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Cahan
New Participant
July 13, 2020
Question

Malformed links?

  • July 13, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 4935 views

I have a malformed link in my Newsletter Link Performance report, ${CTA-url}. When I read this (https://nation.marketo.com/t5/Knowledgebase/What-is-a-malformed-link-in-my-report/ta-p/249063#:~:text=In%20your%20email%20link%20performance%2c.%22%20Here%27s%20how%20that%20happens:&text=When%20this%20happens%2c%20Marketo%20is%2cany%20misconfiguration%20on%20your%20part.) explanation about malformed links, from what I understand it is due to the receiver’s email set-up, which makes it not able to trace what was clicked on. Therefore I would think that all links clicked on by that receiver would show up as malformed? However from a report that shows which links contacts have clicked on, there a several contacts that have clicked on the malformed link, but where I can also see what else they have clicked on. Like in below example.

Malformed link

 
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2 replies

Casey_Grimes2
Casey_Grimes2
New Participant
July 13, 2020

Hi Cahan,

 

This actually isn't a malformed link, but instead a specific setup issue: when you create an email template and choose to use variables for links (such as the CTA link) in editable areas, some problems can occur—while the majority of email clients will receive the email with the properly formed link (so ${CTA-url} is a real link in the email), but not all. Additional issues can come up when you use both the link and the link name as variables, notably in Office 365.

 

I'm at the point where between the lack of copying to text versions of emails, the breaking in Office 365, and the issues it causes in links for Smart Lists/reports that I can no longer recommend anyone use this technique for links in emails. You'll need to restructure your email template so the user has to add the link in themselves.

SanfordWhiteman
SanfordWhiteman
New Participant
July 13, 2020

Can you say more about the outcome in Office 365?

Casey_Grimes2
Casey_Grimes2
New Participant
July 13, 2020

Of course. 365 and Outlook.com are pretty fussy about links in general—in fact, if you've ever tried to do something like

 

<a href="">Test 1</a> or <a href="#">Test 2</a>

 

this used to fail and make links break up until recently. I even wound up just switching to using "#tbd" in order to get around this problem when I didn't know what a link was going to be. Basically, if the software can't understand that the link is in fact a link, it errors out and shows the end user bracketing similar to the following:

 

 

In the case of that screenshot, the link is wrapped in something very similar to

<a href="https://${ctaLink}">${ctaText}</a>

So, it was just the straw that broke the camel's back on this method for me.

Michael_Florin-2
Michael_Florin-2
New Participant
July 13, 2020

I don't believe you're on the right track here. ${CTA-url} looks very much like a Velocity variable, defined in an email script token.

 

And to quote the master:

 

"When you use Velocity tokens, output the entire <a> tag including the closing </a> from Velocity."

 

Search for "velocity links" or "velocity link tracking" to get the full story.

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