Before you start
Things you need to know:
You must turn on link shortening in order to track SMS clicks. Links which aren’t shortened can’t be tracked.
You can use a branded short URL in your SMS campaigns.
Contacts read a massive 98% of text messages sent. This makes SMS unique to other forms of communication in terms of open-rate, but it can be tricky to track how your campaigns perform after you send.
By including a unique shortened link in your SMS message, you can direct contacts to specific online content and get detailed reports of who and how many people are interacting with your campaign and visiting your website .
Enable link shortening and tracking
Create an SMS campaign.
Select CAMPAIGN OPTIONS, and for Links, select Shorten.
Select SAVE and then create your campaign.
Add a link to your campaign
Once you have enabled link shortening:
In the SMS campaign builder, enter the link you want to shorten into your campaign.
Make sure your link begins with either https:// or http://. Links that don't begin with a protocol aren't shortened or tracked.
Select SAVE.
Set link shortening as default
Enabling link shortening inside a campaign controls the setting for that campaign only.
If you’d like to enable link shortening as the default for all SMS campaigns, select Account settings in the side panel, then, under Features, select the Enable link shortening for all SMS campaigns checkbox. To confirm, select SAVE SETTINGS at the bottom of the page.
To access Account settings at any other time, expand the User menu and go to Settings > General > Account settings.
Even with link shortening switched on, you can see that links in the editor view stay the same length. The reason for this is because we generate unique shortened links behind the scenes once you send – this is how we track who's clicking.
The character count in the SMS editor displays the number of characters with the shortened link accounted for.
The character count can not account for data field personalisation, so your character count may increase on send depending on the values held in any data fields you include in your message.
Learn more in Why data fields might increase SMS cost.
The campaign preview shows you an example of a how a short link looks in your final message.
The link generated for the campaign preview is just an example. Do not copy this link into a campaign.
Use data fields in shortened links
Before starting, it's essential to understand the different parts that make up a URL. In its simplest form, a URL is made up of three main components:
Scheme
This is the first part of the URL where you specify the protocol you want to use – eitherhttp://orhttps://.
Hostname
The hostname is the main body of the URL, and it's often known as the domain name —for example,www.example.com.
Path
The path component of the URL is everything after the first slash (/) — for example,/this-is-the-path.
Put together, the scheme, hostname, and path of our example make up the URL: https://www.example.com/this-is-the-path.
You can create a custom URL using the content stored in your contact data fields. To do this, enter the data field tag inline in your URL – after the scheme and hostname:
In this example, @COMP_LINK@ contains a unique path to a web page for the contact.
Don’t forget to include a slash after the hostname, either in your message body or at the start of the data field itself.
Add UTM tags to SMS links for Google Analytics 4
Google Universal Analytics sunsetting
Google Universal Analytics was sunset on July 1. Learn about how we work with the latest edition of Google Analytics 4 (GA4), by watching our video guide.
Urchin Tracking Modules (UTMs) are used to identify campaigns that refer traffic to a specific website.
If you use Google Analytics, you can add UTM tags to your SMS links to help you better understand your customers. It’s also more convenient, as you won’t have to create a new UTM tag each time you send a new link.
Create UTM tags
Before you start
You can only add UTM tags to SMS links if you have link shortening and tracking enabled.
Expand the User menu and go to Settings > Tracking > SMS link tracking.
Select GOOGLE ANALYTICS TRACKING. This adds the three default UTM tags:
utm_campaign which is set to use the campaign name
utm_medium which is set to SMS
utm_source which is set to your company name
To change any of these default values, select the Edit icon.
To disable UTM tags for your SMS message links:
Expand the User menu and go to Settings > Tracking > SMS link tracking.
Select DISABLE GOOGLE ANALYTICS TRACKING.