Improve deliverability of your email by turning off click-tracking on naked links

Tracking links is incredibly valuable because it gives you real data on how your recipients are interacting with your emails. You can learn exactly which recipients are clicking which link, and how many times they click each link. In this article, we will discuss why disabling naked link click-tracking may improve deliverability of your emails.

How click-tracking works

To track a click, the recipient is momentarily taken to a special URL that registers their click, and then is immediately redirected to the intended destination. 

When to be careful about click-tracking

There are cases when tracking clicks may decrease the delivery rate of your emails.

When tracking clicks, you should consider two different types of links:

1. Naked links use text that looks similar to a website URL. For example, nytimes.com. Used in a sentence: For details, visit nytimes.com.
2. Regular links use regular text without additions like 'http://' and '.com'. For example, nytimes. Used in a sentence: Look at this funny cat video from nytimes.

The naked link give the impression that you're going directly to the New York Times homepage. Spammers sometimes use naked links to trick people into thinking they're going to a specific webpage. For example, the link says bank.com/your-account, but when you click it, you're taken to evilhackers.com. For this reason, some spam filters penalize emails that are tracking clicks on naked links. 

How to be smart about tracking clicks

Mixmax has a setting to automatically turn off clicks on naked links. Find it on the Settings page, in the Tracking section. Just un-check the box next to Track clicks on naked links. It's smart to track clicks, because it gives you great insight into how people are interacting with your content. But it's even smarter to track clicks with Mixmax — because we help you track clicks AND stay out of spam filters.