Do Tracked Links only work the first time they're clicked?

[shai]

I'm noticing that when a visitor clicks a tracked link (in a marketing email), they correctly land (after a redirect) at the destination URL, with the appropriate query parameters added → causes the hubspotutk cookie to be set → you can then use that cookie's value to query for a contact by UTK in the API.

However, if clicking through that link a second time (different browser / device, or after clearing cookies), the UTK cookie is again correctly set (to a new value), but using it to call the API returns a brand newly created empty visitor instead of the one who received the email.

Anyone know what's going on? Is this expected?

Thanks!

[Derek_Gervais]

Hi @shai,

How quickly are you making the request to pull the contact via API after they reach their destination? When a contact clicks a link in an email (from a new device) they'll receive a new utk token. This triggers a new visitor record to be created, which is then merged with the 'actual' contact record. Is it possible that you're trying to query the contact record before this association process is complete?

To dig into this more, can you reach out with an example contact & the UTK parameter that wasn't properly associated with them? It'd also be really helpful to take a look at the email in HubSpot that you sent.