I've recently had an issue with the view online version of my emails using the default generated link, %%view_email_url%%.
The email send is dropped into an automation that runs every 30 mins, alongside some data processing and the resulting send data extension would clear and empty after each run. And because of this nature, when someone clicks on the view online, the personalisation strings would be thrown off since it can't reference the data in the DE.
I did a bit of research and found this, https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.noversion.mc-programmatic-content.meta/mc-programmatic-content/sendTimeContent.htm. However, using the enterprise send log is not an option and if possible, I would like to not tweak the current automation setup(mainly because I'm not involved in that solution)
And so in spite of all that, I've started working on a workaround where:
- I would replicate this send logging feature by creating a custom DE instead only storing unique ids of a particular send, and also storing the HTML via HTTPGET(), as described here, https://webep.fr/feed-a-send-log-send-history-data-extension-automatically/, this DE will of course persist until a period say for 30 days
- Replacing the %%view_email_url%% link with a custom link attached with some unique keys as parameter
- Create a Landing page that retrieves this HTML using a Lookup() in the DE using the unique keys and parameters passed from point made above and finally output the HTML, thus replicating the VAWP page. This is built using microsite in Classic Builder (Emails are built in Content Builder)
Everything seems to work fine on this new VAWP page, except for some of the links within the email. This only affects the links that are wrapped with RedirectTo(), full urls seem to work fine.
I originally thought httpGET() would grab the full rendered HTML but it seems like because Salesforce wraps links with some other markup because of the tracking option and then it just throw the whole link off. Just to give an example of the resulting url of a clickthrough, it looks like this, http://click.email.xxx.com/%%=RedirectTo(@CTA)=%%
I'm not sure how to get around this except to not use RedirectTo() in the links but I kinda have to because I'm concatenating some personalisation strings and UTM tags in the links.
I would love to hear if someone else ever encountered this or had try to achieve what I was trying to do with success, or anyone with any other suggestions.
Thanks