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Register link clicks and website visits

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Important

This article only applies to outbound marketing, which will be removed from the product on June 30, 2025. To avoid interruptions, transition to real-time journeys before this date. More information: Transition overview

You can measure customer engagement with your website, banner ads, and other online marketing initiatives in several ways, including by:

  • Adding a script to the pages of your website that enables Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys to record how people use your website and to connect browsing records to anonymous and known contacts.
  • Setting up redirect URLs, which log clicks on links that you post to social-media sites, ad banners, and other places online. You'll be able to see how often a link was clicked, when it was clicked, and the physical location where it was clicked. You'll also be able to see which redirect URLs any given lead or contact clicked on (provided they are working on a machine where the right cookie is set).

Important

Many countries/regions (including the European Union) require that you get consent before setting a cookie on a user's machine. It is your organization's responsibility to be aware of, and conform to, all relevant laws and regulations in the markets where you operate, including consent to set cookies. You can read more about the EU regulations at ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/. Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys uses cookies in the following ways:

  • Marketing pages created and hosted by Customer Insights - Journeys use cookies to enable the pre-fill feature for known contacts, and to log when any contact opens a marketing page. Customer Insights - Journeys pages and page templates do not include a cookie-consent feature, so you must add it. One way to do this is by adding JavaScript to the <head> section of your pages using the HTML editor of the page designer. You could develop your own JavaScript or use one of the many free or licensed solutions already available. You could also use the built-in privacy statement for marketing pages to announce your use of cookies; however, this might not be sufficient in all jurisdictions because it won't stop the server from setting the cookie—it just informs visitors that cookies are being used (for more information about this feature, see Configure landing pages. More information: Create and deploy marketing pages
  • The websites feature uses cookies to log visits to any web page where you place the tracking script. Cookies work together with the marketing-pages feature to identify contacts by matching the visitor IDs to landing-page submissions. If your website already uses cookies and includes a consent feature, then it probably covers the Customer Insights - Journeys website script. However, if you don't have cookie consent built into your website, you must add it before adding the website script to pages that market to residents of relevant countries/regions. More information: Register link clicks and website visits
  • The event portal uses a session cookie to enable contacts to sign in and register for events. More information: Set up the event portal. Additionally, it uses cookies to store the user's language.

More information: How Customer Insights - Journeys uses cookies

Monitor how visitors use your website

When people come to your website, they are expressing an interest in your organization and its products. And where they go on your site tells you even more about what they are interested in. Frequent or extended browsing sessions with your site, especially in the products or purchasing areas, can be a strong indicator of a contact who is ready to buy.

To enable website tracking, you must add JavaScript code generated by Customer Insights - Journeys to each page that you want to track. Each script that the system generates has a unique ID value, which identifies the individual script and is stored with each visit it records (other than this, each script is identical). Customer Insights - Journeys treats all visits to pages that have the same script as occurring on the same website. You might use just one script on all pages, or you might set up several different scripts to divide your site into logical areas of interest. If your organization runs several websites (such as one for each brand), you would typically track each one separately by using different JavaScript code on each of them, though you could also track them all as a single site. The easiest way to add the JavaScript code to all the pages of your site that need it is probably by adding the code to the page templates in your CMS system.

Important

The website tracking script that is supplied by this feature will attempt to set a cookie for all visitors to your site. If your site includes a feature that allows visitors to opt-out of cookies, the website tracking script will still attempt to set its cookie even for visitors who have opted-out. If you want to fully respect the opt-out preference of your site visitors, then you must modify the website tracking script as required so that it also works with your site's opt-out mechanism.

Find or create tracking and form-capture codes for your website

For each collection of webpages that you want to treat as a discrete unit in Customer Insights - Journeys, you must set up a website record, which generates both tracking and form-capture codes for use on those pages.

  1. Go to Outbound marketing > Internet Marketing > Marketing websites to see the current list of websites you are tracking.

  2. Find the website you want to work with, or select New to create a new one.

  3. Your new or existing website record opens. Here you can enter and read information and settings for your website. You'll also find results and analytics gathered for the current site so far (if any). The following settings and information are most important when setting up a website for tracking:

    • Name: Shows a name for the website record, which you'll see in the list view and anywhere else you need to identify the record.
    • URL: Shows the address of the site (or sub-site) where you'll use the codes generated by this record. This isn't required, nor is it used in the generated codes, but this can be important information to help you and other users know where the code is being used.
    • Timeout: The system counts all page loads requested by a single visitor within a short space of time as belonging to the same session. A session is closed when the amount of time specified here passes with no new page requests from that visitor.

  4. If you're working with a new website record, then select Save on the command bar to generate the website-tracking and form-capture codes. After you've saved the record at least once, you'll see the following:

    • JavaScript code: This is the code that you must place on each webpage that you want to track as part of the current website. It is read-only. Copy the code from here and paste it onto each webpage (or CMS template) as needed.
    • Form capture code: This is the code that you must place on each external webpage that includes an externally designed form that you'd like to use to submit data back to Customer Insights - Journeys. Copy the code from here and paste it onto each webpage (or CMS template) as needed. More information: Use form capture to integrate a form created externally.

View site-visit data and analytics

The same website record where you find the JavaScript tracking code also shows the data collected by using that code. To see the results, go to Outbound marketing > Internet Marketing > Marketing websites and open the website record you want to examine. Browse the following three tabs to see what has been happening on your site:

  • General Info: This is where you find the basic metadata and JavaScript code for the current site. After your script has started to collect data, you'll find the results here, including your top 10 pages and other information.
  • Timeline: Shows a detailed timeline of each click recorded for the current website over time.

Note

Website results and insights are also reported for each individual contact record. More information: Contact insights

Track visitors to your marketing pages

Each time you publish a marketing page, Customer Insights - Journeys sets up a new website (including unique JavaScript tracking code) to track interactions with that page only. You'll find these in the Outbound marketing > Internet Marketing > Marketing websites list next to your other websites. For more information about how to work with website tracking and view the results, see the previous section.

Set up redirect URLs

Redirect URLs are links that redirect through your Customer Insights - Journeys server on their way to some other piece of content that the person who clicked the link is actually looking for.

Customer Insights - Journeys logs each click on a redirect URL as it passes the user on to the actual target. By using different redirect URLs in your banner ads, tweets, Facebook posts, and elsewhere, you'll be able to see how many people clicked on each of those links, where they were (physically) when they did so, and more. This can help you evaluate which of your communication channels are having the greatest impact, and which you should improve or abandon.

Find or create a redirect URL

To find or create a redirect URL.

  1. Go to Outbound marketing > Internet Marketing > Redirect URLs to see the current list of redirect URLs you have set up.

  2. Find and open the redirect URL you want to work with, or select New on the command bar to create a new one.

  3. Your new or existing redirect-URL record opens. Here you can enter and read description information and settings for your redirect URL. You'll also find results and analytics gathered for the current redirect URL so far (if any). The following settings and information are most important when setting up a redirect URL:

    • Name: Enter a name for the redirect-URL record, which you'll see in the list view and anywhere else where you need to identify the record. You should use a name that reflects how and where you will use the link, such as "LinkedIn spring campaign."
    • Original URL: Enter the URL for the page or download that should open when somebody clicks on the redirect URL (after being logged and forwarded from the Customer Insights - Journeys server).
    • Redirecting URL: This is the redirecting URL, generated by Customer Insights - Journeys, that you can copy and use wherever you want to post the link. It is generated the first time you save the record.

  4. Select Save to save your work and generate the redirecting URL.

View redirect URL click data and analytics

The same redirect-URL record where you can find the redirecting URL also shows the data collected by using that URL. To see these results, go to Outbound marketing > Internet Marketing > Redirect URLs and open the redirect-URL record you want to examine. Browse the following two tabs to see information gathered by the URL:

  • General Info: This is where you find the basic metadata and the redirecting URL itself. After your redirecting URL has started to collect data, you'll find the results here, including a map with geodata and other information.
  • Timeline: Shows a detailed timeline of each click recorded over time.

Note

Redirect URL results and insights are also reported for each individual contact and lead record. More information: Contact insights

See also

Design lead-scoring models
Set up lead scoring
How Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys uses cookies