How to shorten links in your SMS messages

1. [Optional] If you want to use a custom domain for your shortened links, set it up first – follow the instructions in the next section.
2. Create an SMS draft. In the Enter SMS message text box on the Set up your SMS page, enter the message and include up to 5 URLs that you want to shorten and track.
   1. Every link is automatically created with a 9-character alpha-numeric hash (the part after the "/") for Acoustic Campaign link shortening service.
   2. The standard shortened link is 19 characters, not including http:// or https://. By clicking the Preview button, the character count adjusts to include the shortened link in its total.Select the Replace URLs in this SMS message with shortened, trackable links checkbox before sending the message.

Set up your custom domain or subdomain (optional)

[Optional] You can set up a custom domain or subdomain for your shortened links. This provides an additional layer of personalization to your messages as well as improves your customers' confidence that your SMS messages aren't spam or a scam.

1. Before you begin, make sure to collaborate with your IT department to complete through step 6. Begin by setting up an HTTPS web proxy on your network for your custom domain.
2. Acquire a web domain to use as a custom link shortening domain. This must be different than your existing domain. For example, http://acme.com must use a domain such as http://acme1.com
3. Acquire an SSL certificate for this custom domain. You are responsible for the renewal of the SSL certificate.
4. Verify your HTTPS web proxy can handle the HTTPS traffic based on your SMS send volume.
5. Add an X-Forwarded-Host HTTPS header whose value is set to the name of the custom domain as part of the forward request. For example, X-Forwarded-Host: https://acme1.com.
6. Forward the HTTPS request to the default Acoustic link shortening domain:
   acs1.tc -Pod 0-5, 9
   acs2.tc - Pod 6
   acs3.tc - Pod 8
   acs4.tc - Pod 7
   acs7.tc - Pod B
7. Submit a ticket through support to have the custom domain SMS link shortening feature turned on. Be sure to provide your pod number and organization name.
8. Follow the steps below to specify your custom domain.

Example configuration

Here is an example configuration for NGINX to forward HTTPS request from a customer domain to the Acoustic link shortening service. You will need to set the server_name attribute and update the proxy_pass attribute at the bottom, which would be the value from step 6.

Note: Only the proxy_pass directive is required, but setting the related headers is a good practice.

server {
    server_name https://customdomain.com;
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;
    listen 443 ssl;
    listen [::]:443 ssl;

    include snippets/sslcert.conf;

    # Proxy to the acsX.tc service.
    location / {
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host:$server_port;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        # Proxy to the destination. The full path of the request is passed along.
        proxy_pass https://acs1.tc ;
    }

}

Specify your custom domain and/or a custom error page

1. Go to Settings > Administration > Organization settings.
2. Scroll to SMS URL shortener settings and click Edit.
3. Skip this step if you do not want to specify your custom domain. Select the Custom domain enabled checkbox and fill in your custom domain in the Custom domain text field.
4. Skip this step if you do not want to specify a custom error page. Select the Custom error page URL enabled checkbox and enter the URL of your custom error page in the Error page URL text field. Your customers are redirected to this custom page when a shortened link expires after 30 days. Your custom page does not have to be an error page, but could even be your company website.
5. Click Save to process your changes.

Personalize shortened links

You can add personalization to “complete” a URL.

Note: You can't store the URL in a relational table and pull it into the SMS message. It appears to work, but behind the scenes, the URL is not pulled correctly.

Example 1

In this example, we added personalization based on database fields that will show a contact's first name and product choice in the message received:

Hello %%firstname%%. Please click the following link to learn more about your product choice:  https://acoustic.com/%%product%%

 The above would result in shortening the complete URL in the SMS message. 

Add a shortened link based on a URL stored in your database

You can add a URL that is stored in your database, however, the URL has to start with 'www'. It can't be a complete URL that includes the protocol 'https://' or 'https://'.  This is because Acoustic Campaigns link shortening is triggered when you type the protocol 'https://' or 'https://' in the Enter SMS message text field. 

Example 2

In your database, the URLs are stored in the URL field. To add a personalized URL, type the protocol (https://) and the URL personalization element that includes the database field name (%%URL%%).

The contact will receive a personalized message that includes their name and a shortened link.

Track shortened links in an SMS