Using short links in email and SMS campaigns

SMS: every character counts

A standard text message has room for 160 characters. A long address with tracking parameters can use most of that on its own, pushing your message into a second segment. A short link frees that space for words.

• Put the link at the end, after the reason to tap it.
• Say who you are at the start of the message. An unexpected link from an unknown sender looks like spam.
• Use a descriptive alias when you can. A link ending in /delivery reads as more trustworthy than a random code.
• Send only to people who agreed to hear from you, and include a way to opt out where the law requires it.

Email: think before you shorten

In HTML email the reader usually sees a button or linked text, not the address, so length is rarely a problem. There is less to gain from shortening, and there can be something to lose: spam filters look closely at links, and a message full of links from general-purpose shorteners can be treated with suspicion.

A sensible approach is to use full links to your own domain in the body of marketing emails, and keep short links for plain-text emails, signatures and cases where the address will be read or typed rather than clicked.

Protect the reader's trust

People have learned to be careful with links in messages, and they are right to be. The more context you give, the more comfortable they are.

1. Describe where the link goes in the sentence around it.
2. Send people to a page that matches what the message promised.
3. Do not chain shorteners. One redirect is enough.
4. Check every link in a test message before you send to the whole list.

Measure the result

One practical benefit of short links is the click count. Create a separate short link for each channel or each send, and you can compare them afterwards without touching the destination site. Even a simple count tells you which message people acted on.