Branded link and image URLs

To enable link tracking, Unica modifies links in email messages and landing pages. Deliver rebuilds the link to identify one of your registered messaging domains, instead of seeing a link that references an Unica domain.

When Deliver assembles an email message or displays a hosted landing page, it replaces each hyperlink with a redirect link that connects to Unica hosted messaging services. Without any further link modification, email recipients would see a URL that identifies Unica as the source of the link.

To ensure that message recipients see your brand as the source, Deliver rebuilds each link to include the email marketing domain that you specify as the From: email domain. You specify the From: domain when you configure the email header. Rebuilding the links to reflect your email domain is referred to as presenting a branded URL.

Deliver creates branded URLs for the following links.
  • Hyperlinks added to HTML email.
  • Hyperlinks in email that point to hosted landing pages
  • Hyperlinks between hosted landing pages
  • Image source URLs in HTML email

The following table describes how Deliver ensures that email and landing page links display your preferred email domain.

How Deliver builds and displays trackable links.
Building and viewing the link Link format

What you see in the Message Editor.
When you add a link to the email or landing page, the link displays as shown here.
<a href="http://example.com/NewProducts">
See our latest entries.</a>

In this example, the link target is the new products page on your corporate website: http://example.com/New products.

How Deliver assembles the link.

Deliver replaces the original link target with a redirect link that points to an email marketing domain in the Unica hosted email environment. The rebuilt link includes unique URL parameters that identify the link, specify the original link target, and provide link tracking data.

When you run a mailing,Deliver rebuilds the link in the following format.

<a href="http://content.<your selected email domain>
/deliverIRS/servlet/IRSL?<link parameters>">
See our latest entries.</a>

Deliver sends the rebuilt link as follows:

<a href="http://content.example.online.com/DeliverIRS
/servlet/IRSL?<link parameters>">
See our latest entries.</a>

In this example, example.online.com is the domain that you selected in the From: field in the email header. This URL is also called the branded URL.

What the email recipient sees.

When email recipients hover over the link in HTML versions of the email, they typically see the branded URL, as seen in the following example.

http://content.example.online.com/DeliverIRS/servlet/IRSL?
<encrypted link parameters>See our latest entries

The actual display behavior depends on the email client or browser in which the recipient views the email.
Note: The branded URL displays when email recipients and landing page visitors hover over or click links in the email or landing page. However, if the recipient opens the link target in a web browser, the browser displays the actual URL of the target page.