Campaigns and click counting
Create banners and campaigns as separate templates, control them by rule with audience and period, and measure clicks with UTM parameters or own click counting, without tracking pixels.
Banners and campaigns are templates of their own, alongside the signature and the legal notice. A rule determines which emails carry them and in which period. In the template you define whether and how clicks are measured.
Requirements
- Mail flow. Banners and campaigns are appended server side through the mail flow. The Outlook add-in only delivers the signature, no banners or campaigns.
- Permissions. Templates and the "Campaigns" page need the template permissions, rules need the routing permissions.
Overview
- Create a template of the kind Banner or Campaign and choose the measurement.
- Assign the template in a rule, with audience and period.
- View the figures under Signature › Campaigns.
1. Create a template
- Open Signature › Templates and create a new template.
- Choose Banner or Campaign as the kind.
- Design the content in the block editor: image, text, link. Give every image alternative text; the check before saving points out missing alternative text, weak contrast and oversized images.
A banner suits a permanent note, a campaign an action with click counting. Both kinds have the Campaign measurement section.
2. Choose the measurement
The Campaign measurement section in the template has two parts. The measurement belongs to the template, not to the rule: if the same template sits in several rules, it is measured the same way everywhere.
UTM parameters
"Append parameters to every target address": enter the values you want.
| Parameter | Typical content |
|---|---|
utm_source | Origin, such as signature |
utm_medium | Channel, such as email |
utm_campaign | Name of the action, such as open-house-march |
utm_content | Variant, such as banner-a |
utm_term | Keyword, rarely needed |
Empty fields are not appended. At most ten parameters are possible; further parameters set through the API are shown under "Also set". The Link in the mail line shows what a link looks like afterwards.
Counting takes place in your own analytics tool. For this template, the "Campaigns" page in the portal shows "Parameters only, counted in your own analytics tool".
Count clicks yourself
With the Count clicks yourself switch, the template's links run through a signed redirect at Conbool. The click is counted and the recipient is forwarded to the target immediately.
- Recipients see the address of the redirect when they hover over the link. The template names the host.
- If it says "Not available: no public address configured", no redirect address is set up for this installation.
- Security filters open links automatically. Such requests do not count as clicks but appear separately as Machine requests.
What is not measured
There is no tracking pixel and therefore no open rate. Nor are there conversions or figures per recipient. Signatures and legal notices are not rewritten; measurement is only available in banner and campaign templates.
3. Rule with audience and period
Under Signature › Routing you assign the template, see Rules and assignment.
- Audience: senders and recipients as everyone, individual addresses or groups, also negated; plus direction (incoming, outgoing) and internal or external. Exceptions by sender, recipient, subject, body text or header.
- Block: in the rule, add the banner or campaign as a block of its own alongside signature and legal notice, and choose the template.
- Period: with Set time range you enter Valid from and Valid until. Without a period, the rule always applies. At the end, the block disappears from new emails by itself.
- Follow-up messages: for replies and forwards, choose "Same as first message", a custom layout or "Append nothing". For banners, a custom layout without the banner is usually sensible, so that it does not appear several times in long threads.
The period belongs to the rule, not to the template. This allows the same template to sit in two rules with different runtimes.
In the rule view, the notes Clicks are counted or Campaign parameters active show which measurement the selected template carries.
4. Results
Open Signature › Campaigns and choose the Period.
| Area | Content |
|---|---|
| Clicks | Counted clicks by people. |
| Machine requests | Requests from security filters, listed separately, not included in the clicks. |
| Blocks with measurement | Number of banner and campaign templates that carry a measurement. |
| Trend | Clicks and machine requests over time. |
| Per block | Clicks and machine requests per template, with the note "Click counting active" or "Parameters only, counted in your own analytics tool". |
| Most frequent targets | The targets clicked most often. |
Counting is per block, not per rule. If you want to compare audiences, create separate templates or distinguish them through utm_content.
If it says "No measurement", no banner or campaign carries a measurement yet. You set it up in the template itself.
Understanding machine requests
Many recipients have links in incoming emails checked automatically, for example by an upstream gateway or the link checking in Microsoft Defender for Office 365. The filter requests every link, often within seconds of delivery. These requests are listed separately so that the click figure is not inflated. A high share of machine requests is not an error.
With UTM parameters alone, Conbool does not see these requests; whether your analytics tool filters them out depends on its settings.
Next: Surveys · Rules and assignment