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Short Link Domains

A short link domain is a shorter version of a URL you intend to share.

Custom short link domains let you minimize the chance that your messages with links are blocked by carriers. Commonly used short links (e.g., bit.ly, tinyurl.com, etc.) as well as commonly used link domains (e.g., ActBlue, Mobilize, ActionKit) are some of the more common reasons that carriers choose to block messages, which they interpret as spam.

When trying to send out links of this type, some clients have found success using the link shortening service Rebrandly. However, it's important (and worthwhile) that you buy a custom domain from them rather than using their default domain of rebrand.ly. Links that say rebrand.ly, bit.ly, or tiny.url in them perform poorly. Create a custom domain using .me, .us, or another less common URL suffix and name the domain something legible, like rewired.us. Purchasing a domain can cost as little as $2 and will boost your deliverability considerably.

For even further deliverability assurance, use script versions to rotate links. In the interactions section of your campaign builder, click ADD SCRIPT VERSION. Using Rebrandly, you can set up multiple short links to send out the same link. See our example below using the links GNDchampion.me/1, GNDchampion.me/2, and GNDchampion.me/3. While these example links all lead to the same donate page, having 3 script versions will alternate which link is sent out, improving deliverability.

For more information, contact [email protected].

***UPDATE: "Short Link Domains" is no longer a default Spoke feature, but we can enable this feature if your organization is texting out 50,000-100,000 messages per day with links and is running into deliverability issues.***If you think this would be a good solution for your use case, please email [email protected]

You can add to a list of short link domains from the administration dashboard. When a texter sends a message that includes a shortened link, Spoke uses this list to automatically detect and replace the short link's domain with another domain in the list. Spoke cycles through the domains in this list to spread out usage of the domains. The maximum**usage setting for a domain specifies the number of times Spoke will use that domain before moving onto the next one.

You must set up the short links outside of the Spoke platform, and they must resolve to the same end location for the domain replacement to work. Spoke can detect only the domains you've added to the short link domain list; URLs with other domains will not be replaced.

Note: If you don't set up short links outside of the platform, the links you send out will not work as expected. If you have questions or concerns, contact [email protected].