Define Tracking

To access the tracking definition wizard for a given mail job from the open job details pane, select the Summary tab and click on the Edit link in the Tracking section. If you are already on the workflow page of the mail job, simply click on the Define Tracking section.

The Tracking Definition wizard defines if and how the messages sent with an email job is tracked by LISTSERV Maestro.

The wizard has four pages: Tracking Selection, Type, Type Details, and Summary

The top row of the wizard displays links to these five pages. The page that is currently open is highlighted. Depending on the choices made on some wizard pages, other pages may become disabled or may be shown in different versions. If a wizard page is disabled, then it means that the page is not necessary with the current choices and can safely be ignored.

Type Page: Choose Tracking Type

Note: Some tracking types may have been disabled or hidden by the administrator. This means that not all tracking types may be available at all times.

Personal Tracking or Permission-Based Personal Tracking: Personal Tracking records events traceable to the individual who triggered them. Very specific information can be gathered about an individual's interaction with a message, such as how many times a link has been clicked. This data can be related to personal information on individuals being tracked.

This type of tracking is ideal for gathering the most detailed information about how recipients interact with the messages sent. However, tracking this kind of information is often viewed as a violation of privacy, and is even illegal in many countries without the informed consent of the person being tracked. To avoid problems, seek consent from the recipients to collect and store personal profile data before using this type of tracking. If you are using LISTSERV Maestro's Subscriber Warehouse to store your recipients, Maestro can help you with this:

If you include a special profile field with the type "Consent to Personal Tracking" in your subscriber list or group(see here), then Maestro will do the job for you of collecting and storing the subscribers' consent for personal tracking: This special profile field is displayed to the subscribers as a yes/no choice (usually a checkbox), with a label and explanation text that asks them to agree to being personally tracked. If they select "yes", then this means that they grant their consent for personal tracking.

If a subscriber list or group contains such a special profile field, then for any mailings to this subscriber list or group, the normal "Personal Tracking" type is not available and is replaced with the "Permission-Based Personal Tracking" type. If this type is selected for the mail job, then the following will happen: Any recipients of the mail job which have granted their consent for personal tracking is tracked as if the "Personal Tracking" type was selected. Any recipients which have not granted their consent is tracked as if the "Unique" type was selected (see below). That way, you can be sure that "Personal Tracking" is indeed only used for recipients which have explicitly agreed to being personally tracked, while all recipients where you do not have this agreement are only tracked using the totally anonymous "Unique" type.
Anonymous Tracking: The collected tracking data is only associated with anonymous profiles that include no identifying data. However, demographic information from these anonymous profiles, such as age, gender, or zip code, can be used for reporting without exposing the actual individuals.

Because collected data is not associated with identifiable individuals, it is usually not considered a violation of privacy or illegal collection of data. Most users do, however, expect to be warned if demographic data is being collected and used.

This type of tracking is only available if Maestro has stored individual recipients, i.e. if a text file was uploaded or if Maestro accessed a database to retrieve recipient data.
Unique Tracking: Records the number of times unique tracking events happen, however, it is not associated with individual users or other identifying data.

Because all collected data is totally anonymous, this type of tracking is usually not considered a violation of privacy or illegal collection of data.
Blind Tracking: Collects non-specific tracking data, recording only the number of times events occur. This type of tracking does not allow the tracing of a tracking events back to an actual recipient. Additionally, with this type of tracking chosen, Maestro by design is unable to tell if a number of click events was generated by many unique recipients clicking a few times or by a few recipients clicking many times.

Because all collected data is totally anonymous, this type of tracking is usually not considered a violation of privacy or illegal collection of data.