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Tracking custom data with your email tracking pixel and links (tagging)

By default, your tracking pixels and tracking URL can track three different types of data: IP-addresses, user-agents, and the date & time of triggering. But in addition to those three, you can also track custom data.

What is custom data?

Custom data are like tags that you can add to tracking pixels or URLs. It allows you to differentiate certain tracked data. For example, if you send the same tracking pixel to four different groups of recipients, you can differentiate the performance for each group by adding custom data for each group. But you can also use custom data to find out which recipient has opened your email or clicked your link (learn more).

Our custom data feature works in a similar way as UTM parameters that are widely used in marketing campaigns. UTM parameters have five variants: utm_content, utm_medium, utm_source and utm_campaign. PastePixel custom data feature knows only one variant, which is: cstm_data.

To track custom data, you need to be on a Starter or Premium plan. Check out our pricing for affordable plans.

Tracking custom data

When you create a new tracking pixel, you'll see your generated pixel URL and HTML-code in the Tracking pixel-panel. Here you also see a custom data field. You can enter some custom data and press the refresh button. Your custom data will then be added to your tracking pixel which you can then copy-paste in your mail. Your URLs will then contain ?cstm_data=<your custom data>.

Generated tracking pixel with custom data

Alternatively, you can also manually alter your URLs by typing your custom data or use your own software to dynamically add custom data.

You can only add at most one tracking parameter (cstm_data) to your URL. For example, given that this is your tracking pixel URL: https://pastepixel.com/image/sdFWeifjsd4a.png. If you want to add the custom data tag_1, you add the cstm_data parameter with the value tag_1 such that you end up with: https://pastepixel.com/image/sdFWeifjsd4a.png?cstm_data=tag_1 (don't forget the question mark).

Viewing your custom data

There are 3 ways to view your tracked custom data. On your mail tracking page, you can choose to view your custom data through the donut- or table view. You can select this from the Custom data-panel. You can always change it from the dropdown menu of that panel.

Select custom data view

The donut view gives you a more visual representation in terms of percentages per custom data. In the following example you see the custom data of 16 tracking pixel opens. Tracked data with custom data group_1 was opened 6 times, group_2 was opened 2 times and group_3 8 times.

Custom data donut view

If you track a lot of different custom data, or you just want to see the absolute numbers, you can always choose to use the table view. With a lot of different custom data, the donut view can become cluttered and unclear, whereas the table view makes this easier for you.

Custom data table view

The third way to view your tracked custom data is through the CSV-exports (learn more). Your CSV-files will contain a column with your custom data. Since custom data that got collected by your tracking URLs don't get visualized, but only the ones tracked by your tracking pixel, this is especially handy with your URL exports. In the following example you see a URL data export with custom data.

Custom data in CSV export
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