Move contacts through your automation sequences based on what they click. Links in your sequence emails can be designated as goal methods — when a contact clicks a goal link, the automation recognizes the action as a completed goal and transitions the contact to the next stage of your marketing process. Every email link tracks activity automatically, but only the links you select as goal methods will trigger a sequence transition.

If a sequence email includes links for more than one call to action, and each call to action moves the contact to a different sequence, create a separate goal for each call to action. The contact enters the next sequence based on whichever goal link they click first.

This article covers which link types can trigger a Link Clicked goal, how to configure a Link Clicked goal in the automation builder, and how bot and webcrawler clicks can affect your automations. This article does not cover how to add links to sequence emails. You must add links to your sequence emails before configuring a Link Clicked goal.

Link Types That Can Trigger a Link Clicked Goal

Not all link types in a sequence email can trigger a Link Clicked goal. The following link types will trigger a Link Clicked goal when a contact clicks them:

• File download
• URL
• Web form
• Order form

The following link types cannot trigger a Link Clicked goal. Clicks on these link types will not count as a goal completion and will not transition the contact to the next sequence:

• Phone number
• Email address
• Landing page

How to Create a Link Clicked Goal Automation

1. Drag an Email Link clicked goal from the goals panel onto the automation builder canvas. Place the goal to the right of the sequence that contains the emails with the goal links. 
   
   
2. Double-click the Email Link clicked goal tile to open the goal configuration panel. The left side of the panel displays a list of the individual emails in the sequences connected to the goal. Click an email title to preview the message and view its links. 
   
   
3. Click each link that should trigger the goal. Selected links are highlighted to indicate they have been designated as goal methods. You can select multiple links in the same email if more than one link should satisfy the goal. When a contact clicks any selected goal link, all sequences connected before this goal will stop and the contact will move to the next sequence. Do not select links that are not intended to trigger the goal — clicking a goal link stops all prior connected sequences for that contact. 
   
   
4. Repeat the previous step for each email in the list. After selecting goal links in the first email, click the next email title in the left panel and select the appropriate goal links in that email. Continue until all emails in the connected sequences have been reviewed.
5. Publish your updates to make the Link Clicked goal active. Changes to the automation builder are not applied until the campaign is published. 
   
   

How Bot and Webcrawler Clicks Affect Link Clicked Goals

Some private email domains — such as corporate or business email addresses — use automated security tools called webcrawlers or bots that scan incoming emails and validate every link. When a webcrawler scans an email, it may click the links in the email automatically, which can trigger a Link Clicked goal even though the actual contact never clicked the link.

You may notice this issue when a client responds to a follow-up email that does not match anything they actually did. For example, your automation might send a thank-you email for downloading an eBook, and the client replies saying they never downloaded it. In that case, a bot likely triggered the goal link before the client opened the email.

Bot and webcrawler clicks are more common when your contact list is made up primarily of business email addresses rather than personal email addresses such as Gmail or Hotmail accounts. This behavior does not inflate overall link click rates in your reporting, but it can cause individual contacts to advance through sequences earlier than intended. If you regularly send to business email addresses and notice unexpected goal completions, consider using a different goal type — such as a Form Submitted goal or a Tag Applied goal — for those sequences instead of a Link Clicked goal.