by Hannah Shimali 
With days (or maybe even weeks) of planning, you’ve created a Pardot email – with your design perfected, text refined and recipient lists ready, you’re ready to hit send on your list email or press start on your engagement studio.
Everything seems to go well, when you suddenly realise that the CTA link on your email is taking the prospect to the wrong landing page or to a broken URL. Your first instinct might be to panic but luckily there are a couple of things you can do to minimise the disruption caused.
Read this blog to find out how.
Step 1: Contact Pardot support straight away
You can contact the Pardot support team who can change a link even after it has been sent and depending on your SLA they will get back to you as soon as possible.
Pardot Support have access to a section on sent emails called “Tracker Redirects”, where they can edit the tracker domain/URL to the correct link. The two important things to keep in mind is:
- Only Pardot Support can see this option because of their level of access
- This amendment will only affect the prospects who are yet to open your email
If you’re not sure on how to log a ticket with Pardot Support, please follow the instructions on this article.
Now you’re probably wondering, what about my prospects that have opened my email. Here we can move to step 2.
Step 2: Add a temporary re-direct on the incorrect page
If you were linking to a Pardot landing page, you can place a temporary re-direct on the page using some JavaScript, as follows:
<script> window.location.href = "www.correctpageurl.com"; </script>
You can add this script to the landing page in two ways, either:
- Add the script to the layout template that your landing page is using for its styling. Simply place the script inside the <head> tag then press Confirm & Save.
- Directly on the landing page. Here you will navigate to tab 4 on your landing page wizard and add the script directly in the HTML then press Confirm & Save.
If you are using a different CMS, you are able to use this re-direct, however please check whether you have any built-in redirecting functionality in the backend of your CMS.
Note: If the incorrect page is still in use for other activities, please be advised that your stats will be affected and you should limit the time that this is in place.
Step 3: Send an apology email with the correct details
Even if you were successful with steps 1 and 2, and the link has been amended for the prospects who did not open the email, I’d still recommend sending an apology email with the correct information for prospects that did open or click your email.
To do this, create a new segmentation list of those that have opened and clicked your mailing. You can find this information in your email report.
With all these options in mind, and as a general rule of thumb, you should only send a follow up mailing when it impacts your company or your subscribers when all else fails.
Being a Salesforce Partner, we can help speed this process up and if you would like to speak to one of our consultants, get in touch.