Tracking Third Party Links Via Pardot Custom Redirects

As a marketer you must have wondered as to how should you have control on your third party ads, landing pages or files. Pardot’s custom redirects come to your rescue and we will explain here how you can use them to help you track your marketing assets on third party websites for example, a link on your Linked In page, a banner ad on a third party site, etc.

Creating a custom redirect link is easy can be done in few simple steps. Custom redirects can be accessed from the Marketing Tab and then Content. Destination URL is the location to which visitor will be directed when accessing the Redirect Link. This can be a Third Party page or a file. You can specify your own unique Custom Redirect link name through Vanity URL or else it will auto-generated.

Clicks on the link will show up as an activity on a prospect’s profile. You can also view a list of all prospects who clicked on a particular link. If you are using Google Analytics parameters, they can be integrated into the link during creation.

Optionally you can also add completion actions to your custom redirect link. These actions can be like adding a tag to prospect, adding them to a CRM Campaign, adjusting their score, adding them to a list, sending them an autoresponder email etc.

Completion actions for custom redirects will only apply to prospects already in your account. Completion actions will not apply to any visitors who convert to prospects after clicking on a custom redirect. However, the click of the custom redirect click will still appear in their prospect activity.

When to use Custom Redirects?

1. Banner ads on third party sites — you may want to track a banner add explicitly and see how many prospects and visitors access it.
2. Social sharing — you may share a link on Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. and want to see how it performs.
3. Links to files that you do not host — your website may link to a file on a third-party site. Custom redirects can point to them and show you how many visitors access the file.

All the other links that are there on your marketing assets, i.e. landing pages, or websites or emails are automatically tracked by Pardot. Hence Custom Redirects have a specific purpose to track those links which otherwise you were not able to do, like the links on third party websites or external files.

Please email me at sumita.malhotra@proso.ai