SMS Link Shortening and Tracking

When sending SMS messages, you have to squeeze as much meaning as you can into 160 characters. You can’t afford to waste characters on long URLs, leading to multiple messages, higher messaging costs, and confusing interactions with your audience.

Airship now supports link shortening: and can convert URLs (beginning with http:// or https://) you provide in SMS messages to unique, 25-character links for each SMS or MMS message recipient in your audience. Shortened links save space in your messages, helping you interact with your audience and reducing the overall cost of SMS engagement.

This release also includes a Real-Time Data Streaming short_link_click event, emitted when members of your audience use shortened links so you can track engagement with your links down to individual members of your audience.

Airship makes it easy to shorten links:

• API: Set the shorten_links boolean.
• UI: Enable the link shortening option in the Content step for your message. You can set your project to shorten links in messages you create through the UI by default. You can override this setting for individual messages.

You can also setup automated responses to mobile-originated messages with shortened links; contact your Airship account manager to configure automated SMS responses.

Documentation:

• SMS Link Shortening
• Enable Dashboard Features
• API: SMS Platform Object