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Click tracking

flowchart
    author([Author]) -->|sends| email["
Hey folks! I'm Jason, and I'm writing to you from Buttondown. Have you ever used Google?
"]
    email -->|is delivered to| s124([Subscriber #124])
    s124 -->|opens| email
    s124 -->|clicks| proxy["buttondown.com/c/123/124/google.com"]
    proxy e1@-->|redirects| original_url["google.com"]
    proxy e2@-->|records| email_event>subscriber.clicked]

    click email_event href "event-types#subscriber.clicked"
    e1@{ animate: true }
    e2@{ animate: true }

Buttondown offers opt-in click tracking. When you enable click tracking, Buttondown will rewrite all links in your email to go through a "proxy" URL that we can track.

How it works

Let's say you send a basic email to your subscriber list:

<p>Hey folks! I'm Jason, and I'm writing to you from Buttondown. Have you ever used <a href="https://google.com">Google</a>?</p>

When you enable click tracking, Buttondown will rewrite all links in your email to go through a "proxy" URL that we can track. For example, the link above will be rewritten to look like this:

<p>Hey folks! I'm Jason, and I'm writing to you from Buttondown. Have you ever used <a href="https://buttondown.com/c/{email_id}/{subscriber_id}/https://google.com">Google</a>?</p>

When a subscriber clicks on the link, they will immediately be redirected to the original URL, but we will record that they clicked on the link.

If you disable click tracking later, Buttondown will stop rewriting links in future emails and archive renders. Emails that were already delivered with tracking links will keep redirecting normally, and clicks on those existing tracking links will still be recorded.

Frequently asked questions