Short links in SMS campaigns

Table of Contents

Welcome to the very first guest entry on our blog! Jan Biłyk, CEO at Laurens Coster – the company specializing in analysis, automatization and personalization of brand’s data, will walk you through the SMS campaigns based on links.

Jan Biłyk from Laurens Coster
Jan Biłyk
Laurens Coster

For a couple of months, we have been adding personalized links to our SMS messages. Of course, while the dedicated, shortened link takes the client to the desired page, it also leaves a trace in the marketing cloud which records each individual click.

It’s the same trick you might know from e-mail campaigns. For the reasons unknown to us, it’s rarely used in SMS marketing.

How to track traffic in Google Analytics?

What struck us when analyzing our past campaigns (and later on was proven by chi-square):

Results of SMS campaigns with links
source: Laurens Coster

Power of the link in SMS

Clicking a link in SMS doubles the chances (odds ratio) of returning to the shop within next days, in comparison with unengaged clients.

Of course, page view itself it’s not enough to seal the deal. It should be considered as a sign of engagement that helps to predict the client’s next move. It’s just a correlation, and correlation does not imply causation.

Changing static links for the individually generated ones opens up a lot of possibilities. For example, by knowing who clicked the link you may:

  • automatically remind them about a promotion;
  • insert a cookie on the user’s most personal device – mobile phone;
  • personalize the content on other channels;
  • build one’s technographic profile;
  • dynamically set UTMs for redirecting or use URLs to pass additional parameters which will change what users see…

In short, it’s nothing new, if you have any experience with e-mail marketing. But somehow, most SMS marketers seem to forget these simple tools.

Data source

All data comes from the campaigns run with Selligent Marketing Cloud and SMSAPI in 2018. All values were altered to keep trust and chance ratios intact. Conversions, CTRs, numbers of sent messages are proportional to those sent in the campaigns.