Links in emails or CTAs (legacy) lead to an error page

There are a few possible reasons why clicking the links in your HubSpot emails or clicking your CTAs (legacy) lead to an error page. Some of them may require your web developer or IT department to reconfigure your web server settings and/or security plugins. You can also opt turn off email click tracking as this may resolve the issue.

URL redirect

If you are linking to a page created in HubSpot with a redirect set up, ensure the Match the query string option is cleared for the redirect. This removes any query strings that may be affecting the redirect. Learn how to manage your HubSpot redirects.

URL length

To track clicks, HubSpot appends tracking information to the end of each URL in an email with email tracking enabled, and to the end of a URL used in a CTA.

If you copy a link from an already sent email or CTA (legacy), to be used a new email or CTA (legacy), the initial tracking information will be included, and the end link will have two sets of tracking information. This can cause the URL to be too long to open. Ensure you link to the final destination URL of your page.

Some security plugins can also set limits on URL length. For example, the Ultimate Security Checker installed in Wordpress will prevent links with more than 255 characters from functioning.

Invalid or misplaced characters in URL

If the URL in your email contains unsupported characters, or if you place certain characters incorrectly within the URL, you may notice that the associated link leads to a blank page or results in an error. To confirm that your email link works correctly, check that your URL meets the following requirements:

• A fragment identifier, denoted by the hash mark #, must be located after the last forward slash in your URL.
• If you have email tracking turned on, Outlook meeting links will not work properly due to HubSpot's query parameters that are required to track link clicks. To learn more about this issue, check out this HubSpot Community post.
• If you're linking to a GoToWebinar registration URL that contains UTM parameters, your URL cannot contain a % character. If you notice that the value of your utm_campaign contains a % character, you can clone and rename the campaign to exclude percent-encoded characters, or you can use a link shortening service like bit.ly.
• If you're linking to a SurveyMonkey survey, confirm that your link's UTM parameters, such as utm_campaign, do not contain special characters. Only alphanumeric characters, hyphens, and underscores are supported in SurveyMonkey URLs.

External system settings

If you are linking or redirecting to a non-HubSpot website, your web server may not be properly configured to handle additional tracking URL strings. If your system can be modified to allow for specific tracking parameters, you can add the following HubSpot email parameters: 

• hsenc (identity tracking)
• _hsmi (email click tracking)
• hsCtaTracking (CTA tracking)
• utm_medium
• utm_source
• utm_campaign

In addition to the tracking parameters above, your external system should be configured to allow additional hyphens to be added to the URL.