Sending, Managing, and Tracking Links and Clicks

SlickText offers the ability to shorten and track URLs, or web addresses, that you send in messages to your audiences. Shortening links may save you characters in your messages and tracking them will give you insights into subscriber engagement. (Depending upon your url, the shortened link may not actually be shorter.) If you’re using a SlickText trackable link (slktxt.io, for example), you’ll be able to see clicks on the Campaigns or Analytics pages in SlickText. URLs that you do not shorten in SlickText will not produce any analytics or engagement insights in SlickText. You can even use your own custom link domain to brand your links!

Links can be used for several different purposes. You can shorten and track links that you send in your text messages. You can create tap-to-join links to make it easy for people to opt in to your text messaging program. You can even customize your mobile terms and conditions link.

In this article:

Using a Trackable Link while Creating a Campaign

Creating a Trackable Link from the Links Page

Adding a Custom Link Domain for Your Brand

Creating a Tap-to-join Link from the Links Page

Managing Links

Tracking Link Usage

Merging Contact Data into a Link

Customizing Your Brand’s Terms Link

Before We Begin

The ability to track links you send in your messages requires that you save a trackable link while creating a campaign or directly  on the Links page first.

Using a Trackable Link while Creating a Campaign 

The easiest way to create a trackable link is to do it while you’re creating your message:

1. From the SlickText Dashboard, click on Campaigns in the left navigation bar. For more about creating and sending campaigns, click here.
2. Click on the Create Campaign button in the top right corner.
3. Enter a campaign name and choose an audience to send the message to. 
4. In the message box, type  your message, including any URLs you would like to send. 
5. In the box that pops up asking you if you would like to track the link, click Yes.
6. Name your smart link, then click Shorten. If you paste multiple URLs at once, you’ll repeat this step for each URL.
7. Schedule your campaign or click Save Draft.

Creating a Trackable Link from the Links Page

You can create a trackable link or a tap-to-join link directly on the Links page:

1. From the SlickText Dashboard, click on Tools.
2. Scroll down to the General section and choose Links.
3. Click on the Create Link button in the top right corner.
4. Name the link and choose A normal link. If you are creating a tap-to-join link, see the instructions in the next section.
5. Enter the URL you want the trackable link to redirect to.
6. Click Save.
7. You can now copy your link, create another link, or text the link to one of your contacts. 

Adding a Custom Link Domain for Your Brand

SlickText will use one of our native link domains (for example, sltxt.io) for your trackable links unless you assign a custom Link Domain to your brand. If you don’t already have a domain secured for this purpose, go to a domain registrar (like GoDaddy) to purchase your domain, then follow the steps below to add the domain to your brand.

To add your Link Domain to your brand in SlickText:

1. From the Home page, click on your name in the bottom left corner and choose Settings.
2. On the Settings page, choose Link Domains. 
3. In the top right corner, choose Set Up New Domain.
4. Enter the domain you want to use and add a description. You’ll also want to include a Root Redirect URL and Invalid Link Redirect URL.
5. Select Make Default Domain to make it active. 
6. Follow the additional setup instructions to configure the DNS settings in your domain hosting account.
7. Click Create Domain to save and exit the domain setup.

Once you’ve added one or more Link Domains, you will be able to manage them from the Link Domains page.

Creating a Tap-to-Join Link from the Links Page

You can create a trackable link or a tap-to-join link directly on the Links page:

1. From the SlickText Dashboard, click on Tools.
2. Scroll down to the General section and choose Links.
3. Click on the Create Link button in the top right corner.
4. Name the link and choose A Tap-to-Join Link.
5. Select the Keyword you would like the tap-to-join link to text.
6. Enter the URL you want to trackable link to redirect to.
7. Add a Non-Mobile Fallback URL to redirect to when the link is clicked on from a device that cannot send SMS messages.
8. Click Save.
9. You can now copy your link, create another link, or text the link to one of your contacts. 

Managing Links

Links you’ve created can be copied or renamed directly from the list of links. To edit, clone, or delete a link, click on the 3 dots symbol to the right of the link.

Your recently created links will display at the top of the list by default. If you don’t see the link you’re looking for, you can search by name or sort them alphabetically by name or by the date they were created.

Tracking Link Usage

From the Links page, you can view all clicks, unique clicks and suspected bot clicks for your Link. If you want to retarget contacts based on if they clicked on the link or not, you can do so by creating a Segment or sending the message as part of a workflow that includes Link Clicked objects. 

You can also view the link usage as part of the Campaign Analytics if you send it in a campaign message.

Merging Contact Data into a Link

Any data stored for a contact can be merged into a URL to create a custom link. This will allow  you to route your contacts to different web pages based on information you have about them.

To merge contact data into a link:

1. From the SlickText Dashboard, click on Campaigns.
2. Click on Create Campaign or choose an existing campaign to Edit or Clone.
3. Insert a URL into the message box.
4. Before choosing to track the link, insert a Merge Tag into the URL by clicking on the { } icon in the toolbar and selecting a contact field.
5. In the box that asks Track the __ link?, select Yes.
6. Name your link then select Shorten. 
7. Finish drafting your message.

Customizing Your Brand’s Terms Link

The Links page also allows you to customize your brand’s terms link. If you don’t see it at the bottom of your list of links, you can find it by sorting by date, with the oldest link displaying first, or by searching for “terms”.

While SlickText automatically generates a SMS Terms and Conditions page for your brand and inserts it in all required compliance messaging, some of our customers prefer to use a custom Terms page hosted on their website instead. 

Follow these steps if you would like your brand’s terms link to redirect to a custom URL:

1. From the SlickText Dashboard, click on Tools.
2. Scroll down to the General section and choose Links.
3. Locate the Terms link by searching for “Terms” or by sorting the links by date created with the oldest link displaying first.
4. Click on the 3 dots icon to the right and choose Edit.
5. Change the name if you would like.
6. Replace the URL with the URL of your custom Terms page.
7. Click Save.