How to use universal links in your email templates?

This article explains how to use universal links in your email templates.

Universal links let you connect to content deep inside your app using standard HTTP or HTTPS links (see documentation on the Apple Developer website).

Tracking redirection links in emails

Batch relies on its Email Service Provider’s link tracking to track clicks on your email template links.

When an email is sent from your campaign, the ESP (Email Service Provider) replaces the original links with tracking links of its own, for example:

This link:

<a href="https://myapp.example.com/albums?albumname=vacation&index=1"> OPEN LINK </a>

Is replaced by this one once the email is received:

<a href="http://post.eu.spmailtechnol.com/f/a/UtKgWMX8Z_6C6As1- frJKg~~/AABGZAA~/RgRlbNn6P0TTaHR0cHM6Ly9vLmxhbGFsYWIuY29tL3UvbnJkLnBocD9wP Utoa3g4enRhVERfMl8yNDIwNTkxXzFfMyZlbXNfbD00MTE5NzQ1Jmk9MSZkPU1UWTROamc0TlR"> OPEN LINK </a>

By managing the redirection using a link of its own, the ESP can track the CTA / link opened actions.

Unfortunately, replacing the universal link causes the redirection not to work. Therefore, when using universal links, you need to disable the ESP link tracking, which means you will not be able to track clicks on these links in your Batch campaign stats.

As an alternative, you can rely on the classic Analytics tracking you probably already add to your links (e.g. ?utm=, etc) and track clicks in your dedicated Analytics tool.

Dealing with universal links in your template

In order not to break redirection on universal links, you can disable the ESP’s link tracking by adding the data-msys-clicktrack="0" argument to your link HTML tag as follows:

<a data-msys-clicktrack="0" href="[URL]">My link</a>