When two hero links split the same inbox audience
A practical way to read competing clicks inside one email without declaring a fake winner too early.
Most flash sends put two loud buttons above the fold: a lookbook and a product grid, a story and a shop. Click totals alone will crown a winner. Path analysis asks a slower question — where did each click go next, and which fork still held attention three screens later?
Start with the shared trunk
Draw every subscriber who opened the email as a single trunk. Only after the first click do the forks appear. If 60% hit the lookbook but half of those bounce to a dead gallery, the grid may still be the stronger commercial path.
Label vanity redirects
Catalogue brands love pretty URLs that hop twice before the real page. Those hops look like separate clicks in some ESP exports. Name them in the tidy table or your map will invent forks that never existed for the reader.
Bring creative to the readout
Show the poster before you show the spreadsheet. Creative teams argue productively with a drawing; they glaze over row counts. End with one demotion rule — which link becomes text-only next time — so the session produces a change, not a debate souvenir.