What is Anonymized Email Tracking in Mapp Cloud?

We all need to be careful about our data nowadays. To help you protect your email recipients, Mapp Engage now has the functionality to anonymize email tracking. Our methods should balance your needs for analytical insights with user privacy by providing aggregated campaign performance data (open rates and click-through rates) at a group level. Much like with Cookieless Tracking, there are pros and cons.

What does this mean for me if I want to use this feature?

In short, you will still receive data about your email campaigns, however, if the recipient has chosen to anonymize their data, you will not be able to tie it to a user specifically. This means that while you will know an email was opened and perhaps a link was clicked, you will not be able to reach this person when you create segments or otherwise analyze this specific user. 

How does it work?

We use unique IDs for each contact in email tracking pixels and links. The system captures this event when your recipient opens an email or clicks on a link. It then maps the ID to a group, records the event for that group, and discards the individual ID. For clicks, Mapp-specific links redirect to the original destination after capturing the event. So, the data is linked only to the group, not to a specific contact.

What do I need to do to use this feature?

This is an optional feature originally released in 2022. You must contact Mapp to request its activation.

Once you have the feature enabled, you have a couple of options on how to proceed:

New Users:

You can update any contact or registration forms so that new email recipients can send you their preferences from the start. This data can then be included when you create their profile.  

Preference Center & Specified Updates:

1. Create a preference center for your users. On this page, you should collect a response on whether they would like to anonymize their email activity. 

2. Send out an email to your customers, asking them to visit the preference center and update the information.

3. Once you have collected this information, you can update their profile in Mapp via Upload or Whiteboard. In order to update this, you will need to set the Profile Attribute DoNotTrack

   1. If DoNotTrack = False, the data will not be anonymized.

   2. if DoNotTrack = True, their data will be anonymized.

      Please note that if in the import the attribute doNotTrack is present in the header, but the value is empty in the data row, the import functionality interprets the empty value as "false", not as "unset"

General Settings Change:

If you want to set an overall status for users who have not responded, please contact Mapp. The profile Attribute DoNotTrack has a third status: unset. We have a feature switch available, which can be activated to set a preference for all profiles with the unset status. If set to True, all email recipients without a set DoNotTrack will have their data anonymized until they consent to collect it.