How does Link Tracking work?

Link tracking lets you gain insight into what actions your users are taking within the emails you send them. This help article will provide some additional details about how we are able to track what links are clicked by a recipient. Once your Postmark account is approved for sending Link Tracking can be enabled on a Server or Message level.

Overview

Link tracking works by routing the links you place in the tracked emails through our tracking servers at click.pstmrk.it. When link tracking is enabled for an email you send, we will scan the HTML and/or Plain Text content (depending on your Link Tracking settings) of the email for links and replace them with the wrapped version that performs a redirect through our pstmrk.it domain. We then record the following data before directing the recipient to the original URL:

• IP
• User-Agent
• Link ID
• Timestamp

Viewing Link Tracking Details

Successfully tracked links will show in your Stream Activity and will look like this:

If you open the Message for more details, you can see the information obtained for the click:

In the Message details, you’ll see which link was clicked, along with the browser used, time, and geolocation. With this link tracking information, you can check to see if a specific link was clicked and when.

Formatting Links

Do not use URLs as the display text for links in your emails or your email may appear to ISPs as a phishing attempt. Instead, describe the link in your HTML like this:

<a href="http://myawesomeapp.com">Check out my app!</a>