Why and How to Insert a Web Link in an SMS?

Today, 99.7% of the French population owns a mobile phone and almost 90% of French people have a smartphone capable of connecting to the internet. Inserting a link into an SMS offers several advantages. Have you ever thought about combining the power of SMS with a hyperlink in your marketing campaigns? This type of SMS, known as Rich SMS, redirects your customers to a dedicated web page for your communication campaign.

Why insert a web link in an SMS?

To begin with, inserting a link into your commercial or relational SMS campaign allows you to combine two major levers:

– The power of a high read rate: SMS is one of the most widely read communication channels, with an average read rate of over 95%.

– A significant click-through rate: an SMS campaign delivers a click-through rate of around 36%, well above its cousin email, which averages just over 3% clicks. An SMS link is more than ten times more effective than a link sent by email.

Inserting a hyperlink in a Rich SMS allows you to:

Offer content to your recipients

With each SMS campaign, you write a 160-character message: you therefore aim to be as concise as possible. Your message needs to be attention-grabbing and cannot go into great detail. Inserting a link allows you to redirect recipients to a web page whose content is relevant to your campaign objective. This will enable you to directly address those who want to learn more about your offer.

Beyond providing more detailed or supplementary information, a hyperlink can also help you:

– Capture registrations (newsletter sign-ups, white paper downloads…)
– Convert this initial contact into a lead / business opportunity (quote requests, appointment bookings…)

Track visits generated by your SMS campaigns

Links inserted in your campaign SMS messages automatically include a tracker (transparent to the user). This allows you to precisely monitor the clicks generated by mobile users. This tool therefore enables you to track click-through rates almost in real time, and to concretely measure the impact of your SMS campaign. For example, you can set up two SMS campaigns with two different commercial messages and send them simultaneously. By comparing the click-through rate for each message, you can then measure which one has the greatest impact on your customers.

How to insert a link in an SMS?

The SMS Partner platform offers you two options for inserting links into your Rich SMS messages.

Solution 1: Short URL

A free short URL creation tool is available on the platform. This tool allows you to transform the target URL into a shorter string of characters. For example, http://www.smspartner.fr/foire-aux-questions/ becomes http://goo.gl/emk8RM. What is the advantage? You “use up” fewer characters. As a reminder, an SMS is limited to 160 characters. It’s a valuable tool to help you focus on the customer message!

Solution 2: Full URL

Place URLs directly in the body of your message — they will appear naturally on your recipients’ smartphones. Example: www.smspartner.fr. This solution generally “consumes” more characters. However, it allows the recipient to see the target web address. This is useful if you want to leverage your brand name or a new product.

Track clicks to communicate more effectively

By integrating a click-tracking tag, the solution allows you to monitor your recipients’ journey. This way, you know exactly which phone number clicked on your link. You can then improve your follow-ups (email/SMS) by only retargeting recipients who clicked on your link (and showed an interest in your message).

To find out more, see our tutorial: How to track a phone number that clicks on a link embedded in an SMS?

Take your campaigns further with M.M.S

Do you have questions? Do you need more information on any point in this article? Contact us.