Click and open tracking
You can use SMTPeter's click tracking to figure out what attracts users' eyes. With click tracking enabled all links in emails sent through SMTPeter are rewritten. When a receiver clicks on such a rewritten link he or she will not open the original hyperlink, but a link to one of SMTPeter's web servers instead. SMTPeter intercepts the click and logs it.
Of course, right after we've logged the click we redirect the user to the original hyperlink. From a user's perspective it will appear as if the original link was opened.
We do the same with images. All image links in email messages are rewritten too, such that the images are downloaded from the SMTPeter servers instead of the original server. By doing this we know exactly when someone opens an email, because we see the image download appear in our log files.
Enabling click tracking
Emails can be sent to SMTPeter using the SMTP and the REST API. Both API's allow you to enable click tracking. If you use the REST API you can simply add a "trackclicks" property to the JSON or POST data.
For the SMTP API there are two ways to do this. You either have to add a "x-smtpeter-trackclicks" MIME header to your email or you have to go to SMTPeter's dashboard to create SMTP credentials for which clicktracking is enabled.
Scam prevention
Some email programs show big warning if a clickable URL is connected to a different URL than the one that is visible.
<a href="http://clicks.smtpeter.com/path/to/file">www.example.com</a>The above link triggers a "this message might be scam" warning in some email programs, because the link appears to go to "www.example.com", but in reality the "clicks.smtpeter.com" website is opened.
If you want to prevent such scam warnings, you can instruct SMTPeter to skip rewriting these type of hyperlinks. Alternatively you can also of course change the link text.
<a href="http://clicks.smtpeter.com/path/to/file">my website</a>API and dashboard
All clicks and opens are logged. You can get access to these log files with the REST API. You therefore have access to all collected raw data.
On top of that, SMTPeter periodically processes the log files and extracts relevant data from it and puts this data on the dashboard. When you open the dashboard, you get direct insight into the best performing links.
An overview of all types of log files that we have is given in the table below. You can visit the individual log file page to see what content they hold.
| Log file | Description |
|---|---|
| attempts log file | information about all messages sent through SMTPeter |
| bounces log file | information about messages that bounced |
| clicks log file | information about the clicks generated |
| deliveries log file | information about the messages delivered |
| dmarc log file | information about received dmarc reports |
| failures log file | information about failed deliveries |
| opens log file | information about when messages are opened |
| responses log file | information about response mails received by SMTPeter |
Click tracking domain
When rewriting the links to detect the clicks, we do our best to make the rewritten link look as much as the original. We leave the path intact and only add a small identifier to the URL. We also change the original hostname in the URL to a hostname that points to the SMTPeter web servers. By default, we use "clicks.smtpeter.com" for this.
However, we recommend that you go to your dashboard and configure a different click domain instead. To make your email campaigns more successful, you can better use a click domain like "specialoffers.yourcompanyname.com". The receivers of your messages will then already see your domain when they hover their mouse over the hyperlinks, which gives them more confidence to click.
DNS configuration
If you install your own click domain, you must make sure that this domain leads back to the SMTPeter servers for the logging and redirection to work. The easiest way to do this is to create a DNS CNAME record towards "clicks.smtpeter.com".
The exact way to do this depends on your DNS provider. If in doubt, please contact them for support.
