One of the primary methods to track and identify viewers with Vidyard is to share your video in email with a tracking token.
A tracking token is automatically added to your video’s link when you use Vidyard’s add-in to share a video in a message from Gmail, Outlook or other compatible email tool.
In most cases, identification works best when you share a video in a 1:1 message with a single email recipient. If the email has multiple recipients, the behavior of the tracking tokens changes.
In this article, you’ll find information on:
- how tracking changes with multiple recipients in Gmail & Outlook
- how sending an email directly from Vidyard allows for 1:many tracking
Emails with multiple recipients in Gmail & Outlook
When you use Vidyard to share a video in either Gmail or Outlook, the level of identification that you receive from the tracking token changes based on the number of recipients in the email.
When the email has a single recipient, the tracking token can be uniquely associated with an individual. When multiple recipients are part of the same thread, the token has to be generalized or removed altogether because more than one person may watch the video.
As a result, the number of recipients affects the type of view notification you receive:
- identified: my.viewer@email.com watched your video
- generalized: "1 person watched your video"
| # of recipients in To, CC or BCC fields | Outcome |
| 1 email address | Your recipient is identified
View notifications reads: “my.viewer@email.com watched your video” |
| 2+ email addresses where all recipients have the same domain email (e.g. @vidyard.com) | Viewers are partially identified by their email domain
View notifications reads: “someone@emaildomain.com watched your video” |
| 2+ email addresses where recipients have different email domains | Viewers remain unidentified
View notifications reads: “someone watched your video” or "{# of people} watched your video" |
Emails with multiple recipients sent directly from Vidyard
You can also share videos via email directly from your library on vidyard.com. This option requires you to connect Vidyard to your Gmail or Outlook account.
When you have more than 1 email recipient, each viewer receives a separate individual email with your video. As a result, Vidyard is able to add a unique tracking token to the link for each recipient. This also means that recipients are not included on the same email thread.
- Learn more about how to share your video in an email directly from Vidyard