SendGrid's built-in click tracking rewrites every link in your email through sendgrid.net so it can count opens and clicks. The data is fine for basic email metrics but lacks geo, device, and post-click context. By embedding Track Link short URLs inside SendGrid templates — using substitution tags to inject per-recipient identifiers — you get richer analytics on every click without losing SendGrid's deliverability and infrastructure benefits. This guide walks through how to combine SendGrid for sending and Track Link for click intelligence.
Free plan: 25 links, 4K clicks/month, full analytics. No credit card required.
Why combine them
SendGrid's click tracking shows aggregate clicks per link per send. Track Link captures the same click but adds country, city, device type, browser, OS, and referrer for every individual click — turning a flat number into a segmentable analytics record.
SendGrid's Event Webhook delivers click events with the recipient email, but only for links it rewrote. If you embed a Track Link short URL inside the email, both systems log the click: SendGrid sees the rewritten outer wrapper, Track Link sees the inner redirect with full geo/device data.
Track Link's UTM-tagged short URLs flow through the SendGrid wrapper unchanged, so when the click resolves, your destination site receives utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign in the final URL. SendGrid's own tracking does not append UTMs by default; pairing the two means you only need to tag once on the Track Link side.
SendGrid substitution tags ({{ -firstName- }}, {{ insert order_id }}) work inside Track Link short URLs if the URL is built dynamically before the send. You can include per-recipient identifiers as utm_term or utm_content, then segment Track Link analytics by individual subscriber.
Transactional emails (password resets, order receipts, magic links) often need a one-time link. Track Link's slug-based redirects work cleanly for these too — the short URL stays valid while you still get click analytics, useful for measuring activation funnels in onboarding sequences.
When SendGrid's click tracking is disabled (for deliverability reasons or for emails to strict corporate environments that flag click-rewriters), Track Link still captures every click because the redirect is your own domain, not a generic email-sender domain.
Step by step
A practical workflow for combining Track Link click data with SendGrid.
In SendGrid, navigate to Settings > Tracking > Click Tracking. You can keep it on (both SendGrid and Track Link will log the click — useful for cross-validation) or turn it off (only Track Link counts, simpler attribution). Most teams keep it on but treat Track Link as the source of truth for analytics. If you turn it off, your email links will not be rewritten through sendgrid.net, which improves deliverability scores for some recipients.
Use the Track Link tracking link generator to create a short URL for the destination page, tagged with utm_source=newsletter, utm_medium=email, utm_campaign=<campaign-name>. Track Link preserves these query params through the redirect. Copy the resulting short URL (e.g. https://gettrack.link/abc123).
In SendGrid > Email API > Dynamic Templates, open your template's design editor and replace the destination URL on every CTA button and inline link with your Track Link short URL. If you use the Code editor, set the href attribute directly. The short URLs will be wrapped by SendGrid's click tracking on send, so the email shows a sendgrid.net wrapper to the recipient — but clicking it resolves to your Track Link short URL, which then redirects to the destination with UTMs intact.
SendGrid Dynamic Templates support Handlebars syntax. To pass a unique identifier per recipient into Track Link, build the URL like https://gettrack.link/abc123?utm_content={{contact_id}}. When SendGrid renders the email, {{contact_id}} is replaced with the recipient's ID. Now every click in Track Link is attributable to a specific subscriber via the utm_content value, which Track Link displays in the click events stream.
In SendGrid > Settings > Mail Settings > Event Webhook, enable the Click event and point it at an endpoint you control (or use Event Webhook to BigQuery). For each click event, SendGrid sends the recipient email, message ID, and the URL clicked. Cross-reference this against Track Link's click stream by matching utm_content (your contact_id) and timestamp. Discrepancies usually indicate ad-block on the recipient's mail client.
Send a test email to yourself via SendGrid's API with mail_settings.sandbox_mode set to false (sandbox does not actually deliver). Click each Track Link in the test email, then verify three things: SendGrid's Activity Feed shows the Click event with the right URL, Track Link's dashboard shows the click with utm_campaign and utm_content, and the destination page's GA4 (if applicable) shows a session with the right source/medium. Use the redirect checker to debug any chain that fails.
Need to build tagged URLs first? Use the UTM builder or the tracking link generator. Verify redirects with the redirect checker.
Use cases
Real situations where pairing Track Link with SendGrid pays off.
Send a weekly newsletter to 50,000 subscribers via SendGrid. Tag each CTA with a different utm_content (header_cta, body_link_1, footer_cta). Track Link tells you which placement got the most clicks across the whole list, which countries clicked most, and which devices dominated — context SendGrid's Stats page does not provide. Combined with SendGrid's open rate and recipient-level engagement, you get a full picture of newsletter performance.
In SendGrid Marketing Campaigns automations, every step often links to a different page (welcome guide, free trial signup, pricing). Embedding Track Link URLs in each step lets you track the click-through rate of each step independently in Track Link's dashboard, segmented by automation step. Combined with SendGrid's automation analytics (sends, opens, conversion goals) you can see exactly where users drop off in a multi-email funnel.
Transactional emails sent via the SendGrid v3 Mail Send API (orders, account confirmations, magic links) are critical to the user experience but often go un-analyzed. Replacing the destination URLs with Track Link short URLs gives you a measurable activation funnel: how many users click the magic link, how long after delivery, from what device — a level of insight that helps prioritize onboarding fixes.
Use SendGrid's A/B testing or split-send features. Build two versions of the same email with different Track Link short URLs (or the same URL but different utm_content). Track Link separates the click counts by utm_content automatically, so you can declare a winner based on click-through and post-click engagement, not just opens. This is more reliable than SendGrid's open-rate-only A/B testing.
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about using Track Link alongside SendGrid.
No. SendGrid wraps the URL with its own tracking domain (e.g. http://sendgrid.net/wf/click?upn=...) but the destination it redirects to is still your Track Link short URL. When the recipient clicks, SendGrid logs the click and immediately redirects to the Track Link URL, which then redirects to the final destination with all UTMs preserved. The chain is recipient -> SendGrid -> Track Link -> destination, and every layer counts the click correctly.
SendGrid counts every click event including bot clicks from corporate security scanners (Barracuda, Microsoft ATP, Mimecast) that pre-fetch links to check for malware. These bots usually do not follow secondary redirects, so they hit SendGrid's wrapper but never reach Track Link. Track Link's count is a better proxy for real human clicks. The gap is usually 10-25% on B2B sends.
Only if you have a specific deliverability reason (e.g. corporate recipients flagging email-rewriters as suspicious). Otherwise, keeping it on lets you cross-validate. SendGrid's click count tells you how many times the wrapper was hit; Track Link's count tells you how many made it through. The ratio is a useful health metric.
Yes. Substitution tags are rendered before send, so a URL like https://gettrack.link/abc123?utm_content={{contact_id}} becomes https://gettrack.link/abc123?utm_content=12345 in the actual sent email. Track Link sees the rendered URL and logs utm_content=12345 against the click. This works with both Dynamic Template Handlebars syntax and the legacy substitution_tags v2 API.
Yes. The drag-and-drop editor lets you set the URL on any link or button via the link picker. Just paste your Track Link short URL there. The same applies to the visual editor in Dynamic Templates and the legacy Marketing Campaigns editor.
Track Link does not consume SendGrid's Event Webhook directly — they are independent systems. If you want to correlate them, use a serverless function or your data warehouse to ingest both feeds (SendGrid Event Webhook for sends/opens/clicks at the wrapper level, Track Link click events via CSV export or API for the rich click metadata) and join on utm_content or timestamp.
Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) inflates SendGrid open rates by pre-fetching the open pixel, but it does not pre-fetch link clicks. So your Track Link click count is unaffected by MPP — every click is a real recipient action. This makes Track Link's click count the most reliable engagement signal in a post-MPP world.
Yes. Each link can be its own Track Link short URL pointing to a different final destination — your blog, your pricing page, your shop. Track Link tags every click with the slug, so you know which link in the email was clicked even before resolving the destination. SendGrid still wraps each link individually, so cross-validation works per-link.
Create a free Track Link account, generate tracked URLs, and start feeding richer click data into your SendGrid workflows. No credit card, no setup fee, full analytics on the free plan.