Step 4. Tracking

Track opens and clicks of your mailings and use the data to analyze and optimize your campaigns.

Opens

If you check the Track opens box, Optimizely Campaign monitors how many recipients opened your mailing. This number is available in a report generated later.

When sending a mailing, Optimizely Campaign inserts at the bottom of each email a reference as a 1x1 pixel, transparent graphic. This reference contains a unique ID for each recipient. When the recipient opens the email, the program loads the graphic from the Optimizely server. Optimizely Campaign then receives the recipient ID, so it can track that the user opened the email.

This measurement is only possible if the user opens an HTML mail (text mail does not support graphics) and is online at that time. So, you should perceive the rate of opens as relative, not absolute. If, for example, the open rate doubles from one mailing to the next, you probably selected an enticing subject line.

Clicks

If you check the Enable link tracking box, clicks on links in the mailing are recorded. This number can be retrieved in a subsequent report.

Optimizely Campaign displays a list that includes links you used. In the Occurrence column, you can see how many times each link is used in the text or HTML section. The Description column better identifies the link in subsequent reports.

Because URLs can be long and cryptic, you can enter a clear label for each link here. To do that:

  1. Mark the line you want to modify.
  2. Click Edit link.
  3. In the description field, enter the name for the linked page (such as Homepage, Order form and so on).
  4. Click Apply.

The HTML on or Text on column lets you determine whether to record clicks for each link and content type (Text/HTML). Normally, it is useful to track each link in HTML email. But in plain text email, you may want to keep URLs clean and readable instead of transforming them into cryptic tracking links. For example, in "For information, click www.example.com," the link is more likely to be clicked than a tracking link consisting of symbols and numbers.

Click profiles

In the Click profiles column, you can assign a link to a click profile Click profiling allows target groups to be generated quickly and easily. Click profiles work in a similar way to assigning keywords (tags). For example, email recipients who frequently click Blu-ray offers are segmented via a click profile then supplied with targeted and highly relevant information.. To do so:

  1. Select a link.
  2. Click Edit link.
  3. Click the Profile field.
  4. In the Assign click profile window, select one or more profiles and click OK.

Rule-based click profiles are displayed without having them assigned to the respective link, because they are assigned automatically. You may add more profiles, though, to rule-based profiles.

Rule-based profiles cannot be removed from a link to which they are assigned. But, you can assign a link that does not match the rule to the profile based on the rule.