I'm trying to add affiliate codes from a user field to links to my on-line store.

1. I created a URL link in an e-mail template by appending a plain-text user field to a valid URL, like this: https://www.domain.com/page$[user.field]
2. The contents of the user field are in this form: /?ref=firstlastname
3. When you append that text string to the URL you should get a valid URL in this form: https://www.domain.com/page/?ref=firstlastname
4. However, when you send an e-mail template with that exact URL link in it, zoho changes it so that the code you see in your e-mail client is this: https://www.domain.com/page%2F%3Fref%3Dfirstlastname
5. Zoho created an invalid, partially-encoded link that neither a browser nor an e-mail client can read out of what should be a valid link

 My questions are:

• Why is zoho producing a partially encoded link instead of a valid one? Zoho seems to recognize that the user field is part of the link (it is encoding it)--why is it encoding one part and not the other, and then spitting out a result that is invalid?
• Is there any working method for adding a field to a url?