Love it, hate it, or tolerate it, social media marketing is a must for Shopify merchants. On the one hand, it’s one of the best ways for your audience to find your products through engaging, memorable brand content. At the same time, social media can leave you at the whim of mysterious and always-changing algorithms, and detailed tracking has long plagued ecommerce brands.
Shopify’s built-in analytics might tell you that Instagram as a channel drives sales, plus you can see which posts get views, likes, and comments. But you can’t see which posts actually lead to revenue. You need content-level performance to build data-driven campaigns.
Sharing branded short links to your products or collections closes this visibility gap. And now, thanks to the Bitly and Shopify integration, it’s easier than ever to create and share them. Plus, you can see which links (and social posts) lead to sales in real time. Let’s uncover five examples of how these two platforms can work together to turn your social media posts into trackable Shopify revenue.
Bitly and Shopify integration: What’s new
The newly launched integration between Bitly and Shopify gives merchants direct access to see which of their marketing efforts drive purchases and revenue for their online store. Each platform on its own offers a valuable piece of the analytics picture: Shopify shares channel-level data, while Bitly shows which links and QR Codes drive clicks and scans. These two tools have joined forces to go even deeper. When you use the Bitly app in Shopify, you get detailed metrics for each link to your products, including conversion rates, orders, and sales.
With branded Bitly links for each social media post or campaign, you can see which individual posts drive sales. You can uncover the nuances of your audience engagement across organic channels and use the data to craft more content that keep driving sales.
Need some ideas that can help you start posting and measuring campaign ROI for your store? We’ve got you covered. Let’s check out five use cases where the integration reveals real-time revenue from your social media presence.
Example #1: Product launch campaigns
Launch days can be some of the most exciting, nerve-wracking, and stressful times for your ecommerce brand. You get to share what you’ve been designing or creating for your customer base with the world. And with the right tools, you also get real-time audience feedback about what you’re building in the form of engagement, traffic, and sales. Using Bitly and Shopify together makes Launch Day even more informative.
Create unique trackable links to your products or collections for every launch announcement across your Instagram story, feed posts, email campaigns, and more. During and after launch day, your analytics dashboards will reveal which channels drove most orders and revenue for your store. When someone visits a link from one of your organic channels, Bitly will track which of those clicks turned into an order, how much shoppers spent, and how often they converted. At a glance, learn which product announcement and channel generated the most Launch Day revenue.
That valuable data can help you continue to promote your newly launched product, inform everyday posts across channels, and inspire your next launch campaign.
Example #2: Influencers and partnerships
More than half of consumers have purchased as a result of an influencer endorsement, according to the Better Business Bureau’s 2025 Influencer Trust Index. So it’s no wonder the same study also found that more than eight out of 10 US marketers used influencer partnerships in creative campaigns in 2024.
Influencer relationships can be a valuable brand investment that associates your product with the values of a high-profile content creator that your audience trusts. But measuring traffic or even clicks from their content doesn’t tell the full story—the true measure of a partnership is its return on investment. Is their content actually driving purchases and store revenue? Now, the Bitly and Shopify integration makes it easy to measure exactly that.
You can build unique branded links to your products for each influencer or co-marketing partner, or for each distinct campaign or post they share. As their followers make purchases in response to these endorsements, you can directly tie that revenue to the partnership. These analytics give you a way to truly calculate ROI on influencer spending. Make strategic choices if a partnership isn’t measuring up, and spend more of your marketing budget with influencers who are reaching the right customers.
Example #3: Organic social content testing
One of marketing’s best-kept secrets is that viral posts don’t always move your business forward. Sure, they might boost follower count and foster lively conversations in the comments. But that attention doesn’t necessarily translate to sales.
Instead, some of the “quieter” posts that seek to connect with a specific person or highlight a problem your product solves actually drive people to buy. And the smaller group of people who do see the post really resonate. That’s why conversion, purchase, and revenue data from your organic social media presence is your marketing’s secret ingredient. You can uncover which posts are deceptively effective and run rigorous testing to find out which strategies consistently drive revenue.
With conversion and purchase data from Bitly and Shopify, you can conduct experiments to see which of your social media campaigns perform best, not just based on engagement metrics but based on the actions customers take. Test and compare different aspects of your campaigns:
- Messaging approaches: Does lifestyle content or a product-focused post most often encourage shoppers to buy?
- Content format: Do people make a purchase after a longer, deep-dive video into your product, or do punchy, short-form videos turn them into customers?
- Tone and voice: If you’re still developing your brand, purchase data can help inform decisions around the look and feel of your graphics or tell you whether your copy should take a bold and empowering tone or a fun and playful one.
Data points from your social media experiments help you build your social strategy and content calendar on your customers’ buying behavior—and drive more sales with every post.
Example #4: Cross-channel campaigns
This marketing truth has stood the test of time: Customers need to see a message many times before they believe it and take action on it. But with each platform getting more competitive by the day, a cross-channel strategy is key to growing your Shopify business.
If your ideal customers see your new sale or product line once on TikTok, they might be inspired to click through and look around. But if they see you on Instagram, Facebook, and in their inbox as well, you have three more chances to convince them to buy. Conversion data from Bitly and Shopify lets you see how your channels are working together and which ones are sealing the deal.
As you run coordinated campaigns across organic channels, compare each platform side-by-side to understand where your audience spends time, pays attention, and takes action. Look for patterns in the data to adjust each post and its messaging for the platform to drive sales. Then, you can reallocate your time and budget for what’s driving revenue rather than just views or likes.
Whether you’re adding new marketing channels to your stack or taking stock, conversion data is the key to strong cross-channel performance.
Example #5: Seasonal and promo tracking
When you’re running a limited-time offer or trying to boost sales during the most wonderful (and most hectic) time of the year, you have a short window to capture attention, make a compelling argument to buy now, and drive action.
Your data can make or break the success of tight-turnaround seasonal campaigns. Details about when and why they buy can serve as a guidepost to inform how often you reach out, which deals you offer, and how you market the sale. On top of traffic, opens, and clicks, evaluate and iterate these campaigns on the go with purchase data collected from every Bitly link click.
Track the sales performance of each promotional strategy to decide where to follow up again and which products to promote. After the sale has ended, run an in-depth analysis of the success of each post or outreach to track the overall success of the sale and make plans for your next evergreen campaign.
Measure and drive sales with every campaign
Marketers often embrace social media as a one-to-many channel for connecting with an audience, but the best social strategies take a one-to-one approach: The post shares a targeted message for a specific person who you hope buys the product for a particular reason. Purchase data makes this approach a reality, showing you each order placed and dollar spent at your store, rather than just aggregated traffic that may or may not have turned into sales.
When you start using the Bitly and Shopify integration, you turn every post, link, and click into the chance to learn exactly what content is fueling your revenue goals this quarter. You also learn more about what messaging connects with individual customers and what products get them excited enough to head to check out.
Get real-time click-to-purchase data when you start sharing Bitly links to your Shopify products or collections in every social post. Set up the integration today, and start connecting your marketing efforts straight to Shopify sales.
