What is link wrapping?

And every Every time someone clicks a link in your email, your ESP needs to know about it. That's where link wrapping comes in. Before your email goes out, your ESP quietly replaces every URL in the message with a tracking version that runs through its own servers first.

But Here's what that looks like in practice. You write a link pointing to https://shop.example.com/product. By the time the email lands in someone's inbox, that link has become something like https://track.esp.com/c/abc123. The subscriber still sees your original link text ("Buy now", for example), but the underlying URL is now the wrapped version. When they click, the tracking server logs the event, decodes the original destination, and redirects them there. The whole thing happens in milliseconds.

That encoded string ("abc123" in the example above) carries a lot of information packed together. It typically includes the original URL, a campaign identifier, a link position, and a recipient ID. That's how your ESP knows not just that someone clicked, but who clicked, which link, and when. This is the foundation of how click tracking works across email platforms.

Most ESPs wrap all links automatically by default. Some let you exclude specific URLs (like unsubscribe links) or skip entire domains. Worth checking your settings if you've ever had a subscriber complain that a link "looked weird."

A few things that can go wrong with wrapped links:

• Security filter clashes. Tools like Microsoft 365 SafeLinks pre-scan wrapped URLs and can re-wrap them, creating a chain of redirects. That can slow down the click experience or break tracking altogether.
• Encoding issues. URLs with special characters or very long query strings need careful encoding. Poor encoding breaks the link, the redirect, or both.
• Reputation bleed. If the tracking domain your ESP uses has a poor reputation, it can hurt your deliverability. That's one reason custom tracking domains matter more than most senders realize.

Always test your wrapped links by clicking them in a real test send. Verify the redirect lands correctly and that your analytics register the click. It's a five-minute check that saves a lot of embarrassing post-send fixes.

If something looks off with your link tracking setup, our free Email Header Analyzer can help you spot redirect chains and flag anything unexpected. Or if you're stuck, reach out and we'll take a look.