Forward to a Friend link in an email communication

A Forward to a Friend link provides email recipients with a convenient way to forward a copy of your marketing email to people that they know. Because Unica tracks the forwarding requests, you can measure your ability to use this method to encourage your customers to promote your message and brand.

You must request that Unica enable this feature for your hosted messaging account.

Each email recipient can forward a copy of the message to up to 5 email addresses. The forwarded email duplicates the personalization and content of the original message. When this feature is enabled, you can add a Forward to a Friend link by using either of the following methods.

  • In the Message Editor, drop the link into a zone with the Forward to a Friend widget Forward to a Friend.
  • Embed the link in an HTML template or snippet with the custom <UAEf2f> tag.

You can add one or more Forward to a Friend links to an email communication. You can configure each link to appear as text or as an image. Each Forward to a Friend link appears as a trackable link in HTML email and in the web page version of the email. Forward to a Friend links are not supported in the text-only version of an email message.

When you publish a message that contains a Forward to a Friend link, Unica creates a hosted landing page form that the email recipient uses to submit email forwarding addresses. You can modify the hosted address submission form, and a corresponding confirmation page, to support your brand.

Unica tracks which recipients forward the message and how many friends open the forwarded messages. The system tracks message opens and link clicks in the forwarded messages and adds the response data to the Deliver system tables. The response data from the forwarded messages, including message bounce data, also appears in standard link tracking reports. Responses to the forwarded messages are attributed to the original mailing.

Forward to a Friend links are not supported in the following cases.

  • Email messages that are sent as transactional email
  • Advanced scripts for email
  • Email messages that include offers from Unica Campaign.

Because the forwarded messages duplicate the original message, the forwarded messages also contain Forward to a Friend links. However, the links in the forwarded messages are not active. Only the initial email recipient can forward a message.