SMS communication is evolving rapidly, and it's now an established fact that when it comes to capturing the recipient's attention, the SMS message just works exceptionally well.
Several analyses show that SMS messages have an average open rate of 98%, which means that SMS beats most other channels on this parameter. For emails, for example, the average open rate is 20%.
However, for many years there has been one weak point of SMS that marketing departments in particular have missed: the ability to track SMS campaigns. Fortunately, that's all changed today. Since the beginning of 2022, it has been possible to track links in SMS messages sent in inMobile.
In this article, we take an in-depth look at what link tracking is, how to include links in your SMS messages and how to effectively utilise link tracking in your SMS campaigns.
What is link tracking?
Link tracking (also called URL tracking) is often used in marketing to track the number of clicks on links in your marketing campaigns. When you choose to track your links, you get a much better insight into your customers' behaviour and engagement with your campaigns, and thus a better understanding of the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.
The way link tracking works is that you insert a link (a URL) in your marketing material. For example, it could be a link to your website that you insert in an email, SMS or advert.
When a person clicks on this link, the link tracking setup ensures that the click is registered in a database. In this database, you can then see how many people have clicked on a specific link.
What is link tracking in SMS?
Link tracking in SMS is when you insert a link in your SMS message in a way that can reveal how many recipients of the SMS message have clicked on the link.
You can use this knowledge to optimise future SMS campaigns to ensure that your SMS messages' click-through rate (also called your CTR or Click Through Rate) is continuously improving.
How to use link tracking in inMobile
There is no doubt that the SMS channel is a powerful tool in the battle for customer attention. In addition to the exceptionally high open rate of 98%, a whopping 90% of all recipients also open their SMS message within the first 3 minutes of receiving it.
However, one thing is that the recipient opens your SMS message. Another thing is whether the information or message you've shared in your SMS is actually acted upon.
InMobile's link tracking tool makes it easy to track recipient behaviour. This applies whether you send your SMS messages via campaigns, SMS automations, email to SMS, via a webhook or via the inMobile API. Simply make sure that link tracking is set up correctly on your inMobile account.
Our goal is to help you ensure the success of your SMS campaigns. That's why we've made it easy for you to set up and use the link tracking feature.
Below you will find specific guides for setting up link tracking for each of inMobile's broadcasting options.
Guide: Link tracking in campaigns
In your inMobile account you will find the "Promotions" tab. Here you can send one-off SMS messages to your lists of recipients. In other words, this is where you send what is typically called an SMS campaign.
If you want to make use of link tracking in your SMS campaigns, you can see how to set it up in the video below.
Read more here: Guide to link tracking in SMS campaigns.
Guide: Link tracking in SMS automations
If you work with SMS automations, i.e. flows of SMS messages that are automatically sent based on selected triggers, it is also possible to include links with link tracking here.
The beauty of including link tracking in your SMS automations is that you get a much better insight into whether the recipients of your automated SMS messages are actually interacting with the message content. If they don't, you have a basis for optimising your SMS messages.
In the guide below you can see how to set up link tracking for SMS automations.
Read more here: Guide to link tracking in SMS automation
Guide: Link tracking via SMS API
If you use inMobile's API to send SMS messages, that shouldn't stop you from taking advantage of effective link tracking as well.
In the guide below, you can see how to set up the link tracking feature so you can insert tracking links in your SMS messages sent via the API.
Read more here: Guide to link tracking via API
Guide: Link tracking in email to SMS
When you send an SMS message via the "email to SMS" feature, you also have the option to use links with link tracking in the message. You just need to have the right setup for it.
In the video below you will find a guide on how to set up link tracking in email to SMS.
Read more here: Guide to link tracking in email to SMS
The benefits of link tracking in SMS marketing
As you may have already deduced from the previous section of this article, there are many benefits to using link tracking in SMS. Especially if you work with SMS marketing.
Below we go through what we believe are the most important benefits of setting up tracking for your links.
#1 More conversions
When you include links in your SMS messages, you make it much easier for the recipient to respond to your message's message (your CTA - Call to Action). For example, if you want to draw attention to a specific product, product category or perhaps a specific offer, you can easily direct the recipient to a landing page with the products, category or offer that your SMS promotes.
A link in your SMS campaign can be crucial to the campaign's final conversion rate, as more visitors to your landing page means more potential sales.
If you work with SMS marketing or SMS for e-commerce, it is particularly relevant to use tracking links in your SMS campaigns.
#2 Valuable data insights
When you use link tracking in your SMS campaigns, you gain valuable data insights into your campaigns that are otherwise unavailable. You get insight into whether the recipients of the SMS message have responded to your message and interacted with your campaign by clicking on your link.
Once you have set up your subdomain for link tracking in inMobile and sent an SMS with a link, you can start viewing your SMS data under each SMS send.
Here you get an overview of how many clicks your tracking link has received in total, as well as how many unique clicks there have been on a specific link. This means that if the same recipient clicks the same link multiple times, it counts as multiple total clicks, but only as one unique link.
Your click-through rate is calculated based on the number of unique clicks on a link. Below is an example of what an SMS message's link tracking reporting might look like.
Your click-through rate tells you something about how your SMS message has performed. You can use this knowledge to optimise future campaigns and increase your company's performance on the SMS channel.
#3 Access to owned data
Let's face it, tracking and data collection is becoming increasingly difficult - especially for European marketing departments.
Big tech companies like Apple and Google, as well as regulations like GDPR, continue to make it more difficult to collect and store data and keep track of what your customers are doing online.
The good news is that you have the option to collect your own data (legally, of course) and that data cannot be taken away from you. InMobile's link tracking gives you access to just that kind of data - also known as owned data.
The way it works is that when a recipient clicks on a link in an SMS message sent from inMobile, the person who clicked is first sent through inMobile's (European hosted) servers and then on to the relevant URL.
This means that your link tracking in inMobile is not dependent on third-party UTM parameters, cookies or pixels, and you can therefore legally view (and store) your SMS messages' click-through rates.
#4 Know your unsubscribe rate
Speaking of legislation and data policy.
When working with SMS marketing, it's a legal requirement to give the recipient an easy way to unsubscribe from your SMS list. At inMobile, we always recommend that you do this using an unsubscribe link. Both because it's user-friendly, but also because an unsubscribe link contains link tracking.
When you use an SMS unsubscribe link, you gain insight into how many recipients click on the unsubscribe link and thus your unsubscribe rate. It clearly tells you which campaigns your target audience is not responding positively to - and which you might want to rethink.
💡 In other words, the biggest advantage of using link tracking in SMS campaigns is that you get a concrete insight into which of your SMS campaigns are performing well and engaging the target audience, and which can be optimised going forward.
Bonus: Credible link shortener
When you use inMobile's link tracking tool, you get an extra advantage. Namely, your link will automatically be shortened.
You've probably come across shortened links called something like bitly, shorturl, tinyurl or similar. With shortened links like these, it can be difficult for the recipient of the link to recognise who the sender is and whether they are spam or dangerous links.
Unlike many online link shorteners(also called URL shorteners or link shorteners) such as bitly's tracking links, inMobile's link shortener ensures that your shortened link still contains your company name.
Specifically, the inMobile link shortener works by creating a subdomain with your DNS provider. It's not nearly as complicated as it may sound - see how to do it in this guide to setting up a subdomain). It is then the subdomain that remains part of your link.
When a shortened link contains the company's brand name, it significantly increases the credibility of the link and makes it more transparent to the recipient. This usually results in a higher click-through rate.
With inMobile's link shortener, you can create confidence with your brand name in your links.
See how to use the link shortener in the video below or in the inMobile link shortener guide.
Advantages of a link shortener
A study by Rebrandly has shown that links that include the sender's name have up to 39% higher CTR than generic links. Therefore, it's obviously a great advantage to be able to create URL shorteners without having to omit your brand name in the link.
It simply increases the credibility of the link and creates a greater sense of security for the customer when your / the sender's brand name is included in the link - which ultimately means a higher click-through rate (CTR) on your links and thus also a potentially higher conversion rate.
A bonus benefit of shortening your links is that the SMS message becomes clearer and has fewer characters. This is good because, as you know, an SMS is limited in the number of characters available.
Read more in the article: How many characters can an SMS contain?
Case: How Barnets Verden uses link tracking
Barnets Verden is one of many companies using link tracking in inMobile's SMS system. To utilise link tracking in one of their previous campaigns, they inserted the following link in their campaign: www.barnetsverden.dk/pages/du-har-adgang-for-alle-andre.
As you can see, the link above is both long and a bit confusing to receive in an SMS. Therefore, using inMobile's link tracking feature, the link was converted to the following link: s.barnetsverden.dk/4xcGMz-1.
The message then looked like this:
As you can see in the example above, the link is significantly shorter and clearer for the recipient. At the same time, the company name is still in the link, which increases the credibility of the link.
Because Barnets Verden used link tracking, they could subsequently see how many of the recipients clicked on the link. This gave them a really good sense of the recipients' reaction to the campaign and whether the SMS message was performing as it should.
SMS unsubscribe with unsubscribe link
In the message example from Barnets Verden above, you can see that the message ends with an unsubscribe link. This is (as previously mentioned) another great feature of link tracking - your recipients can unsubscribe from your SMS lists using a link.
Before the link tracking feature was created, recipients who wanted to unsubscribe from an SMS list had to do so using a keyword. For example, it could be a keyword like STOP or AFMELD sent to 1245.
It's not very user-friendly and fortunately not necessary when you have link tracking set up.
Link cancellation in SMS is beneficial for both you and your recipients. For recipients, it's a clearer way to unsubscribe from an SMS list. For you, unsubscribing via a link means you can track your campaigns more accurately using your unsubscribe rate.
You also save the cost of having access to a keyword.
Read more in the guide: How to use link cancellation in SMS.
Summarising
SMS is now a well-established communication channel in many organisations, where the SMS message is an effective medium for quickly getting the right message to the right recipients.
Does your organisation use SMS to communicate with your customers, employees or others, and are there sometimes links in your SMS messages? Then it's a good idea to set up link tracking on your inMobile account.
It's quick and easy, and in this post you'll find links to all the relevant guides you need to set up link tracking in SMS with inMobile.
FAQ: Link tracking
What is link tracking?
Link tracking is also called URL tracking and means that you track (measure) the number of clicks on your links. If you use link tracking in inMobile, you get access to information about how many recipients click on links in your SMS messages.
What is the benefit of link tracking?
There are many benefits to link tracking or URL tracking. One of the biggest benefits is that link tracking gives you access to relevant data such as your click-through rate and unsubscribe rate. Furthermore, links in SMS messages give the recipient an easy way to respond to your message's message by clicking on the link. A link will typically direct the recipient to a desired landing page where the final conversion takes place.
How does link tracking work in SMS?
If you want to use link tracking in your SMS messages, start by creating a subdomain with your DNS provider. It's not difficult or time-consuming (see how in the inMobile domain guide). You will then be able to insert tracking links and shortened links in your SMS messages sent from inMobile. Under each SMS send, you can subsequently gain insight into the SMS's click rate.
What can you use link tracking for?
Link tracking can be used for many different types of SMS messages. Link tracking is popular for SMS marketing, where you can insert a link directly to your company's website in the SMS message. For example, links in SMS messages can also be used to send questionnaires, send important info or invitations to employees and much more. Regardless of why you send links in your SMS messages, it's beneficial to have insight into how many recipients actually clicked on the link.
What is CTR (click-through rate)?
CTR stands for Click Through Rate. In Danish, we often call it a click-through rate. Your CTR - or click-through rate - is a number that tells you how many people clicked on your link. For example, if your click-through rate is 30%, it means that 30% of those who could have potentially clicked on your link have done so.
What is a good CTR (click-through rate) for SMS?
The average CTR/click rate for SMS marketing messages is 36%, while the average CTR/click rate for SMS messages in general is 19%. That's not to say that a CTR below this is bad. It all depends on what your message is and who the recipients of the message are. The best way to find your company's benchmark for what "a good CTR is" is to monitor the performance of your SMS campaigns and compare them over time.
How do you send a link in an SMS?
It's easy to send a link in an SMS. In fact, anyone can do this, but it requires a special setup to send links with tracking. In order to measure the click-through rate of links sent in an SMS message, you must first have link tracking set up in your SMS account.
