Re-direct when loading website URL

[maroni]

Hi team, 

At the moment, we have resources.vamp-brands.com connected as our primary domain for Landing Pages and Emails in our Hubspot account. We also have our new Website domain connected as a brand domain ("vamp"). We have not yet connected our new website (vamp.com) as a primary website domain. Now when sending marketing emails via Hubspot, I am observing some weird behaviors: 

This is the website URL linked in the email: 

However, when clicking on a CTA button where this URL is linked, it first loads as the link below, before redirecting to the URL above.

This step ads latency, which in turn impacts CX and email performance. Could this be resolved by adding vamp.com as a primary website domain? Are there any implications of updating the DNS records to complete verification? 

Thank you! 

-Matthias

[Jnix284]

Hi @maroni  Happy to help clarify what might be happening here.

It looks like your blog is hosted at vamp.com/blog (hosted on wordpress) where you also have your website hosted.

A subdomain can only host content on one platform (i.e HubSpot or Wordpress) [more info here], which is likely why you are using the resources.vamp-brands.com as your domain in HubSpot for email sends and landing pages.

I don't think that the link redirect is coming from the email sending domain itself, I think it is actually coming from the CTA link being generated.

Could you share a screenshot of how you have the link configured in the CTA or email button itself? Is the link configured to go directly to the blog URL?

///

Side note, your blog listing page is vamp.com/resources/blog, but once you click an article, it is just vamp.com/blog/article-name - I would suggest removing the /resources and retaining only the /blog for your blog, even if you call the page "resources" Google is not seeing all of the blog articles as part of the /resources directory so there is no benefit to having this URL structure. 

You'll definitely need a redirect for this if you make the change. If you're already thinking of moving your website and/or blog to HubSpot, the blog listing page should be set up the same way (with /blog only).

[maroni]

Hi @Jnix284 - Thank you so much for your input here. Please see a screenshot of the email setup below: 

And noted regarding the blog URL structure, I will forward this to our web team. Thank you so much! 

-Matthias

[Jnix284]

Hi @maroni , you're welcome, happy to help!

I couldn't find any documentation or related questions about what happens if your email sending domain is not the same as your website domain.

I did some testing with one of our recent marketing emails and it looks like tracking information is added, but no redirects:

https://www.maka-agency.com/power-theme-changelog?utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=2&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--bLyDcrboyIIziIBllqSFRk7ghx5ukXn481Z686HOPM_ufItwCqYHUCf7V6m7v4Pl5HaDVVIhD3S5KtYgUv7L2HHvqaA&_hsmi=2

Our email sending domain is the same as our website domain, so I have to make the assumption that the redirect is caused by the domain.

I don't think there will be a way around this - it might be worth reaching out to HubSpot Support to confirm this is the expected behavior.

@jolle any experience with clients that have a different email sending domain from their website domain (hosted outside of HS)?

[maroni]

Thanks @Jnix284 - I just opened a support ticket. Will keep this thread posted. Appreciate the help! 

-Matthias

[maroni · Accepted solution]

Hi @Jnix284 & @jolle - mystery solved, makes sense now that the team pointed it out 😄

Thanks for your help! 

"So, the redirect URL you're seeing beginning with "resources.vamp-brands.com/e3t/Ctc/" is used for click tracking in Marketing emails. The tracking link is automatically set to reference your connected Email (web version) domain, which you can see in the Click tracking domain section of your settings here. When a recipient clicks the link, they are briefly redirected through the tracking URL which lets us know the link was clicked.

Click tracking can be toggled off in the settings, but doing so would prevent us from being able to report on the number of clicks and who clicked what."

[Jnix284]

@maroni I'm glad they could provide clarity around the expected process.

It sounds like the redirect can't be avoided unless you turn off tracking.

If you decide to turn off tracking, you could just create your own links with UTM parameters or even a bit.ly with UTM parameters and you'll still get the tracking data, you just won't get it at the email/contact level like the native tracking.

And to confirm, the redirect is only added when the email sending domain is different from the website domain. When it is the same, the tracking code is added via URL parameters instead.

[maroni]

Got it, thanks so much @Jnix284! 

[TiphaineCuisset]

Hi @maroni 

Thank you for reaching out.

I want to tag some of our experts here @Jnix284 @BukunmiOdetayo @Phil_Vallender do you have any thoughts for @maroni on this? 

Thank you!

Best

Tiphaine