# How does tracking work? **URL:** \ **Category:** Product Support\ **Created:** [January 15, 2015, 6:53pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/how-does-tracking-work/1458 "2015-01-15T18:53:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![gshuk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/848f3c/32.png) [@gshuk](https://forum.mautic.org/u/gshuk)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2015, 6:53pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/how-does-tracking-work/1458/1 "2015-01-15T18:53:48Z")
Is there any documentation? All I can see is that you put a link to a gif file on website. Filling out a form is one way to tie email to browers, however can they be tracked when they click on links within emails that have been sent out through Mautic? Can emails sent from Outlook be tied to a lead in Mautic? Thanks Glenn ---
**Author:** ![gshuk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/848f3c/32.png) [@gshuk](https://forum.mautic.org/u/gshuk)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2015, 6:53pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/how-does-tracking-work/1458/2 "2015-01-15T18:53:48Z")
Is there any documentation? All I can see is that you put a link to a gif file on website. Filling out a form is one way to tie email to browers, however can they be tracked when they click on links within emails that have been sent out through Mautic? Can emails sent from Outlook be tied to a lead in Mautic? Thanks Glenn ---
**Author:** ![gmillard](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/gmillard/32/5_2.png) [@gmillard](https://forum.mautic.org/u/gmillard)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2015, 10:22pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/how-does-tracking-work/1458/3 "2015-01-15T22:22:09Z")
Hi Glenn, The documentation we have written right now is at [http://docs.mautic.org/leads/lead\_monitoring.html](http://docs.mautic.org/leads/lead_monitoring.html) Currently only emails sent through Mautic are supported for tracking opened stats. If a lead opens the email, it’s noted in the lead’s timeline and email stats. (Email tracking also uses an image which means it will not track if the user’s client has images disabled). You can also add external URLs to emails in Mautic. If you use the builder, just drag and drop the External URL token. If you are using custom HTML, you can add the token {externallink=http://google.com}. That will get translated into a Mautic “click through” URL so that Mautic knows what lead clicked on what link through what email, then redirects the lead to the external URL. For landing pages built through Mautic, you can use the token {pagelink=1} where 1 is the ID of the page. Does that help? Thanks! Alan ---
**Author:** ![gshuk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/848f3c/32.png) [@gshuk](https://forum.mautic.org/u/gshuk)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2015, 2:45pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/how-does-tracking-work/1458/4 "2015-01-16T14:45:39Z")
Thanks Alan, I read the docs but I guess it is early stages because they are very sparse. I see emails can only be sent in batch mode via lists or campaigns and not individually from the contact. I understand the image, however I was just wondering what is tagged onto the image in order to relate that email to a contact? Also what are the steps to setting up the email server. Is that via API or …? Thanks Glenn ---
**Author:** ![gmillard](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/gmillard/32/5_2.png) [@gmillard](https://forum.mautic.org/u/gmillard)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2015, 11:31pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/how-does-tracking-work/1458/5 "2015-01-16T23:31:31Z")
Hi Glenn, Yes, right now emails are batched and/or automated. We don’t have a feature to email a lead directly. Were you thinking of basically clicking on their email and writing a custom email? Or did you want to choose form the list of prepared emails and send it to the individual lead? So when an email is sent from Mautic, it stores the email id and lead id in a table along with a uniquely generated string. When the lead opens the email and the image loads, Mautic extracts that unique string from the URL, searches for it, and then marks the email as being opened and the date opened. Then fires whatever tasks are associated with the opening of that email. Setting up an email server is outside the scope of Mautic. In Mautic’s configuration, you can choose who to send mail through. By default, it uses PHP’s mail function. But you can also choose Mandril, Amazon SES, Sendgrid, Postmark, Gmail, or some other SMTP server (this is assuming you’re using the downloaded version). Thanks, Alan ---
**Author:** ![zamzam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/ac91a4/32.png) [@zamzam](https://forum.mautic.org/u/zamzam)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2015, 11:36pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/how-does-tracking-work/1458/6 "2015-01-16T23:36:39Z")
Hi Alan, Would it be possible to use [Segment.com](http://Segment.com) to send data to mautic? Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![gmillard](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/gmillard/32/5_2.png) [@gmillard](https://forum.mautic.org/u/gmillard)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2015, 11:50pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/how-does-tracking-work/1458/7 "2015-01-16T23:50:02Z")
Not right now. But would you be willing to add it as a feature request to [https://github.com/mautic/mautic/issues](https://github.com/mautic/mautic/issues) and we’ll investigate integration possibilities. Thanks! Alan ---
**Author:** ![zamzam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/ac91a4/32.png) [@zamzam](https://forum.mautic.org/u/zamzam)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2015, 4:35pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/how-does-tracking-work/1458/8 "2015-01-18T16:35:41Z")
Done ---
**Author:** ![kurtgenc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/edb3f5/32.png) [@kurtgenc](https://forum.mautic.org/u/kurtgenc)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2015, 8:20pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/how-does-tracking-work/1458/9 "2015-10-03T20:20:02Z")
Alan, I’m trying to implement e-mail tracking. My test campaign sends out messages OK, but although I have an open e-mail event, it’s not recording the action when e-mail is opened . I don’t see “opened” tracking in the manage e-mail and not in the campaign section either. I believe this is due to not having a tracking image in the e-mail content. But I haven’t seen anywhere in Mautic documentation (or here) how this is needs to be done exactly. In theory yes, I understand, but details… no. You said in your post above “(Email tracking also uses an image …)”, would you explain how this image is placed in the message? Adding a tracking image is not part of the e-mail editor (I think it needs to be). E-mail tracking is crucial part of any campaign, I think more attention is needed in Mautic to either document implementing this feature with details, or add a tool that helps people select and upload an image, and embed it in their message, in a practical way. You’ve also mentioned " If you use the builder, just drag and drop the External URL token…" which builder are you referring to? E-mail editor doesn’t seem to have that feature and neither does Campaign builder … Lead monitoring documentation ([https://www.mautic.org/docs/leads/lead\_monitoring.html](https://www.mautic.org/docs/leads/lead_monitoring.html)) refers mostly to website monitoring. To make it short, I’m simply looking for specific instructions/steps to add “e-mail tracking image” to the e-mails or campaigns… Thanks for all your hard work and help. Kurt ---
**Author:** ![ehill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/cdc98d/32.png) [@ehill](https://forum.mautic.org/u/ehill)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 5:02pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/how-does-tracking-work/1458/10 "2015-11-06T17:02:37Z")
@alanhartless Is this correct then? ---
**Author:** ![silavapi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/silavapi/32/7424_2.png) [@silavapi](https://forum.mautic.org/u/silavapi)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2020, 10:57pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/how-does-tracking-work/1458/11 "2020-02-02T22:57:12Z")