Link Shortening and Tracking to Grow your Database

The world has better traffic metrics than ‘recent site visitors’. It’s time you stopped fixating on a few favorites and looked beyond dead-beat metrics to examine Calls-to-Action for they really are underneath – URLs.

Be that as it may, unshortened URLs look suspicious. Read along as we take you through the bare essentials of link-shortening and effective usage so you can up your SMS and CTA game.  

Why you should ‘Link Shorten’

1. Understand customer personas, who they are, where they come from
2. Inspire confidence when you use on-brand URL contractions and relevant slugs. You don’t want to look like an elaborate phishing attempt when you’re not one.
3. Pre-empt passers-by on social media about the Landing Page that they’re about to visit. Shorter, branded URLs are also easier to share
4. Strengthen recall for your brand
   with a consistent identity
5. Track incoming traffic without diluting brand identity

Starting Out With URL Shorteners

Tools are aplenty. Just pick a link shortening provider that’s dependable and won’t wind down its service abruptly later (remember Google’s QR code generators?).

Also, be sure to avoid URL shorteners that get filtered and penalized by Carriers. More on that here.

Be sure to use custom URLs, branded domains, and custom keywords

“What are UTM Parameters,  Why should I care?”   UTM or Urchin Tracking Module parameters are special tags to your URLs that help track and make sense of your traffic across platforms and CTAs. With UTM in URLs you can tag-and-track everything:   Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter posts, Blogs, Whitepaper, Reports, Use-cases, CPC Ads – Everything!  Which fetches you:   Exact sources of traffic  as well as location, device, and browser, Relative contribution  across traffic sources, and More insight than just Google analytics.   When your custom links are clicked, the tags are sent back to Google Analytics and tracked. You can use takeaways from this and feed those back into campaigns Because you can compare performance tangibly across your campaigns to see what works and what doesn’t.

Why short URLs are great for  promoting content

Easy on the eyes, Easy on the analytics

Your promotions and brand pages immediately become more accessible. You can enrich conversations with high-quality resources. They’re a dependable way to know what your customers want to know about.

Long URLs look careless, invite suspicion

Introducing campaigns or redirections that are brandless look ambiguous, purposeless, and ad-hoc which isn’t enticing.

They drown out brand identity and feel like taking a chance on an unknown URL.

No-Nos for URL Shortening

Don’t shorten more than once

It nests URLs and your page will take forever to load

Don’t spam or collect PII

Be a good-faith factor and shortened URLs only

To redirect to relevant pages. Also, never collect personally identifiable information (PII) through UTM parameters.