Traditional marketing wisdom says that it takes an average of 7 touchpoints to convince someone to believe your message or buy from you (and the number is 3-4 times higher in B2B). But it only takes one wrong click on a malicious or unsafe URL tied to a specific company to cause irreparable brand damage. Such incidents can communicate to the public that the brand isn’t protecting customers and their data.
Trust is hard-won—it can take months or more to build but moments to topple. And the short links your brand shares and sends to customers, partners, and employees are a gateway. They can support the marketing experience and protect the brand, or, used unsafely, they can expose your brand in a huge way. Link safety isn’t just a security concern—it’s a branding issue, and marketing plays an essential role in creating, distributing, and protecting these digital touchpoints. Here’s why (and how) your team should lock in.
Building online trust in a skeptical era
Every day, consumers encounter another reason to be cynical about trusting their eyes and ears online. Phishing scams remain the number one cybersecurity attack vector. According to Hornetsecurity, over 400 million emails contained malicious content in 2024, from malware to ransomware that can devastate individuals and companies alike. And while AI is a powerful tool for automating and democratizing wide swaths of tasks, it’s also led to a huge spike in fake and forged images, convincing deepfakes, and hallucinations. Consumers are rightfully unsure what to believe, and their concerns are valid, especially when AI has made phishing campaigns significantly more effective.
At the same time, relational and value-first branding is rising in importance. At a time when audiences can ask an LLM anything, brands need to prioritize being relentlessly helpful, providing entertainment, anticipating needs, and keeping the customer experience front and center.
Safety and security, too, play a critical role in upholding your brand and reassuring customers that they can trust you: Brands that lead with protecting customers and their data will lead the pack. Companies that leave security as an afterthought risk revenue and reputation every time.
The link between marketing and security
While most think of digital safety as a job for the IT or cybersecurity teams (and understandably so), safeguarding the brand is typically the marketing team’s job—so link safety and security falls on both of these teams.
With every campaign marketers send, the security of their digital touchpoints should be top of mind. How could threat actors attempt to misuse our communication and fool our audience into giving away information when they think they’re interacting with us? How are our tools structured to prevent abuse and protect our brand? These kinds of questions are why a strong relationship between marketing and security is key. Security can help you to identify potential gaps and vulnerabilities in your digital tools, develop policies for link hygiene, and quickly address any issues.
Whether you’re sending links internally to another team or launching a major campaign, a security-first approach is your first line of defense against breaches and brand damage. It also gives your future customers one more reason to place their trust in you.
4 safety features that build consumer trust
It’s not your fault that malicious threat actors exist and that their actions degrade consumer confidence in engaging with digital touchpoints. But if you’re going to deepen connections with your audience, it is your responsibility to build links with safety in mind. The right link-building platform comes with these four features that help you rebuild customer trust and make it easier to manage clicks for safer and more secure interactions.
1. Safe previews
When consumers encounter a link from any brand, many are understandably skeptical about clicking at first. They need an indication that the link is safe, comes from a verified source, and takes them to a destination they actually want to visit. Link previews give consumers immediate reassurance of who the link came from and where it will take them.
Bitly link previews reveal the primary image and headline from the destination page to drive recognition of a familiar (or even a new) brand. Bitly Support also offers an easy-access Link Checker—users can simply drop a bit.ly link into the search bar to safely view the destination before visiting the page.
2. Link expiration and redirects
Link hygiene is a critical process to prevent URLs from being hacked or co-opted for malicious purposes. That’s why flexible deletion and redirects are critical to keep your links in top shape for customer safety and brand reputation alike. Ensure each short URL your company sends (both internally and externally) stays updated and sends those who click to a verified destination.
Teams using Bitly can redirect Bitly links to a new destination at any time. This process sends audiences to a refreshed offering after limited-time sales or events and keeps links clean, correct, and safe. Bitly users can also delete links when they are no longer needed—if anyone clicks a deleted link, they receive a 404 error.
3. Branded links from front to back
When a consumer receives or encounters a short link that includes a known brand name, they trust the URL more than they would otherwise. The immediate recognition reassures them that it’s safe to click and visit the destination.
While the Bitly brand name is one of the most well-known in link shortening, your familiar brand is what your audience wants from you. Instead of using the generic bit.ly domain, paid Bitly plans let you add a custom domain to reinforce the safety of the short link.
You can also customize the link’s back-half so that, instead of a random string of numbers and letters, your audience sees a keyword that previews what they’re clicking on. This experience is clear and clean. Imagine this: You get an SMS text with a short link from SF Living, a local furniture store. Are you more likely to click on bit.ly/sdiL9Yu, or sf.living/springsale? The latter wins clicks by communicating an enticing offer and the safety of a familiar brand.
4. Link monitoring
While your team may have policies in place to check on link security, they might not catch every risk or error immediately. That’s why it pays to partner with a platform that also keeps an eye on malicious links and creates paths for reporting problems with URLs.
For instance, Bitly’s Threat Detection Service scans for threats to address harmful or malicious links and mitigate risks. Bitly’s Abuse API exists to catalog a database of harmful URLs and dynamically checks each short link clicked or QR Code scanned against it. Users then visit an informational page that informs them of the risk and offers guidance. These measures build a culture and community of link safety around our customers and their customers.
Link safety for every occasion
With consumer expectations and standards for regulatory compliance rising over time, brands can’t afford not to consider the safety of their digital touchpoints. No matter how or why you’re sending short links (or which team is doing so), work to build processes that are safer and more secure. Here are some best practices to consider across use cases.
Internal communications
You might think that employee conversations via the company Slack or Teams are some of the safest communication forums—and you might not even think twice before clicking a link from a coworker. But these tools aren’t immune to data breaches, and many phishing email scams masquerade as a friendly-but-urgent message or email from a leader or colleague, where a hacker is reaching out instead.
While not every URL exchanged internally needs to be shortened, consider using a verified platform to create and send company-wide internal communications (especially if you’re a larger enterprise). Individuals can see that the link comes from a verified source when they’re accessing new information or opening a training. Marketing and security should also work together to remind employees of the warning signs of an untrustworthy link and the steps they should take to confirm that any request is legitimate, especially when it involves clicking a link to take action.
Marketing campaigns
From SMS campaigns and emails, to social media and OOH ads, short links turn a compelling offer and copy into traffic and conversions. Whenever possible, use branded domains and custom back-halves that inform your customers what they’re clicking and where the link will take them. Brand recognition from the link itself reinforces any existing connection to or trust in your company and product or service, and it shows them they aren’t being scammed.
On the process side, manage and monitor marketing links internally by checking for anomalies, keeping campaigns tagged and organized, and making ongoing updates to your links. When a limited-time campaign ends, redirect the link to a more current sale or offer in case a customer comes across an old short link—this ensures you still keep their attention, and you keep an eye on safety.
Customer support and order updates
When someone places an order with you or reaches out to customer support, you have one of the best opportunities to either ensure they’ll never buy from you again or turn them into a loyal customer. As you deepen trust in your brand, you can also reinforce their perception of your company as secure and trustworthy. On top of identity verification methods like SMS codes or order confirmation numbers, your support team can reassure customers of security with secure, branded short links to surveys or how-to articles.
Plus, with the help of the Bitly API, you can apply security at the individual customer level. For instance, Koozie Group uses Bitly short links to the tune of thousands of daily order updates. These individualized links are completely secure and trusted—customers can click the link for their real-time order status without even having to log in or track down a password. Those kinds of above-and-beyond touches rebuild trust because they provide the most convenient interaction possible and keep customers’ information safe.
“We wanted to create the best possible experience for our customers so that when they receive a communication from us, they know it’s trustworthy and secure.”
— Phil Gergen, Chief Information Officer, Koozie Group
Lead the way to link safety with Bitly
Your customers have every reason to be skeptical—beyond just high-profile security incidents in every sector (that get more sophisticated every day), they’ve also been burned by brands and products that overpromise and underdeliver. A new narrative of customer-centeredness and security they can depend on starts with you, one message and link at a time. Bitly is your partner in giving customers every reason to engage with you by scanning a QR Code, interacting with mobile-friendly landing pages, or clicking a link that takes them exactly where they need to go.
With streamlined link management, detailed click and scan data, and a proprietary approach to abuse protection, Bitly helps you reinforce your brand’s commitment to security—because we share the same commitment. Explore Bitly link features to see why some of the most established enterprises trust Bitly for their link safety, and contact our team to get started today.
