Bitly has become synonymous with effective marketing campaign management. With the tool, you can shorten and manage your links under a single platform, giving you better control of your marketing campaigns.
Central to Bitly’s campaigns is its Dashboard. The Bitly Dashboard provides an overview of your activity, including how your target audience engages with links, facilitating better, data-driven marketing decisions.
Of course, you can only get the most out of the Dashboard if you master it. To help you, we’ll assess the features in the dashboard and delve into how to use Bitly to improve your digital marketing and content strategies.
What is the Bitly Dashboard?
It’s every digital marketer’s dream as it provides data on how their audience interacts with their links. Think of the Bitly Dashboard as the central command center for all your marketing activities on the platform.
The Bitly Dashboard is a web-based interface that allows you to create and manage short links, track engagement, and gain insights into analytics like the total number of clicks and the geographic data of link visitors. You can then use the analytics to determine metrics like your click-through rates (CTRs).
But it doesn’t stop there. With Bitly, you also have access to other valuable marketing features like QR Codes, Bitly Link-in-bio, and campaigns. The Bitly Dashboard makes it easy to keep track of all your activity in a streamlined central hub.
Navigating the Bitly Dashboard
The Bitly Dashboard is built for everyone. It doesn’t matter whether you’re new to the platform or have used it before—it’s designed to be easy to use.
Even so, we like to save clients time by providing the resources they need to access and use the platform. Here’s an overview of how to navigate the Bitly Dashboard.
Overview of main features
The Bitly Dashboard is the first thing you see when you log in to your account. Some of the main features you’ll see include:
- Links created: This part shows the total number of long URLs you’ve shortened through your Bitly account.
- Top links: These are the most clicked Bitly short links.
- Total engagements: This is the total number of scans on your QR Codes and clicks on your short links and Link-in-bios.
- Total campaigns: This shows the number of campaigns you’ve run through your Bitly account.
- Total channels: This refers to the number of marketing channels you’ve created.
However, the Bitly Dashboard will soon contain helpful insights, tips, and shortcuts rather than these metrics. To access these and more features, open the Analytics page.
Customization options
The Bitly Dashboard comes with some default elements, like the Top performing by clicks + scans feature, which allows you to view details like the number of clicks your links receive.
But, we recognize that not all clients want their Dashboards to have the same setup. That’s why we allow customization. You can determine what you see on your Dashboard by creating, rearranging, editing, or deleting modules. For example, if you want your Dashboard to show the number of link clicks by location, follow these steps:
- Tap Analytics on the left sidebar.
- Select Add module.
- On the Chart type box, choose Location.
- Select your preferred data visualization option from the Visualization box. For location data, you can choose Table or Map.
- Tap Add to dashboard. Your chosen module will appear on your Dashboard.
Consider your core needs when personalizing your Dashboard. Add the top-performing module to your Dashboard to see your top-performing links. If you’re more focused on determining where your target market is located, add the location module to your Dashboard.
Account information
Here’s how you can access and manage your account through the Dashboard:
- Tap the Settings option.
- Select Profile. This will show your display name, email address, and password.
- If you want to edit your account information, go back to the left sidebar and tap Account details—it’s under the Account settings option.
- Choose the edit option alongside the details you want to change.
- Enter your new details and tap Save.
For payment details updates:
- Go to Billing and usage under the Account settings option.
- Scroll to Billing details and tap Change next to the Payment method box.
- Enter your new payment information and select Save.
Keeping account details, like your email address, up to date enables you to receive important notifications from Bitly on time. Updating your payment details lets you maintain your paid subscription and receive real-time analytics.
Main features on the Bitly Dashboard
The Bitly Dashboard allows you to manage different aspects of your marketing campaign without transitioning between platforms. You can easily access Bitly analytics, link shortener, and more by simply opening your Bitly account. Here are the main features on the Bitly Dashboard:
Creating and shortening links
It only takes a few minutes to create short links on Bitly. When you open your Dashboard:
- Tap the Create new button.
- Select Link.
- Enter your long URL into the Destination field and tap Next.
- If you have UTM parameters for your link, toggle the switch and enter your UTMs in the relevant fields.
- Select Create.
Customizing links
Bitly allows you to customize your links to reflect your brand. After entering your destination URL, you can customize your links by adding your brand name or preferred phrase to the Customize back-half field.
Customizing your links can improve your marketing efforts by allowing you to maintain a cohesive brand image. It can also evoke more customer trust, increasing engagement.
Link organization and management
Bitly can allow you to generate thousands of links per minute. As such, proper organization and management are important.
The platform allows you to add tags to your links to make them easier to find. For example, if you’re creating links for an SMS and Instagram campaign, you can add an “SMS” or “Instagram” tag to each link to allow you to assess each campaign’s performance individually.
Proper link management is vital for your campaign’s success. Implement best practices like occasionally reviewing and updating your links to ensure they work. This can help you provide better customer experiences and prevent unnecessary link overloading.
Analytics and reporting
The Analytics tab on the Dashboard is a gold mine for marketers looking for ways to improve future campaigns. When you tap the button, you’ll get data on the number of clicks your links receive, organic share links, the geographical locations of the clicks, link referrers, and the types of devices used to open your URLs. This data can help you narrow your target audience and identify top-performing content and campaigns.
Advanced features to explore on the Bitly Dashboard
You don’t have to constrain yourself to the basic features we’ve explored above. You can improve your campaign even further by exploring advanced Bitly features like:
Branded links and custom domains
Under the Growth, Premium, and Enterprise plans, you can customize your links further by using your branded domain instead of the bit.ly domain. Your branded domain can be your brand name, a keyword customers associate with your business, or any other creative phrase.
Branded links and custom domains enhance brand recognition, allow you to maintain consistency in your marketing efforts, and improve customer trust.
Integration capabilities
The Bitly Dashboard integrates seamlessly with numerous tools to streamline marketing activities. You can integrate short links with social media management solutions like Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Sprinklr, and more. This allows you to seamlessly publish your links to social media platforms and get in-depth analytics.
User engagement tracking
Bitly’s Dashboard allows you to track user engagement across different channels. This is vital if you’re running multiple campaigns simultaneously, as you can identify top-performing strategies and make better-informed decisions.
Suppose you want to compare your Facebook and Instagram links’ performance:
- Go to the Bitly Link Checker.
- Enter your Facebook account’s short URL into the box and tap the Check it button.
- Tap View the click data to get the link’s metrics.
- Do the same for the Instagram URL to compare both channels’ performance.
Digital marketing optimization
Marketing analytics improve decision-making and efficiency, enhancing a marketing campaign’s outcomes. Insights gained from the Bitly Dashboard can let you know which marketing campaigns to focus your resources on to improve outcomes. They can also inform future campaigns—you can implement strategies with the highest engagement rates in future endeavors.
To optimize marketing outcomes, continuously assess your Dashboard data. Make tweaks to your campaign and observe how they affect your engagement. For example, you can introduce promotional offers or work with influencers to determine if these measures impact your click rates. If they do, you can implement them in future campaigns.
Build your best digital strategy with Bitly‘s tools
The digital marketing landscape is constantly evolving. More businesses are creating digital marketing campaigns, and audiences are becoming even choosier because of easy access to information, products, and services. You must continually refine your strategy to reflect modern marketing trends to succeed.
Bitly allows you to do just that. You can create and manage short URLs, QR Codes, and Link-in bios, and receive real-time analytics on their performance. Whether you just want a snapshot of how your marketing campaign is performing for the day or you want to take a deeper look “under the hood,” the Bitly Analytics Dashboard is a great place to start.
Sign up for a Bitly account today to get insights into your marketing campaigns and make data-driven decisions!
