Using a link to a webpage as part of your SMS marketing message is an excellent way to further engage and connect with your customers. The link can send your customers to a specific offer or section on your website, to an app download or to anything you want really. However, links tend to be quite long and they can easily consume many of the valuable characters in your SMS marketing message. To get around this and still be able to include your links you should use a URL shortener.
It’s actually very easy. You simply submit your very long link and in return you get a short link that’s just a fraction of the length of your original link. This short link will now permanently point to your long link and make life much easier for you when you want to include it in your SMS marketing message.
Our favourite URL shortener service is Google’s own https://goo.gl/. And because it’s hosted by Google you can be confident that it’s stable, reliable and safe to use. You just open https://goo.gl/, paste your long url in the text box, and then click the SHORTEN URL button. In return you’ll get a link that looks something like this goo.gl/Xsd133. This is now your shortened link! Just copy and use when sending your messages with qiksms.
In addition to shortening your links and saving characters you’ll also get enhanced reporting as Google will track the number of clicks per link in real time (you can create as many shortened links as you want). Use this data and compare stats from different messages to further improve your marketing campaigns. A higher click-through-rate means your message is spot on!
If you want to try today there is a special offer which gives you 10 free included text messages when you sign up. Just click here to sign up for free and get started!