Troubleshoot Broken Links

If you have broken or misdirected links in your email, there are some common causes to consider. Even when a link works in your browser, it may not work for your recipients.

In this article, you’ll learn how to troubleshoot broken links in your content.

Links aren’t formatted correctly

When you add a link to your content, here are some ways to avoid formatting issues.

• Make sure each link begins with the http:// or https:// protocol.
  If web links in your email don't begin with the http:// or https:// protocol, they may have broken after click tracking was added.
• Double check any custom code.
  Our system makes sure your links are formatted correctly if you use Mailchimp's link building tools. However, if you create a custom-coded template, you or your designer are responsible for verifying that your link formatting is correct.
• Make sure your link is really a link. It’s possible that the text or image in your email is only styled to look like a link, but isn’t actually clickable.

To ensure your formatting is correct before you send, enter preview mode and use the link checker tool. If you're working with the new email builder, we'll mark broken links with an exclamation point icon as you add your content.

Link tracking adds unaccepted query strings

Some of our link-tracking features, like Google Analytics and Clicktale tracking, use query strings to pass information about a specific email back to your Mailchimp reports or to a third-party service or plugin. When you use these various link-tracking methods, first make sure the website you link to is configured to accept these parameters.

For example, if Google Analytics tracking is enabled for your email, your website needs to be set up to handle the following Google Analytics parameters.

• utm_source=
• utm_campaign=
• utm_medium=

If you're not sure that your website is configured to handle these strings, forward this information to your developer to verify and troubleshoot further. Otherwise, you'll need to disable the additional tracking methods for your email.

Advanced tracking methods like Google Analytics aren’t applied until your email is sent. To confirm that the UTM sources are accepted by your website, you’ll need to create and send a live test email with advanced tracking enabled.

Links are redirected to https://mailchimp.com/about/mcsv-static

We've seen this happen when an email passes through a very aggressive spam filter, like in corporate or academic settings. To avoid potential attacks, the spam filter breaks our tracking code. This causes the URL to load incorrectly, so the contact instead gets redirected to https://mailchimp.com/about/mcsv-static.

This redirect may also happen when you link to a deleted email or test a “View in browser” link before you send, since we don’t create the email campaign archive page for an email until after it’s sent.

If a contact regularly has this issue when they visit the links in your emails, you may want to recommend they subscribe to your emails with an address on a public domain like Gmail.

Table of contents not working as expected

Merge tags and anchor links have their own unique formatting requirements. If your email includes a table of contents with the |MC:TOC| merge tag and custom anchor links, check out Add a Table of Contents to an Email to learn some troubleshooting tips.