What is Viral Tracking?
Viral Tracking lets you see how your campaign spreads from person to person. When enabled, Echo tracks which shares inspire further shares, building a chain of attribution that you can explore as an interactive tree in your analytics dashboard.
How It Works
Someone clicks a sharing link - When a visitor clicks on a shared link (e.g. from LinkedIn or WhatsApp), Echo sets a cookie in their browser that remembers which share brought them in.
They create their own share - If that visitor later creates their own share of the same campaign, Echo links the two shares together.
A viral chain forms - As this process repeats, a tree of connections builds up: Alice shared on LinkedIn, Bob clicked her link and shared on Twitter, Carol clicked Bob's link and shared on WhatsApp, and so on.
This chain is displayed as an interactive Viral Tracking chart at the bottom of your campaign's analytics page:
Enabling Viral Tracking
Open your campaign in the Dashboard.
Go to the Tracking & Embed tab.
Toggle Enable Viral Tracking on.
Save the campaign.
Viral Tracking is off by default for every campaign. When disabled, no viral tracking cookie is set and no parent-child relationships are recorded between shares.
Reading the Viral Spread Tree
Once Viral Tracking is enabled and shares start forming chains, the Viral Tracking widget appears at the bottom of your campaign's analytics page;
The root node (purple) represents your campaign.
Each node represents a share.
First-level nodes are shares that were published directly through your campaign page.
Deeper nodes are shares that were inspired by clicking another share's link first.
Nodes are sized proportionally to the number of clicks that a share link received. A larger node means more people clicked on that share.
Shares with clicks display an orange badge showing the click count. Counts above 99 are shown as "99+".
Nodes that have children (i.e. shares that inspired further shares) display a subtle glow ring around them, making it easy to spot the most influential sharers.
Privacy & GDPR
Viral Tracking uses a dedicated first-party cookie (echo_viral_) that is separate from any other tracking cookies (such as conversion tracking). This cookie:
Is only set when Viral Tracking is explicitly enabled for the campaign.
Expires after 90 days.
Contains only the share code (a random alphanumeric string) — no personal data.
Because this is a separate, purpose-specific cookie, you can enable or disable it independently of conversion tracking, making it easier to manage consent in your cookie banner or privacy policy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I enable Viral Tracking on an existing campaign?
Yes. You can enable it at any time. However, only shares created after enabling the feature will have parent-child relationships tracked. Existing shares will appear as root-level nodes in the tree.
What happens if I disable Viral Tracking?
No new viral cookies will be set. Existing parent-child relationships between shares are preserved and will still appear in the tree, but no new connections will be recorded.
Why are some shares at the root level even though Viral Tracking is enabled?
A share appears at root level when the visitor came directly to the campaign page (not through another share link), or when the viral cookie had expired (after 90 days), or when the visitor's browser blocked the cookie.
Does Viral Tracking slow down my campaign page?
No. Setting a cookie is a near-instant operation that adds no visible delay to page loads or redirects.
Is there a limit to how deep the tree can go?
No. The tree supports unlimited depth. If a chain runs many levels deep, you can use the zoom and pan controls to navigate it.