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Link templates

With link templates, you can create dynamic and reusable links for your email campaigns by appending parameters or prepending URLs. This can create consistency in the URLs across your campaigns and messages.

How it works

Link templates are most often used in these following use cases:

  • Appending Google Analytics query parameters to all links in a given email message
  • Prepending a URL to all links in a given email message

Let’s say you’re running a promotional email campaign for a new product launch. You can use a link template that directs users to the product page and personalize the link to include your user’s name or a specific promotional code. This can allow you to track how many users have clicked on the link and have made a purchase. This way, you can create consistency across your links and better track your analytics.

You can create an unlimited number of link templates to support your various needs. To create a link template, do the following:

  1. Go to Content > Email Link.
  2. Select Create email link template.
  3. Give your link template a name.
  4. (Optional) Add a description, team, or tag to add details about the link template.
  5. (Optional) Select the toggle to automatically add the link template to links in email campaigns and Canvases. This applies when adding a new link to any new or existing email.

There are two types of link templates you can create:

When using link templates and Liquid, Liquid must only be added within the body tag to ensure consistent rendering.

To add a string or URL before the links in your email message, do the following:

  1. Create a new link template.
  2. Set the Template Position to Before URL.
  3. Enter a string that will always get prepended to your URL.

The Template preview is provided to give you an example of how the link template will be inserted before a URL.

Template Position, Prepend URL, and Template Preview fields for the link template insertion process before a URL.

If you want to add query parameters after a URL in your email message:

  1. Create a new link template.
  2. Set the Template Position to After URL.
  3. Enter the query parameters (value=example) to the end of each URL. You can have multiple parameters appended to the end of a URL.

Template Position, Query Parameters, and Template Preview fields for the link template insertion process after a URL.

After you set up your link templates, you can apply them in your email.

To apply a link template in the HTML editor or the drag-and-drop editor, follow these steps:

  • Updated HTML editor: On the Content tab, select Link Management, select Add a Link Template, choose your link template, and then select Add.
  • Drag-and-drop editor: On the Content tab, select Link Management, select Add a Link Template, choose your link template, and then select Add.

Link Management tab in the drag-and-drop editor with an example list of link templates.

As you add link templates in the Link Management tab, each template appears as an additional column in the table. If existing links within an email already have a link template added, newly added links also have the link template added by default.

You can also duplicate link templates. Learn more about creating and managing templates and creative content in Templates & Media.

Troubleshooting

Missing UTM parameters

Link templates aren’t applied to links in standard HTML comments (<!-- ... -->). For Outlook conditional comments (for example, <!--[if mso]>), link templates are applied when link aliasing is enabled for your workspace. Workspaces without link aliasing enabled still skip conditional comments.

This can happen when the URL path in your email doesn’t match the full path you intend (for example, a shortened or different path than the website’s full URL).

  • What to check: The href in the email includes the complete path to the page (not only a partial path that relies on redirects).
  • What to expect: If the path in the email is incomplete or different, UTM parameters from your link template may not be applied to that link when it’s clicked, even though the website might still redirect the visitor to the correct page.

For example, if the full link is https://www.somewebsite.com/women/designer/johnjane but the email uses https://www.somewebsite.com/designer/johnjane, it is expected that UTM parameters won’t be added to the email link.

When applying link templates, Braze parses each URL to determine where to append parameters. If a Liquid tag renders a URL that cannot be parsed as a valid URI, the link template is silently skipped. Check that your Liquid output produces a well-formed URL. Test by previewing the message for a specific user and verifying the rendered URL is valid. If the URL includes Liquid variables in the path or query string, confirm the output doesn’t contain invalid characters or broken encoding.

UTM values missing in test sends

When test sending link templates, {{${user_id}}} does not get rendered. Instead, duplicate the campaign and set it to target your internal users’ email or external_id and launch the campaign to verify that all UTM parameters from the link template are populated.

Frequently asked questions

For answers to frequently asked questions about link templates, check out our Templates FAQ page.
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