How link clicks are tracked

Overview

Learn how email link clicks are tracked in Ortto and what factors can influence open tracking accuracy. Understanding how clicks are recorded helps you better interpret email engagement and performance metrics.

How clicks are tracked

To track link clicks, we automatically generate a unique URL for each link you include in your emails. This URL is hosted by us and allows us to track specific information such as the link clicked, the email name, the contact who clicked, and more. If you have a tracking subdomain set up, the Ortto-generated URL will use your tracking subdomain. This unique URL automatically redirects to the link you added, without the contact noticing.

Example of an email with open & click tracking enabled.

Both open and click tracking are turned on by default for new emails.

Example of a link with tracking enabled. (Click on the image to maximize it).

Why clicks may not be tracked

There are several reasons why an open might not be recorded:

Link redirection is stripped – Some security filters may automatically redirect to the final link, bypassing our generated URL and preventing tracking from working.
Click tracking is disabled – If click tracking is turned off in your email settings, clicks will not be recorded.
Manual URL replacement – This is unlikely, but if a recipient traces the URL and goes directly to the final link instead of using our generated URL, the click won’t be registered.

TIP: If you're sending emails via API and clicks are not being recorded, make sure to send "no_click_tracks": false in your API payload.

Learn more about using API to send transactional emails.

Why false clicks may be recorded

In some cases, a link click may be recorded even if the recipient hasn’t actually clicked the link.

NOTE: We already have a detection mechanism that automatically excludes clicks occurring within 5 seconds of sending (10 seconds for Internet Explorer 8), as these are likely false clicks. It's challenging to exclude all possible false clicks without the risk of also excluding legitimate ones. We are actively working on improving our detection methods and will include additional options as soon as we can ensure reliable identification

Here are a few reasons why false clicks can happen:

Security filters scanning links – Some email security systems automatically check all links before delivering the email, leading to false click events.
Email preview tools – Some email clients or third-party tools prefetch links for previews, mistakenly logging clicks.

Essentially, any external mechanism that loads our generated link after 5 seconds of the email being sent will log the link click activity.