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Click Map with Inbox Monster

See where the links in your email actually go, and whether the offer waiting there matches the one you promised.

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Written by Lee Silver

A link that looks right in the creative can still land somewhere wrong. Click Map picks up the links in your email, follows each one through its redirects to the page it finally opens, captures that page, and shows it beside the email so you can confirm at a glance that it goes where it should.

It also reads the offer on that page. Where your email advertises a price, Click Map compares it against what the landing page actually shows, so a stale price is caught before it reaches anyone.

This walkthrough covers choosing what to run, running a map, and reading the results.

Running a Click Map

The map is not built automatically. Open the rendering report, go to the Click Map tab, and start it yourself.

The Click Map tab before a run

Before a map exists, the tab offers a single Run button.

  1. Open the rendering report for the email you want to check.

  2. Select the Click Map tab.

  3. Click Run CTA links to start straight away, or use the arrow beside it to choose what to check first.

Choosing what to check

Following a link means loading the page behind it, which takes time and counts towards what you use. So you choose how much of the email to check before you run it.

The Run menu, showing the two scope options and the unsubscribe checkbox

The arrow beside the Run button opens the options.

Option

What it does

Run CTA links only

Checks the calls to action. The fastest and lowest-cost run, and the default.

Run all links

Loads every landing page in the email, including footer and secondary links.

Also follow unsubscribe links

A separate tick box. Unsubscribe links are left alone unless you turn this on.

The button keeps whichever scope you last used, so its label tells you what the next run will do.

Inbox Monster then visits the links it picks up, follows any redirects, and takes a full-page snapshot of wherever each one ends up, reading the offer on the page as it goes. This takes a little time, since every landing page is loaded properly rather than guessed at.

Once a map exists, the button moves to the top of the page and becomes Re-run.

Reading the map

When the scan finishes, the tab shows your email on the left and the landing pages on the right.

  • The email preview. Your creative, with a numbered marker on each link that was followed.

  • Landing page cards. One card per followed link, numbered to match its marker, showing a snapshot of the page that link actually opens.

  • Connectors. A line drawn from a marker to its card, so you can see which page belongs to which link.

  • Status counts. Resolved, Redirect and Broken totals for the links in the map, shown above it.

Only the links included in your last run appear. If you ran CTA links only, the footer links are absent rather than shown as unchecked.

The Click Map tab after a scan

The map after a scan: marker on the link, connector, and the landing page it opens.

Understanding a landing page card

Each card carries everything you need to judge one link.

A landing page card with its parity result expanded

A card with its offer check open, showing the email price beside the page price.

On the card

What it tells you

Number

Matches the marker on the email preview, so you can find that link in the creative.

Snapshot

The page as it actually loaded. Click it to open full size.

Link text

The wording of the link in your email, so you can recognize it without hunting.

Status

Resolved, Redirect or Broken, with the HTTP code the page returned.

Refresh

Re-checks this one link on its own. See below.

Parity

Whether the offer on the page matches your email. See below.

LINK

The URL exactly as it appears in the email — usually your tracking link.

RESOLVES

Where that link finally arrived. This is the one to check.

The three statuses

Status

What it means

What to do

Resolved

The link opened its page directly, with no redirect.

Check the snapshot is the page you intended.

Redirect

The link passed through one or more redirects before arriving. Normal for tracked links, so most of your links will look like this.

Confirm RESOLVES is the right destination, not last month's campaign or a generic homepage.

Broken

The page returned an error, or the server did not respond.

Fix before send. Scan for these first.

Checking the offer on the landing page

Getting someone to the right page is only half of it. If the email says one price and the page says another, the link worked and the campaign still failed.

Where a link leads to a page carrying an offer, the card shows a Parity result. Open it with the chevron to see the comparison side by side: what your email said, and what the page showed.

The three results

Result

What it means

What to do

A match — for example Price matches

The page agrees with your email.

Nothing.

A mismatch

They disagree — a different price, or an offer that has changed since the creative was built.

Open the comparison to see both sides, then fix whichever is wrong. Often it is the page rather than the email.

Could not check

There was nothing stable to compare. A page that personalizes its price per visitor, for example, has no fixed offer to read.

Check it yourself if the offer matters. It is not counted as a problem and is left out of the mismatch totals and filters.

The result names the field it compared, so Price matches tells you both the verdict and what was measured. Could not check is a deliberate answer rather than a failure — opening it tells you why the check was withheld.

Refreshing a single link

If you have fixed one landing page, you do not need to run the whole map again. Each card has a refresh control beside its status.

The refresh control on a landing page card

The refresh control re-checks one link on its own.

It re-fetches that page, follows the redirects again, and updates the card's snapshot, status and resolved URL in place. The rest of the map stays as it is, and you can carry on working while it runs.

Opening a landing page full size

Click any snapshot to open that page full size, with the resolved URL shown along the top so you can confirm exactly where the link went. Close it to return to the map.

A landing page opened over the map

The landing page opens over the map, with its resolved URL along the top.

Frequently asked questions

The tab says "No click map yet". What does that mean?

Nothing has been run for this creative yet. Choose a scope and click Run.

Which links does Click Map follow?

Whichever set you chose when you ran it. Run CTA links only covers the calls to action; Run all links loads every landing page in the email. Unsubscribe links are only followed if you tick that option. If a link you expected is missing, check which scope the last run used.

Why do some cards have no offer check?

Not every link leads to an offer. A link to your preference center or a help page has nothing to compare, so no result is shown.

A card says the offer could not be checked. Is that a problem?

No. It means the page had no fixed offer to read against — a price that changes per visitor is the common case. It is not counted as a mismatch and does not appear in the mismatch filters. Open it to see why the check was withheld.

Why is almost everything showing as Redirect?

That is normal. Tracked links go through your ESP's click-tracking domain before reaching the destination, which counts as a redirect. What matters is the RESOLVES line, not the status.

Why has a link come back as Broken when it works in my browser?

The snapshot is taken from outside your session, so anything depending on being signed in, or on a regional redirect, can resolve differently. Check the RESOLVES line on the card to see where it actually went.

The map is stuck loading. What now?

If a scan does not come back, Click Map stops waiting after a few minutes and offers you a retry rather than spinning indefinitely. Start it again from the retry panel. If it fails a second time, send it to us through the help icon.

Do I need to run it again after editing the creative?

Yes. The map reflects the links in the version that was scanned, so use Re-run after changing any link or price. If only one landing page changed, the refresh control on that card is quicker.


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