SFMC - Preview Email Link (not view_email_url)

Question

I've created some ampscript which will create a Note on the contacts account to let the account owner know this account has been sent an email. Inside the note contains the view_email_url so the account owner can take a look at the email that was sent to them.

The only issue with that is when they open the link to view the email its triggered as an Open on the reports. Is there anything else i can use instead of view_email_url so employees can click on a link to see the email without it triggering as an "Open"?

Below is the script I'm using at the moment:

%%[

IF _messagecontext == "SEND" Then 

var @Job_id, @DE_ID, @AccountID, @Web_Link, @createNote, @currentTime

set @job_id = jobid
set @Web_Link = view_email_url
set @AccountID = Lookup("ENT.Contact_Salesforce_7","AccountId","Contact_ID_18__c", _subscriberkey)

set @currentTime  = Now()
set @currentTime =  format(@currentTime,"dd/MM/yyyy @ hh:mm")

set @DE_ID = Concat(@job_id, '-', @AccountID)

IF IsNull(@AccountID) == "false" THEN

set @notebody = Concat('This customer has had a new email sent to them on ', @currentTime, '. Click on the link below to view the email: ', @Web_Link)

set @createNote = CreateSalesforceObject(
"Note__c", 3, 
"Account__c", @AccountID, 
"Body__c", @notebody,
"Title__c", "New Email Sent To Customer")

UpsertDE("GB_SENT_WEBLINK", 1, "ID", @DE_ID, "JobID", @job_id, "ContactID", _subscriberkey, "AccountID", @AccountID, "Web_Link", @Web_Link, "Email_Sent", NOW(), "NoteID", @createNote)

ELSE

UpsertDE("GB_SENT_WEBLINK", 1, "ID", @DE_ID, "JobID", @job_id, "ContactID", _subscriberkey, "AccountID", @AccountID, "Web_Link", @Web_Link, "Email_Sent", NOW())

ENDIF
EndIF
]%%

Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

A pragmatic approach would be to solve this in the email.

Open tracking doesn't happen by default, but only in emails where the "open tracking" code snippet (<custom name="opencounter" type="tracking"/>) is inserted - typically this is done initially on template level and then forgotten about, but you can still get to this / find ways to make it conditional in your usecase.

If you manipulate it inside of your particular email html like this:

%%[
IF _messagecontext != "VAWP" Then 
   ]%%<custom name="opencounter" type="tracking"/>%%[
ENDIF
]%%

reference: https://ampscript.guide/email-data-strings/

, then opens from the view online version the are no longer tracked.

downside: this is obviously also the case for "actual" recipient opens that open through view online link (which sounds like a pretty slim number to me). Especially if you do this only for your particular usecase, I think it is rather negligible.

edit: also - this does not solve the fundamental issue that VAWP (re)generates the email with the available data at the time of VIEW, not necessarily how it looked at the time of send.

If the sendout is based on a data extension that changes frequently, chances are people viewing the email some time later get a different / broken version, not the one that was rendered at the time of send.

Then you have to also consider a sendlog and set up something similar to this:

https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/marketing/marketing-cloud/guide/sendTimeContent.html