Overview

Defining default link appends and having them available across all email messages automatically is an efficient way to streamline the repetitive task of manually constructing frequently used URL strings.

Once stored in account settings, default link appends can be enabled, disabled and edited uniquely for each email message during message creation, without affecting the stored defaults at the account level.

If you're looking for more advanced link append options for individual links, please check out our appendQuerySrting Smarty modifier article.

Create default link appends

You can save a set of default link append key/value pairs via the UI.

1. Log in to your Cordial account and open the dropdown menu in the top right corner. Navigate to Administration > Account Settings and select Email from the left navigation menu.

2. Edit the Link Append Defaults section to add new or modify existing link append key/value pairs. The value field accepts contact and system Smarty variables such as {$contact.attributeKey} and {$mcID}, giving you access to additional data points for constructing a holistic view of campaign performance using contact and system attributes.

While contact and system variables are supported, fully dynamic Smarty variables cannot be executed using link append defaults.

Use case

You could use a hypothetical loyalty program variable {$contact.loyalty} to gain insight into the number of contacts that have interacted with your links, organized by program tier levels such as gold, silver, and bronze.

Changes to link append defaults will not affect existing message drafts. To update link appends on existing drafts, modify the link append string directly in the message under Goals and Tracking.

• Key: Campaign tracking parameter name. Urchin tracking parameters are a great example. Can be a custom key or any key recognizable by your marketing campaign tracking tool.
• Value: Data that describes your campaign and gives you insights into campaign performance.

The key/value pairs are added as an extension to all of your links in an email message. Our example above would generate the following URL (assuming the message link points to cordial.com):

https://cordial.com/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Weekly_Deals&utm_source=newsletter

Maintain clean and easy to interpret campaign performance reports by applying consistent naming rules for your link append key/value pairs.

Edit default link appends

You can edit default link appends at the message level when tracking parameters for a particular campaign are different from the norm. Changed made at the message level will not update saved default key/value pairs at the account level.

When creating or editing a message, scroll down to the Goals and Tracking pane and click Edit.

Link tracking does not have to be enabled.

You can now freely edit the default append URL string. Note that the ? mark will be automatically inserted before your appended URL string when the message is sent.

When customizing default append URL strings, ensure that your link append keys are followed by the = sign, along with the key value. Insert & after key values to indicate the beginning of a new key/value pair entry.

Special characters in Link Append parameters will be encoded except the following characters - !, *, ?, (, ), ;, :, @, =, +, $, ,, /, ?, %, #, [, ], {, }

Suppress default link appends

Default link appends can be suppressed for individual links in a message by using the data-crdl-noappend="true" attribute. This requires editing message HTML and placing the attribute inside the <a> tag of a chosen link:

<a href="cordial.com" data-crdl-noappend="true">This link will not be appended</a>

Suppressing link appends does not affect link tracking.