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Although an ordinary SMS message contains only 160 characters, you can easily add more content with short URLs.
How is that even possible you might ask? That’s what shorten URLs feature can bring. Your text can redirect recipients’ to a website. This combines fast delivery time and high open rate of SMS with rich media. That’s why it’s so efficient in all kinds of marketing campaigns.
Shortened link – what is it exactly?
Shortened link cut.li is simply a short URL address, that redirects to a selected website, file, or app. Your addresses shortened in the SMSAPI Customer Portal will be displayed as cut.li/suffix. Try it. Copy and paste it to your browser – it’ll take to you our sign up page.
Using cut.li link shortener significantly decreases the number of used characters, but what’s more critical – gives you basic feedback about campaigns’ performance.
Cut.li – a free URL shortener for SMSAPI clients
The Cut.li URL shortener is a free tool available in the SMSAPI Customer Portal. Use it to quickly turn long URL into mobile-friendly short URL. Furthermore, you can use the shortened links to measure open-rate and converstion of your SMS campaigns
Key metrics – that’s what it’s all about
The shortened link allows you to get full information about recipients’ behaviour. Detailed campaign report is generated automatically after each bulk SMS. It contains such data as mobile phone operating system (iOS, Android, Windows Phone), used mobile browser (e.g. Safari, Chrome), type o a device (e.g. iPhone) and click date.
Read about other SMS KPIs
All this information from short URL allows you to know and serve your customer better. This opens a new opportunity to profile your campaigns more effectively and to increase your clients’ engagement.
Where to lead with a shortened link?
- An application – this is a widespread solution because our SMS API recognizes smartphone OS. A short link that will open an app in a dedicated store (AppStore, Google Play, Windows Marketplace).
- SMS Newsletter – if you have your recipients phone numbers but not their e-mail addresses, you can use short links to ask for more data. Simply include a short URL to your SMS newsletter.
- Discount coupon – when you start your special promo, that includes discount coupons and you want to spread them wide among your customers – text them a shortened URL with a downloadable coupon.
We have a brief example from one of our clients that used the potential of short links in SMS, combined with a dedicated app, social media management solution for managing all social media in one place, and achieved colossal campaign success.
CTR over 31%? That’s possible with short URL!
One of our clients has sent an SMS campaign to students informing about the annual biggest students party. Among people that received information regarding this event, 31% of them clicked shortened URLs that lead to a site dedicated to this event. What’s more important – 80% of recipients used the link within 1 hour after receiving SMS. Such high CTR (clickthrough rate) is easily achievable with highly personoalized and well-targeted SMS campaigns. Short URLs are help you to direct your customers to your website.
Test SMSAPI
Create a free account and test the Cut.li short links, as well as other features of a professional bulk SMS gateway.
Our system generated a full report with information about devices, mobile operating systems and browsers on which the SMS was read (in 51% cases it was an Android device with Google Chrome browser).
Link shortener: conclusions
SMS with short links quickly reach interested recipients, but what’s crucial – the short URL redirects them to the dedicated site, where they can find all important information. And as stated previously – knowledge about our clients’ devices and used OS and browser allows us to prepare a better, more engaging campaign for the next time. But there’s more to short links!
How to measure the effectiveness of SMS marketing in Google Analytics?
You can easily monitor the traffic coming from an SMS campaign by using the UTM parameters with your shortened URLs. Just remember to add it to the link you wish to shorten. Read more about the link in SMS in the article by Jan Biłyk or watch the video:
