July 22, 2019
Times they are-a-changing. Modern marketing moves at the speed of light and what was once taboo, might now be a great idea. Take short links for instance. Even 5 years ago, they were viewed as a spammer’s calling card.
However, these days they are a highly useful and effective means of measuring your marketing efforts. One way to plug them is through newsletters. In fact, newsletter readers tend to spend about 80% more time on a site than non-readers.
Here are a few tips to keep you on track when shortening links for newsletters:
To avoid having any sort of short link be “blacklisted” by a search engine, you have to make sure you are creating what is known as “vanity” links. These are short links that tell a consumer directly the name of your brand or what you are doing.
The more you customize the link, the less likely you will appear like a spammer in your newsletter.
The idea in a newsletter is to say a lot in very little. You want to cover monthly or quarterly content in a page or less. Think of it as your last chance for an audience before the content becomes stale. Therefore, it’s important to keep the links to a minimum and the graphics/media to a max. Immediately engaging people is the goal here.
Using short links in a newsletter gives you more space to promote content. Don’t distract with a lengthy URL. Show them a large graphic with a small short link to entice clicking. This not only further engages people but drives more traffic to your branding. You can even load the landing page with tons more URLs, as long as it’s not crowding the newsletter.
Digital marketing is not a guessing game. In fact, it can be a very educated science. Therefore, when you are creating your newsletter, consider developing two separate types. Then send them to different audiences.
To do this, include a shortened link (make two from the same URL) in each email, but use different content. Then measure the result of each link. These metrics should tell you exactly which campaign is performing better and why. You can study metrics like:
Once you have determined the content that works best, you can retire the other campaign. To recycle it, simply run it on a third channel to test the audience there.
If your brand is still printing and mailing a newsletter the best way to convey a URL is through a shortened link. There is simply no way to compare. If you include a link that is only three words and related to your brand, chances are people will easily remember it. If you include a URL with random numbers and letters, most people will never see that site. Especially when reading a hard copy.
The New York Times has the right idea. Their newsletter readers consume twice as much content as those who don’t get newsletters, and they’re twice as likely to become paid subscribers. That’s because the paper knows how to push with visuals and promote trough branded short links.
If you want more information on how LinkHawk can help you get heard today, give us a shout. Let’s chat branded links!
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