Link Tracking and Email Deliverability

What a tracked link looks like to a filter

An untracked link points directly at your page. A tracked link points at a redirect host, which records the click and forwards the reader. To a receiving provider, the email now contains a link to a third-party domain that may be shared by thousands of senders, some of them abusive.

If the tracking host has a poor reputation, the link inherits some of that perception. If it changes on every campaign, the domain has no history at all. If the redirect passes through two or three hops before reaching the destination, the message looks more like an ad network than a personal note. Custom tracking domain explains how to put the host on your own brand, and the deliverability checklist shows where link review belongs in a pre-send check.

Shared hosts, shorteners and chains

Shared tracking hosts are the default in many tools because they are easy. They are also the first thing a deliverability review flags. Link shorteners are worse: they hide the destination, which is exactly what phishing does, and filters treat them accordingly.

Redirect chains compound the problem. A link that goes from a shortener to a tracking domain to a landing page with another redirect gives the provider several chances to decide the message is promotional or suspicious.

A branded tracking setup

Use one stable tracking hostname on your sending domain, configured with a valid TLS certificate. Point every tracked link at it and make sure the redirect lands on the exact page the reader expects. Keep the destination on the same brand as the sender, or at least on a domain the reader would recognise.

• One tracking host, not one per campaign.
• Valid certificate, no browser warning.
• Direct redirect to the final URL.
• No shortener in the chain.
• Destination page matching the email promise.

Mail Pro's Business plan supports a custom tracking domain for this reason. It keeps clicks on your brand and avoids a shared host. On Starter and Growth, standard tracking applies, and the simplest fix is often to reduce the number of tracked links rather than add more infrastructure.

How many links should a cold email have

One. A cold email works best when it asks for one thing: a reply, a meeting or a visit to one page. Multiple links split attention and increase the number of redirects a filter must evaluate. If you need a second destination, put it in the signature or in a follow-up, not in the first email.

Plain text with a single link is the most robust configuration for cold outreach. It also reads more like a person wrote it, which is the effect you want.

Test the whole path

Send the campaign to an external mailbox, open it on a phone, and click every link. Check that the redirect resolves quickly, the certificate is valid, the page matches the offer and no intermediate warning appears. Then test with images blocked, because the visible link must still work.

Do this after any change to the tracking configuration, the sending domain or the landing page. A broken tracked link is worse than no tracking: it wastes the click and signals a careless sender.

When tracking is not worth it

If your team makes decisions from replies and meetings, click tracking adds risk for data you do not use. Turning it off removes a redirect from every email, simplifies the message and removes a dependency on a third-party host. Many cold email programmes run with no pixel and no click tracking and measure outcomes through the inbox.

That is a legitimate choice, not a lack of sophistication. Measure what you act on.

A worked example

A team's campaign is filtered at one provider. The email contains three tracked links through a shared host and a shortener in the signature. They reduce to one link on go.example.com, remove the shortener and re-test. Placement improves at the filtering provider, and the click-through rate stays similar because the single call to action is clearer.

The copy did not change. The number of redirects did.

Keep a record

Document the tracking hostname, certificate renewal date and which campaigns use click tracking. When a deliverability problem appears, this record tells you whether the link path is a suspect. The deliverability checklist includes tracking as one of its steps for exactly this reason.