Short links in SMS campaigns: how to track the clicks on each message

An SMS has 160 characters, but only if the text uses just characters from the standard SMS alphabet. Letters such as ă, â, î, ș and ț (used in Romanian) are not part of it: a message that contains them switches to Unicode encoding, and the limit drops to 70 characters per segment. A long link of 90 characters can therefore take up more than a whole segment.

Why shorten the link

Besides the space you save, a short link looks cleaner and can be tracked: you see how many people clicked, on which day and at what time, from which country and on what type of device. A long link pasted into a message tells you nothing once it has been sent.

One link for each message

The rule that changes results the most: do not send the same link to everyone. Create a separate short link for each message variant or for each audience segment. If you test two texts, with two links you see exactly which one brought more clicks.

UTM parameters

If the destination is your website, add three parameters to the link: utm_source=sms, utm_medium=message and utm_campaign= followed by the campaign name. That way, in your analytics tool, the visits from SMS show up separately from those from email or social media. In Li-Nk you can save a set of parameters as a template, under “Parameters”, and then apply it to every new link, so you do not type them by hand each time.

The result per campaign

Create a campaign in Li-Nk for each send and add the message links to it. On the campaign page you see the clicks added up for all of its links, and each link stays visible separately. You send the messages from your own SMS platform; Li-Nk does not send SMS and does not automatically receive data from it.

What to watch after sending

• the clicks in the first two hours — with SMS, most reactions come quickly;
• the ratio between clicks and delivered messages (you get the number of delivered messages from your SMS platform);
• the difference between the variants you tested.