URL Shortening for Marketing Campaigns

Why marketers still use short links

Imagine you run a café and you're promoting a new loyalty program. You'll mention it in an email newsletter, a Facebook post, a text message to regulars and a poster on the counter. A month later, you want to know: which of those actually brought people to the sign-up page?

That's the real job of a shortened URL in marketing. A URL is a web address, and a URL shortener turns a long one into a short link, such as bit.ly/3kQx7Zp or cafe.link/loyalty. Shorter is tidier, but the bigger win is that each link can be tracked separately.

Used well, short links make your campaigns easier to share, easier to measure and easier to manage. Used carelessly, they can look like spam, break years later, or produce numbers you can't trust.

This guide walks through how short links work, what they genuinely do for a campaign, and the habits that make them reliable.

How a short link works

A URL shortener is a service that keeps a list matching short codes to full addresses. When someone clicks your short link, their browser visits the shortener first. The shortener notes the click, then sends a redirect: an instruction telling the browser to go to the real page.

Customer clicks:    cafe.link/loyalty
Shortener records:  1 click, Tuesday 9:14 am, mobile, Adelaide
Shortener replies:  301 Moved Permanently
                    Location: https://www.examplecafe.com.au/loyalty?utm_source=newsletter
Browser opens:      the loyalty page

The 301 is an HTTP status code, a three-digit message from a web server. 301 means "moved permanently"; some services use 302, which means "moved temporarily". For everyday campaigns, either works fine.

Because every click passes through the shortener, it can count them and record basic details, such as the date, rough location, device type and the referrer (the website or app the click came from, when that's available).

What short links do (and don't) do for you

A lot of older advice oversells short links. Here's an honest summary.

Watch out for free-plan preview pages

Free plans aren't always truly free. In February 2025, Bitly began showing a preview page, which can include an advertisement, before redirecting clicks on links made with its free plan. Paid plans remove it.

An extra page between your customer and your offer adds friction, and an unrelated ad can look unprofessional. Before you commit to any service, click one of its free links on your own phone and see exactly what your customers will see.

Choosing a shortener and branding your links

Popular services include Bitly, Rebrandly, TinyURL, Short.io and others, and features and prices change regularly. Rather than chasing a "best" one, compare them against what your campaigns need.

Setting up a branded short domain

A branded short domain is a short web address you own, used only for your links. It's one of the most worthwhile upgrades a small business can make.

1. Buy a short domain related to your brand, such as cafe.link or exmpl.au, from a domain registrar (a company that sells web addresses).
2. Connect it to your shortener. Your shortener will give you a setting to add in your domain's DNS (Domain Name System), the internet's address book. This usually means copying one or two values into your registrar's control panel.
3. Set a fallback page so anyone visiting the bare domain, or a mistyped link, lands on your main website rather than an error.
4. Agree on naming rules with your team (see below), then start creating links.

Choosing the bit after the slash

The part after the slash, called the slug or back-half, can usually be customised. Make it readable, short and easy to say out loud.

• Good: cafe.link/loyalty, cafe.link/xmas-menu
• Avoid: cafe.link/Loyalty_Program_Nov2026_FINAL (hard to type, mixed capitals, underscores that vanish under underlines)

Tracking properly with UTM parameters

A shortener tells you how many times a link was clicked. Your website analytics (such as Google Analytics) can tell you what those visitors did next: whether they signed up, bought something or left straight away. UTM parameters connect the two.

UTM parameters are labels added to the end of a web address, after a question mark. Your analytics tool reads them and files each visit under the right campaign. There are five standard ones:

A full tagged address looks long and messy, which is exactly why you shorten it afterwards:

https://www.examplecafe.com.au/loyalty?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=loyalty-launch&utm_content=header-button

       ↓ shortened to ↓

cafe.link/loyalty-email

Rules that keep your data clean

• Always lowercase. Most analytics tools treat Facebook and facebook as two different sources.
• Use hyphens, not spaces. Spaces get converted into odd characters such as %20.
• Keep a shared spreadsheet of every link: short link, full address, channel, campaign and date. It saves endless confusion later.
• Never tag internal links (links from one page of your own site to another). It can split a single visit into two and muddle your reports.

A/B testing, QR codes and print

A/B testing done fairly

A/B testing means showing two versions of something to similar audiences and seeing which performs better. You might send half your email list one subject line and half another, or test two different landing pages.

Older advice suggested changing where a short link points partway through a campaign. That's unreliable, because results then mix different times of day, days of the week and audiences. A fairer method:

1. Create one short link per version, for example cafe.link/offer-a and cafe.link/offer-b, with matching utm_content values.
2. Run both versions at the same time, to similar audiences.
3. Change one thing only, such as the headline or the image, so you know what made the difference.
4. Judge the winner on results that matter (sign-ups, sales) in your analytics, not clicks alone.

QR codes and printed materials

A QR code is a square barcode that phone cameras can scan to open a web address. Point your QR code at a short link you control, rather than directly at the final page. This is often called a dynamic QR code.

The advantage is huge for print. If your menu page moves, or you spot a typo in the address, you update the short link's destination and every printed flyer, sticker and box keeps working. Before printing thousands of anything, scan the code with two or three different phones.

Trust, the law and link rot

Short links and scam fears

Scammers use generic short links to hide dangerous websites, and many people have learned to be wary of them. Some recipients will check your link with an expander such as ExpandURL before clicking, which reveals the real destination. That's healthy, and a good reason to make sure your links lead somewhere that obviously belongs to you.

• Use a branded domain so the link itself shows your name.
• Say clearly what's behind the link: "See the menu: cafe.link/menu".
• Never ask people to log in or enter payment details straight from a link in a text message; customers are rightly taught to avoid that.

Australian rules for messages

If you send marketing by email or SMS in Australia, the Spam Act 2003 applies, and the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) enforces it. In plain terms, commercial messages must:

1. Be sent with the recipient's consent.
2. Identify your business clearly.
3. Include a working unsubscribe option, with requests honoured within five working days.

If your texts show a business name instead of a phone number (a sender ID), note that from 1 July 2026, texts sent with unregistered sender IDs have the name replaced with the word "Unverified". Register through your SMS provider, or your carefully crafted campaign will look like a scam. For the full details, check the ACMA website or get professional advice.

Link rot

Link rot is when links stop working over time. Short links add an extra point of failure: if the shortener closes, every link it made can break at once.

It really happens. Google stopped making new goo.gl links in 2018–2019 and switched off its inactive old links in August 2025. Free accounts can also be closed or limited if they go unused. To protect yourself:

• Use your own branded domain, so you can move your links to another provider if needed.
• Keep your link spreadsheet up to date, including the full destination of every link.
• Check your important links (especially printed ones) every few months.

Common problems and how to fix them

Quick reference glossary

Wrapping up

Short links are a small tool with a big job: making campaigns tidy to share and possible to measure. The real gains come from branding them, tracking them consistently and keeping them under your control.

If you remember four things, make them these:

1. Use one short link per channel and version, so you can compare results.
2. Add consistent, lowercase UTM parameters, and judge success by outcomes, not clicks.
3. Use a branded domain you own, with no ad pages, to build trust and avoid link rot.
4. Follow the rules: consent, clear identification and a working unsubscribe, plus a registered sender ID for branded texts.

Get these habits in place once, and every campaign after that becomes easier to run and easier to learn from.