Clickthrough Tracker

- Clickthrough Tracking - clickthrough_tracking.cgi
- Obtaining The Program
- Installing clickthrough_tracking.cgi
- Using clickthrough_tracking.cgi

- Creating clickthrough tracking links
- Using Open Messages Logging
- Using Subscriber Count Logging
- Using ``Hard'' email Bounces Logging

- Viewing Clickthrough Information
- FAQ
- COPYRIGHT

# Clickthrough Tracking - clickthrough_tracking.cgi

clickthrough_tracking.cgi gives you the ability to track:

- How many times certain urls are clicked on in your list messages
- How many times a message is opened
- How many subscribers are present every time a message is sent
- ``Hard'' email Bounces

# Obtaining The Program

The Click Through Tracking plugin can be found in the Magicbook distribution in the, plugins directory.

# Installing clickthrough_tracking.cgi

clickthrough_tracking.cgi should be installed into your dada/plugins directory. Upload the script and change it's permissions to 755.

Add this entry to the $ADMIN_MENU array ref:

             {-Title          => 'Clickthrough Tracking',
              -Title_URL      => $PLUGIN_URL."/clickthrough_tracking.cgi",
              -Function       => 'clickthrough_tracking',
              -Activated      => 1,
              },

It's possible that this has already been added to $ADMIN_MENU and all you would need to do is uncomment this entry.

# Using clickthrough_tracking.cgi

## Creating clickthrough tracking links

Clickthrough tracking works by passing the URL you want to track to a script that keeps track of what URL gets clicked when, then redirecting the user to the real URL.

To use the clickthrough tracking capabilities, first visit clickthrough_tracking.cgi in your web browser and check, Enable Clickthrough Tracking

When you write a list message use the special [redirect] tag, instead of just a URL:

Instead of:

            http://yahoo.com

Write:

        [redirect=http://yahoo.com]

If you're are writing an HTML message,

Instead of:

            <a href="http://yahoo.com">http://yahoo.com</a>;

Write:

            <a href="[redirect=http://yahoo.com]">http://yahoo.com</a>;

Make sure:

- You do not put quotes around the URL in the [redirect] tag:

  NO!

       [redirect="http://yahoo.com";]

  Yes!

       [redirect=http://yahoo.com]

- You do not forget the http:// part of the URL:

  NO!

       [redirect=yahoo.com]

  Yes!

        [redirect=http://yahoo.com]

  If you want, you can use any protocal you want, be it http, ftp, ical, etc.

## Using Open Messages Logging

Be sure to check, Enable Open Messages Logging

Please understand what this feature does - and does not do.

When this option is checked, Dada Mail will track each time an email message is opened by a mail reader as long as:

- The message is formatted in HTML

  PlainText messages cannot be tracked.

- The mail reader being used to view your list message has not disabled image viewing

Even if all these conditions are met, opens may not be logged correctly. Saying all this, you should not use this feature as a hard statistical number, but rather as a sort of barometer of how many people may be reading your message.

Viewing the message in Dada Mail's own archives will not be tracked.

The Open Message Logger only logs:

- The list the message was sent from
- The, ``Message-ID'' of the message itself
- The time the message was opened.

The Open Message Logger DOES NOT log:

- The email address associated with the opening
- The IP address associated with the opening
- Any other information that can be used to associate a open with a specific subscriber of your list

We find the extremely important that no personal information is tracked. It's not something we'd personally want tracked if we were to be a subscriber to a mailing list.

To clarify how the message opener works, Dada Mail inserts a small image into the source of your HTML message. It looks something like this:

     <!--open_img-->
     <img src="example.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/spacer_image/listshortname/1234/spacer.png" />
     <!--/open_img-->

Where, listshortname is your List Short Name and, 1234 is the Message-ID.

In our testing using SpamAssassin, this does not raise any flags with its mail filters, but please run your own tests to make sure that your subscribers will still receive your messages.

## Using Subscriber Count Logging

Check, Enable Subscriber Count Logging

That's it! Nothing more has to be done.

## Using ``Hard'' email Bounces Logging

If you have the, Mystery Girl Bounce Handler installed, just check,

Enable Bounce Logging

To clarify what this tells you - a brief tutorial on how messages are bounced:

There are roughly two different types of bounced messages: ``soft'' bounces - bounces that happen because a mailbox is full, or there's some sort of problem with mail delivery and, ``hard'' bounces - bounces because the subscriber's mail box just doesn't exist.

In the context of this tracker, only bounce emails that cause the Mystery Girl bounce handler to remove the address from the subscription list are counted.

This means, you may receive 100 bounces from your list, but only 10 that will be unsubscribed. Ten bounces will be shown to you when you view the logs.

# Viewing Clickthrough Information

After a mailing list message has been sent out, the reports may be viewed by visiting clickthrough_tracking.cgi in your browser.

# FAQ

- Does the clickthrough log save which subscriber (email address) clicks on which link?

  No. Email addresses aren't saved in the clickthrough logs. The clickthrough tracking is not meant to track individual users, but to get a general idea on what, if any, links people follow from email messages.

  Although the power of being able to track individual subscribers is great, it's also important to remember about people's privacy.

- Why are some of my message subjects in the reports a string of numbers?

  If you have deleted the archive entry associated with the message, or don't have archiving turned on, The tracking reports will use the message id associated with the mailing list message you're looking at.

- Where are the clickthrough logs being written?

  Clickthrough logs are named listshortname-clickthrough.log, where listshortnamt is the list's shortname.

  These files are written in whatever directory you set the $LOGS variable to. If you haven't set the $LOGS variable, they'll get written wherever the $FILES variable is set to.

- What else can I do with the logs?

  You can also fetch the raw clickthrough logs and open them up in a spreadsheet application, such as Excel and create your own reports from them.

# COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 1999 - 2008

Justin Simoni

http://justinsimoni.com

All rights reserved.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.