How much time do you spend jumping between digital marketing channels?
If you’re like most marketers, you likely spend hours going back and forth between multiple channels. When audiences live in all digital corners, everyone has had to adapt by building campaigns that span everything from social media to offline events to email to SMS.
When you’re running a campaign on that many channels at once, checking the analytics for each one can be a balancing act of metrics, time, and your brainpower.
With Bitly Campaign management analytics, you can solve the puzzle. The Campaigns feature helps you create, measure, and manage the links at every customer experience touchpoint.
You can get a real-time view of where your campaign is succeeding and where it might need a little more investment. We’ll look at the ins and outs of Bitly Campaigns, including how to set them up and maximize the results.
What are Bitly Campaigns?
Bitly Campaigns is a feature within the Bitly platform that shows how your links perform across channels. You can think of them as a way to consolidate your work so you don’t have to keep popping back and forth between screens.
Suppose you manage multiple links (like those from affiliates, influencers, or cost-per-click ads). In that case, Bitly Campaigns makes your life easier by shortening each link, so you can manage them all and have an accurate idea of how each campaign resonates. If you’re looking for a way to unify your marketing efforts across channels, Bitly Campaigns helps your brand achieve the consistency and impact you want.
Our tools make your links clear and concise to your customer and allow you to track each link in context with the larger campaign. Below, we’ll explain how to integrate Bitly Campaigns with your marketing efforts.
Why should you use Bitly Campaigns?
Bitly Campaigns cuts down on the confusion of creating, tracking, and analyzing link traffic across channels. As new platforms pop up, compromising your audience’s attention, you can follow the real-time success of each campaign via link management and analysis.
Multichannel tracking
If you want to know how to set your business apart with a multichannel customer experience, it starts with having a way to track all of your traffic. Bitly Campaigns shows you how different platforms performed for each campaign, giving you fast insight into your audience’s initial reaction.
For each channel, you can assign a unique Bitly link that connects back to the larger dashboard for the campaign.
So, let’s say you’re offering a 20% discount on a product. For this campaign, you send out a long email about the product’s durability, but you also have shorter web ads and social media posts that emphasize the product’s luxury angle.
With multichannel tracking, you can see how each one resonates so you can adjust or eliminate channels as needed.
Performance analytics
Performance analytics in Bitly are comprehensive and easy to read, both during and after the campaign. The sleek Dashboard highlights important data as it’s collected.
Real-time analytics are the key to making more informed decisions for as long as the campaign runs. You can use them to understand how different customer segments respond to every aspect of the campaign, giving you more insight into what’s driving the performance of the ad, article, newsletter, or post.
Insights and reporting
Knowing how many people tapped a unique link is important, but it doesn’t always give you the customer’s real motivation. The reporting tools of Bitly Campaigns give you stronger insight by tracking the nuances and results of each tap.
You can learn how long the customer engaged with your brand, whether they completed the call-to-action, and if they returned to your site after their first peek. Marketers can then leverage this information for future efforts. Once you know more about both the behavior and the reasons behind the behavior, you can improve the performance of subsequent campaigns.
Customization
UTM parameters allow you to customize the link based on channel, target demographic, medium, and more. But when your links get long or sloppy, they can be off-putting to customers and employees alike. With Bitly Campaigns, you can shorten each custom link to align with the campaign and the audience—and you can easily add UTM parameters with Bitly’s built-in UTM builder.
When you use Bitly Campaigns with Google’s Campaign URL Builder, you can also add parameters that identify customer segments. For instance, if you send out an email to your most affluent customers, you can embed identifiers into the link, so you can see how this audience responds and adjust your campaign accordingly.
Strategy optimization
Dynamic markets have made strategy optimization an integral part of marketing campaigns. The Bitly Campaigns feature is flexible and agile, allowing marketers to tweak, adjust, and revamp campaigns across platforms. The intuitive navigation tools allow you to make changes on the fly, giving you enough leeway to turn lukewarm campaigns into home runs.
Continually optimizing your strategy is the best way to stay relevant and effective. For instance, if there’s a trending topic directly related to an ongoing campaign, you can pop into Bitly Campaigns to adjust the content or channel.
Common integrations with Bitly Campaigns
You’ll be happy to learn that Bitly Campaigns plays nicely with your current marketing tools. This perk won’t just make your life easier—it’s the only way to streamline your workflow and develop more cohesive data. We’ll explore the most common integrations, so you can create a stronger suite of tools.
Social media platforms
Bitly campaigns can integrate with all major social media platforms, making it easier to track and analyze individual efforts and overall strategies. With Bitly, you can simplify campaign tracking, even if you’re running 14 campaigns across 10 channels.
Let’s say that you post twice a day on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, with each post calibrated for your target demographic. With Bitly, you can not only see which platform had the most traffic, but you can gauge which content led to the best engagement.
When people are liable to idly link tap more on social media, Bitly Campaigns can help you separate real engagement from accidental hits.
Marketing software
There are reports and analytics tools on practically all software a marketer uses. From Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems to email marketing, you can easily drown in data. Luckily, Bitly Campaigns doesn’t add to the mess.
Instead, you can implement Bitly so the data flows from one system to another. When you don’t have to constantly switch back and forth between tools, you can work more efficiently. For instance, marketers can integrate link-tracking data with the lead-scoring system of their CRM to prioritize their most valuable customers.
Analytics or data visualization tools
Graphs, charts, and diagrams condense important takeaways from each campaign. In Bitly, the analytics and data visualization tools are sleek and user-friendly, giving you an easier way to map out and interpret the data to make more informed decisions.
We highly recommend taking full advantage of these features because they can create a memorable and, more importantly, accurate impression of campaign performance and audience behavior.
For instance, you might have a graph that breaks down landing page engagement based on whether it came from email marketing or social media. If you’re a marketer arguing for more resources to reach a certain demographic, this can be the proof you need to adjust your budget or staff.
Content management systems
Integrating a content management platform into Bitly enhances your data interpretation, so you can monitor content across the board. When you see how your marketing campaigns perform, you optimize the content for more than just SEO.
Link management and tracking can streamline content distribution, telling you how an audience relates to the brand in real time. For instance, if you have a product spiking in demand, you can adjust your homepage to highlight the product’s ordering process. Or you can use your social media channels as conduits for positive testimonials about the product.
Bitly Campaigns can also show you how emerging channels can give you a leg up on your content. Understanding the top marketing channels and how they’ll change is key to forming a content distribution plan.
Custom API integration
Bitly’s API creates custom integrations depending on your business needs, and it’s a proven solution for marketers who run an array of complex or specialized campaigns.
For instance, let’s say you run promotions with complex link parameters every day through social media and SMS. With the Bitly API, you can automatically shorten the links so your campaigns run faster and more efficiently. This is just one way to tailor the API, which can integrate with everything from HubSpot to Zapier.
How to create a Bitly Campaign
Creating a Bitly Campaign is straightforward. Once you’ve established the campaign’s parameters, it’s easy to add links and send them out.
Log in to or sign up for a Bitly account
It’s simple to get started with Bitly. Entering just a few details gives you access to our easy-to-use interface. We recommend taking a few minutes to explore all the features available to you (not just the Campaign section), so you can strategize how they can work with your marketing efforts.
Access the Campaigns feature
To get started, select Campaigns in the left sidebar of the account homepage. The Campaigns section is where you’ll adapt Bitly’s tools to meet the needs of each initiative.
The interface is not only easy to use, but it can give you more ideas about how to segment campaigns and streamline content for each audience. To enrich your data, we recommend taking the time to familiarize yourself with all of the features so you’re certain that nothing is left on the table.
Create a new Bitly Campaign
In the top right-hand corner, tap Create Campaign. You’ll see a prompt to write your campaign title and description. Each new campaign should have a unique and descriptive name, so you’re less likely to confuse it down the line (this is especially true if the campaigns are similar).
Under the description, you’ll see Select Channels, where you can select existing channels. Bitly allows you to search for the channels, but the Dashboard will also suggest channels for easier campaign management.
To add channels, select Manage Channels. Once you’ve typed in the name of the channel, select Create Channel. Use the Back Button to navigate back to the main Campaign dashboard.
Add Bitly links to your Campaign
Once you’ve named the campaign and selected the channels to track, select Add Links and paste the long URL. This could be a link to a landing page, a website, a product page, a service page, or a sign-up page. If you have multiple links, you can upload them in bulk from a CSV file.
Set up Campaign parameters
To set up campaign parameters, select Auto-Add UTM Parameters.
- utm_medium will be “bitly”.
- utm_campaign is the campaign name.
- utm_source is the channel name.
The campaign goals, target audience, and duration parameters add the structure of your campaign, ensuring that you’re reaching out to the right people at the right time. Once you’ve chosen the channels, select Create.
Organize your links
You now have Bitly links for every channel! The corresponding UTM parameters populate automatically, so you don’t have to manually create individual codes.
We recommend categorizing your links so they’re easier to track and analyze. For instance, you might create basic categories of email, social media, and newsletter marketing. From there, you can break down which subject lines, social media platforms, or keywords were most effective.
Launch the Campaign
Once you’re satisfied with the parameters and categories, it’s time to launch and track. This is the time to savor all of your prep work! This is the most important step of active campaign management and data collection.
From here, you have all the tools you need to adjust the campaign based on your audience’s reaction. For instance, if you notice that TikTok is by far the most active platform, you can extend the campaign for another week on TikTok and cut it off on the rest of your social media channels.
How to monitor a Bitly Campaign
With real-time updates from Bitly, you get more insight into what customers care about. Below, we’ll tell you how to use ongoing analysis to answer everything from when to post to what keywords to use.
Navigate to the Campaigns section
You can both launch and monitor from the Campaigns section. It’s critical to get into the habit of checking regularly, so you can optimize the performance of all your active campaigns.
Select your Campaign
Once you’re in the Campaigns section, you can choose the name of the campaign you want to monitor. We recommend a thorough review of every metric to identify the strengths of each campaign plus areas for improvement.
Review the Campaign Overview
On the main page, you’ll see the overall data for the campaign, plus a breakdown by channel. This is a great place to get initial insight into the performance, because you can easily absorb which channels are getting the most traction. This is a snapshot of whether email, social media, or newsletter is the most effective means of communication.
Analyze link performance
To analyze an individual link, select View link details. This will open a page where you can see total engagement by day. This is the page where you’ll see how different links contribute to the overall performance of the campaign. A deep dive on links is the key to knowing which channels, platforms, and content are driving your conversions. The link details section shows you where traffic originates and where it leads.
Check geographic and referrer data
In the View link details page, you’ll see where customers are and how they stumbled upon your content or ad. Once you know the geographic locations as well as the technology used to access the link, you can target and distribute future campaigns to maximize returns. For instance, if you know that 79% of your traffic is in Chicago from a micro-influencer’s YouTube page, you can optimize the campaigns to fit these demographics.
Examine trends over time
When you understand the mechanics of your campaigns relative to your audience’s needs at any given time, it’s easier to devise long-term strategies. With Bitly, you can see how your campaigns evolve, so you can predict future performance and make adjustments.
For instance, you can see whether your audience is trending away from email engagement, preferring to interact with your social media posts instead. Whether you improve your email marketing or start pouring more resources into social media, you’ll have the evidence to support either decision.
Compare against goals and adjust
The real-time tracking data from Bitly allows you to see how the results mesh with your goals. The best campaign management is iterative, changing to meet the needs of the audience based on their behaviors and preferences. For instance, if you’re hoping for a 20% open rate for email but you’re only getting 15%, you might consider adjusting the subject line to get that extra 5%.
Examples of Bitly Campaigns in action
Your campaigns are a measure of your creativity, but if you need a little inspiration, we have a few examples that might spark your next campaign.
Product launches
You can use Bitly Campaigns to track and analyze interest in your product launch. So, let’s say that you’re running several campaigns with two approaches for a single product. In one, you advertise the fun aspects of the product on social media to one audience. In the other, you emphasize the practical aspects of the product via email.
With Bitly Campaigns, you can see which strategy had the best returns. It’s an innovative way for many industries to tease or promote products before and during launch.
Once the launch is over, start a new campaign to collect feedback on the product. Use different Bitly links for the features, pricing, and testimonials of the product, and then distribute them across a variety of channels (like newsletters, social media, and online ads).
Event promotion
With Bitly, you can use links to track your RSVPs and ticket sales for your events. To maximize engagement, we recommend using links that sync your brand with the event.
For instance, if you’re planning to have a mystery guest at the event, you might set the custom back half of a link as “/secret-speaker.” You can add these links to invites, press releases, and social media posts.
As you collect data, you can fine-tune your event promotion in real time. This can help you drum up anticipation, which can be integral to selling out your next event.
Content marketing
You can use Bitly Campaigns to analyze which content strikes a chord, along with how your readership rises and dips across platforms. If you don’t have unlimited time and money to see what sticks, a data-driven approach to content marketing is the only solution.
For example, an online magazine or blog can share articles or posts with Bitly links across affiliate sites, email marketing, and social media. They can then see not only what channels are driving readership, but which topics are of most interest on which platforms. It’s easier to tailor the content based on the audience once you know who the audience is and what they care about.
Influencer marketing
The marketing world is seeing a switch to micro-influencers rather than macro-influencers. Bitly can allow you to see who’s driving the best responses, regardless of how the influencer is promoting the brand.
By using unique links from Bitly, you can set the parameters of the campaign based on influencer, channels, and audience type. From there, you can determine which partnership has the best ROI.
Boost your success with Bitly Campaigns today
Using Bitly Campaigns is your chance to dive deeper into each decision. It drastically reduces or even eliminates wasted time and money on unproductive strategies and content. Plus, it’s easy to get started with Bitly Campaigns. With just a few simple inputs, you can really dive in.
Ready to use analysis to your advantage? Get started with Bitly today.
