Better URL design for more clicks?

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One of the wonderful things about email is the ability to track who clicked on what. If you send out your email via an ESP, for example, they will typically take your landing page URL and turn it into a tracking URL with a unique tag for each recipient.

All fine so far.

So let me ask an impertinent question. Does this tracking reduce clickthroughs?

Say this is my landing page:

http://www.markscompany.com/10_dollars_off/

Once in an email, this attractive looking URL often gets turned into something that looks like this...

http://www.esp2v.net/dfg35465788883777458885866888g

...a click on that link redirects to the landing page, but not before the service provider collects a nice record of the click and which email (and recipient) it came from.

Privacy issues aside, this is generally considered a "GOOD THING." The tracking gives you insights you can use to send better, more targeted email next time around. No arguments there.

But (my favorite word)...some people will look at the URL as they hover over the link with their mouse. Which of the two URL alternatives above is likely to have the greatest positive impact on the decision to click or not?

Intuition says the first one.

Consider, especially, how people are trained to be careful about clicking on strange URLs. Check out this consumer advice from a Microsoft article entitled Recognize phishing scams and fraudulent e-mails:

"The string of cryptic numbers looks nothing like the company's Web address, which is a suspicious sign."

Has anyone done A/B tests to see if the look of the link URL in an email affects clickthrough rates?

I'm not aware of any (please comment if you are).

I'm guessing it might make a difference, especially if you're in a sector plagued by phishing attacks or where you've yet to truly establish trust through your email program.

And I'm also guessing you've never given a moment's thought to this issue until now.

If you think there could be a few extra clicks to gain from good-looking URLs, check how your tracking links display, and work with your service or software provider to see if there are better-structured alternatives.

For example, a little tinkering* with DNS records might let your ESP use a subdomain of your own domain for tracking. So the tracking link would look like this:

http://enews.markscompany.com/dfg35465788883777458885866888g

...which is already an improvement.

If there are no alternatives, at least you tried. And the value of tracking is still worth the loss of a few clicks. But if you can get your URLs looking attractive, so much the better. Every little bit counts.

* a technical term which means I know it's possible because I did it for my own newsletter and ESP, but damned if I can remember the details.

See also: Forget email design, what about URL design

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Permalink | February 04, 2009 | 7 comment(s)
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7 Comments:

The problem is no ESP offers any possibility of tracking clicks without modifying links.
So this is probably why no one has done any A/B testing on this.

I bet better looking links increase the CTR ( especially for those reading the message in Text format )

If the ESP would use the DNS idea they could even drop a lot of those number in the tracking code thus making the url even more attractive.
By Anonymous Mihai Secasiu, on 04 February, 2009  
 

Thanks Mihai. I'm hoping some ESPs will get in touch with some nice solutions (already had one sent in) so I can follow up on this with promising ideas.
By Anonymous Mark Brownlow, on 04 February, 2009  
 

As you mention in the bottom of your post the best option is to utilise e-mail masking via your ESP. Which is actually very simple if you know what you are doing. Just a case of creating a subdomain and changing the nameservers so your ESP has control of that subdomain for tracking purposes. This then makes your e-mails look more trustworthy in my opinion and is consistent with your branding and from address which will also use the domain masking technique. This is exactly what we do at Pure. This also increase deliverability as you are less likely to be seen as a Phishing e-mail
By Blogger Dunkndisorderly, on 04 February, 2009  
 

Our ESP uses http://yourcompany.espdomain/stringofgarbledcode. From there you immediately get redirected to the landing page, so it won't show up too much in the browsers adress bar.

I guess it's not a perfect solution, but it might be the most practical one I've come across.
By Blogger F., on 05 February, 2009  
 

Super, thanks F. and Dunkndisorderly: that's two more positive alternatives to the classic (and ugly) tracking link.
By Anonymous Mark Brownlow, on 05 February, 2009  
 

What about mobile? Those ugly cryptic links really show up on my BlackBerry. Wouldn't making this change help with how emails render on mobile devices too? And maybe even cut down on the scrolling required if they ended up shorter?
By Anonymous Sharon, on 24 February, 2009  
 

That's a very good point Sharon - thanks for the reminder.

Here's a new post with some alternatives. Not all of them are shorter, but they at least look better.
By Anonymous Mark Brownlow, on 25 February, 2009  
 

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