Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach customers. After all, most people check their messages regularly.
The problem is that many brands already know that, so your target audience probably has crowded inboxes. To stand out, you need to polish up your emails to look professional and put your brand name front and center.
A great way to do this is by leveraging short links. They appear more credible than long links and can be customized to include your branded domain, helping you enhance recognition and build customer trust.
When added to your pre and post-purchase engagement email marketing, these links can increase click-through rates, enhance tracking, and streamline the email experience. Let’s take an in-depth look at how.
Why are short links so useful in email marketing campaigns?
One of the biggest downsides to long URLs is that they can clutter emails, making you look unprofessional. This can result in distrust from your target audience and impact email marketing conversion rates.
Short links, on the other hand, are the complete opposite. Here’s why they’re better suited for your marketing campaigns:
- They reduce visual clutter: This improves the overall readability and professionalism of emails.
- They fit better within mobile phones’ limited screen space: This makes it easier for recipients to engage with your emails via phone. Given that 50-60% of emails are opened on mobile devices, using a shortened URL can increase your email conversions.
- They make CTAs more appealing: Because of their low character count, they don’t detract from the CTA message. Instead, they reinforce it, increasing the likelihood of target audiences taking desired actions.
- They can reinforce brand awareness: When you choose URL shortening services that allow link customization, you can add branding elements, like your domain name. This boosts your professionalism and reinforces brand awareness, which can encourage future engagement.
- They can provide valuable insights: Thanks to short link tracking analytics, you can conduct A/B tests to see everything from the type of content that resonates with your audience to the kind of CTAs that encourage engagement. This information can help you improve future digital marketing campaigns.
Types of email campaigns where shortened links make the most impact
Whether you’re running a newsletter campaign to boost brand awareness and engagement or a sales campaign to get more eyes on your offerings, shortened links may be the missing piece that brings everything together. They elevate business communications by boosting their professionalism, making them must-have elements in whichever campaign you’re running.
Here are some great places to start:
Newsletters
While you may want to share every important update with your subscribers, this isn’t always possible in an email newsletter. You may overload readers with too much text, reducing their likelihood of engaging with you.
To prevent this, only provide a summary of whatever you want to communicate. Then, use short links to direct readers to more comprehensive information, like long-form content or featured products. This prevents emails from being too overwhelming for recipients.
To increase engagement even further, use branded short links instead of generic ones. Branded links ensure readers recognize your brand even before engaging.
Promotional emails and sales announcements
Roughly 40% of people specifically check their emails for special deals, such as discounts. This makes email one of the best channels for promoting products.
Of course, how you communicate will determine whether you make sales.
Use short links to highlight time-sensitive deals or promotions and drive traffic to landing pages. Short URLs can increase conversions because they are easier to engage with and share than long ones.
Also, if you use Bitly Links, leverage our analytics to track which links and offers get the most traction and use that data to improve future emails. For instance, if you find that your total engagement numbers go up when you give out coupons, be sure to incorporate more coupons in future promotional email campaigns.
Welcome emails
Want to make new customers or subscribers feel valued and encourage further engagement with your brand? Use short links in your welcome emails to direct them to important content like product overviews, tutorials, and special offers.
Be sure to use branded links to promote recognition and build trust. Remember, new customers may not be conversant enough with your brand to know who the emails are from if you don’t include branding elements.
Event invitations and registrations
Short links simplify the event invitation process since they’re easier to share than long URLs. They also streamline sign-ups for recipients because they don’t break—this makes them easier to click, copy, and paste.
If you’re planning an event, use these links to direct potential attendees to registration forms, RSVP pages, or ticket sales platforms. This can encourage registrations and provide valuable data to help with event planning. For example, with Bitly, you receive real-time data on the number of recipients who engage with your registration links, allowing you to estimate attendance.
Best practices for using short links in email campaigns
The success of short links in email campaigns is contingent on how well you use them. So, keep the following best practices in mind when implementing your marketing strategy:
Use branded short links whenever possible
Many people are cautious about opening unknown links to avoid falling victim to scams. Unfortunately for your brand, this could mean missed conversions if you use generic links.
One of the best ways to ensure your short links improve omnichannel marketing is to use your branded domain name. Branded links increase brand recognition, which can boost trust in your email and other business communications.
With Bitly as your URL shortening service, you can change out our “bit.ly” domain for your custom domain (on some paid plans) to get the most value from your marketing campaigns.
Keep links visible and easily selectable
Make sure your short links are strategically placed within emails for maximum visibility. Some great placements are near the top of your email to capture recipients who don’t scroll down to read your entire message and at the bottom of your email, where customers already expect the links to be.
After choosing your location, decide on an appropriate anchor text—it should be relevant to the destination your short URL directs receipts to. For example, you can use “Shop now” if your short link directs customers to your online store, “How to use our product” if it takes recipients to a tutorial, and “Register now” if it directs them to a registration form.
Also, make sure the short links are selectable before sending them out to provide a great customer experience. To do this, test the links yourself.
Track email link engagement with Bitly Analytics
Short link tracking data can be incredibly insightful, as it shows how recipients interact with your emails. It can help you identify the kind of messaging and content that sparks engagement from your audience, allowing you to continuously improve your campaigns.
With services like Bitly, you also get insights into your audience’s locations and devices, which can help you refine your targeting strategy and optimize future campaigns. For example, if you find that the highest number of people engaging with your emails are in Los Angeles, you can amp up your marketing efforts in the city to reach a wider audience.
With the right service provider, monitoring engagement is relatively straightforward. Here’s how to track short link analytics through Bitly Analytics:
- Log into your Bitly account.
- Select Analytics.
- Go to your email campaign folder (note that you’ll need to set this up in advance) and filter to locate the campaign you’ve created. This will show engagement data for all your campaign links, such as engagements over time, engagements by referrer, engagements by location, and top-performing by engagement. If you use QR Codes for email campaigns, you’ll find their scan data here too.
If you want specific analytics, like top-performing links, follow these steps after opening your folder:
- Select Add module.
- Select the module you want from the chart types menu—in this case, choose Top performing.
- Choose your preferred visualization—this differs based on your chart type. In our case, you can choose a bar chart, table, or highlight.
- Choose Add to dashboard.
You can also monitor the performance of each specific link. To do so:
- Log into your account.
- Choose Links.
- Select the link you want to monitor.
When you do, you’ll see your total engagements, engagements in the last seven days, and week-over-week change at the top of the page.
To see more data, scroll down to the Engagements over time section and choose the type of engagement data you want to see.
How Bitly can maximize your email campaign performance
You’re probably wondering, “Why should I use Bitly for my email campaigns?” The simple answer is that Bitly has a suite of tools designed to help you enhance your campaign performance.
Here’s how:
Short links for measurable results
With Bitly’s URL shortener, you don’t just get cleaner-looking links; you also get valuable link performance insights you can use to improve future email campaigns. As mentioned earlier, Bitly provides real-time data for each link, giving you a better understanding of your customers.
With our analytics, you can easily conduct A/B testing, changing different email elements (subject lines, tone, CTA, etc.) to determine what resonates with your target audience.
If you’re running multiple campaigns using different mediums, like email, social media, influencers, and ads, you can also compare their individual performance by creating unique links for each one. This allows you to make better future campaign decisions.
Integration with email marketing platforms
The last thing you want is to have to manually copy links from your URL shortening platform to your email marketing tool. Bitly ensures you never have to.
Bitly integrates with popular platforms like HubSpot to streamline every aspect of your campaign. With our integrations, you can sync short links directly into email creation, allowing you to roll out error-free campaigns quickly.
Start improving your email campaigns with Bitly‘s short links today
Short links are game-changers for email marketing campaigns. They allow you to send cleaner and more credible-looking emails, improving customer experiences and engagement. They’re also brandable and trackable, and as such, can enhance your brand awareness efforts and provide valuable customer insights.
With Bitly’s URL shortener and link management tools, you can forget the hassle of dealing with lengthy URLs that can’t be tracked. We provide short, branded URLs to enhance customer experiences as well as boost recognition and trust. With us, you also get real-time engagement data, giving you a visual of how customers engage with emails throughout your campaign. This information can facilitate future strategy optimization.
Get started with Bitly today to create custom short links that drive engagement in your email campaigns!
