Getting Started with Engagement Tracking

Last updated February 2021

With SparkPost, there are a multitude of ways to configure engagement tracking with our customers. This guide will outline some of the initial options, and provide references to other guides for configuring custom tracking domains and different ways to use HTTPS with your custom tracking domains.

Getting Started

Customers can view their engagement through the use of SparkPosts Events. These events can be searched and viewed in many different ways. They can be viewed within SparkPost Signals, queried and searched via the Events API or sent to your own environments through the use of Event Webhooks to name a few.

Notes on Click Tracking

For a link to be click tracked, it must start with a protocol of either http:// or https://. If neither of these are present, the link will not be click tracked by SparkPost.

SparkPost click tracking links are highly dependent on the size of the original link supplied within the REST Transmission or SMTP request. If there are concerns over link length within an email with SparkPost's click tracking enabled, first verify the original link length.

Link sizes of over 4096 bytes will be rejected on redirection

REST Transmissions with Engagement Tracking

Transmissions sent via the SparkPost Transmissions API have engagement tracking on by default for all customers. This includes a top open pixel, bottom open pixel, and click tracking on all links within the email content. These options can be configured via Transmissions API level options. For example, if you wish to use open tracking, but not click tracking, you can set the following options in your JSON payload for a REST transmission

SparkPost templates also have the option to set open and click tracking so that different templates can have a different configuration if desired. These options are identical to the Transmissions level options, although stored at the template level. You can view that documentation here. Even when using a stored template with specific engagement options set, they can still be overriden at the Transmissions API level.

Note: The open_tracking option is not required to be set in the example below, as it defaults to true. It is set explicitly for this example.

{
  "options": {
    "open_tracking": true,
    "click_tracking": false,
    "transactional": true,
    "ip_pool": "my_ip_pool"
  },
  "campaign_id": "click_sample",
  "recipients": [
    ...
  ],
  "content": { ... }
}

If for some reason, you cannot or do not wish to set your tracking configuration with Transmissions API or Template level options, you can request different default settings for your account. Please contact support through the SparkPost app, or your Technical Account Manager.

SMTP Engagement Tracking

The SparkPost SMTP engagement tracking is turned off by default for new accounts. This can be turned on account wide by following this Guide.

To enable click and open tracking in SMTP messages, add the X-MSYS-API header as follows:

X-MSYS-API: { "options" : { "open_tracking" : true, "click_tracking" : true } }

For more information on SMTP Engagement Tracking, check out this Guide to configure your account settings or leverage the SMTP API to control your engagement tracking.

Rate Limiting

If Sparkpost detects excessive click requests over a short period, it will return http 403 Forbidden errors.

If you're a developer running the same tests frequently, you may run into it. The solution is to wait a while, or cycle through various recipient addresses.

Next Steps

Look at setting up a Custom Tracking Domain for your SparkPost mail, which can provide features like Mobile Universal and App Links and HTTPS tracking links through CDN Hosting or the use of a Reverse Proxy.

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Getting Started with Engagement Tracking

Getting Started#

Notes on Click Tracking#

REST Transmissions with Engagement Tracking#

SMTP Engagement Tracking#

Rate Limiting#

Next Steps#