6 Useful Ways to use Tracking Links
A tracking link allows the owner who generated the link, to track the number of people who click on it.
And because marketing campaigns can be executed in many different variations, channels, and methods, tracking links can also be utilized in many different ways.
Looking for ideas on how you can leverage your tracking link(s)?
Here are 6 unique ways.
1. Referrals
By using a tracking link for referrals, you will be able to attribute how much traffic actually comes from a specific source.
You can even compare the referral source to see which source is the most effective and drop the less effective one (cruel world, I know).
One example of using tracking links for referrals is to create them for Social Media Influencers.
Social Media Influencers are hard to quantify in terms of effectiveness due to the unpredictability of human nature and the degree of control the company has.
Make the traffic, engagement, or activity contribution of each Social Media Influencer trackable via unique tracking links for each of them to use.
2. Cross-channel
Instead of leaving icons on your profile/webpage to direct users to your social media channels, why not add a tracking link to each of them?
Tracking links are useful to check how your users are crossing from channel to channel.
This gives you a sense of whether the channels have synergy and whether people are dropping out after crossing the channel.
Here are some examples:
- Email to Website
- Website to Social Media
- Social Media to Social Media
- Offline event to Website
- Ads to Website
If you find that there are a thousand users clicking onto your Instagram icon on your website but your Instagram followers are not growing, something wrong is definitely going on there and may require further investigation/optimization.
Together with analytics from the various channels, embedding tracking links to your cross-channel icons allow you to have a bigger picture of the movement in between your channels.
3. Measuring Campaigns
Having tracking links in marketing campaigns enable the creative aspect of marketing campaigns to be quantified & compared.
Comparing with the clickthroughs from the tracking link, the clickthrough rate can be calculated to find out the drop-off rate.
When campaigns are not tracked, there would be little relevant data for comparison.
To include tracked links for marketing campaigns are a common practice in this day and age.
For the benefit of those who do not practice digital marketing, an example of how tracked links can be used in a marketing campaign is when a marketing email is sent to 1000 recipients (assuming no bounce) and there were 100 clicks to purchase your latest ebook, that particular email marketing campaign would have a clickthrough rate of 10% (100/1000) and 90% drop-off rate.
Adding in the cost of producing and sending that marketing email and sales from selling the ebook, you will be able to get the exact amount of profit/loss.
By analyzing the various campaigns, you may also derive precious insights and trends that you can apply to other similar campaigns.
This ultimately improves the ROI of your marketing campaigns allowing you to earn more money.
Do not forget to add tracking links in your marketing campaigns!
4. Interest
A tracking link embedded in your call to action for your marketing campaigns can help gauge interest.
Having interest is a crucial stage stepping stone to reach before converting the audience into purchasing the product or taking action.
Knowing which stage your audience is in can help you personalize the content to make it more relevant.
An example of the audience showing interest would be when they click the download button/link in your email to obtain a case study of how your software was used to reduce cost and improve efficiency.
By tracking newsletter sign-ups, you can also find out if someone has an interest in your products.
Below is a screenshot is taken from ASOS’s website, there are different channels where you can place the newsletter subscription button, but having a tracked link on it will help you track interest.
You will also know if someone is interested in you if they subscribe to your newsletter on Medium, check out the image below for an example.
5. Engagement/Interaction
Tracking links can also be used to measure engagement the audience has with a particular webpage or a piece of content.
By including tracking links, you would be able to figure out how much engagement each part of the content has.
This is especially important for webpages or marketing campaigns that place engagement as their KPI and measurement of success.
Instead of isolating the engagement of followers on LinkedIn or having a link that is not tracked.
Below is an example of how Google is using a tracking link (note — All links on LinkedIn posts will automatically be masked by a tracking link from LinkedIn) to measure how much engagement there is with Google’s content from LinkedIn.
Another example from Google below where their Google Alert emailers below contain tracked links to check for engagement and interaction for each result.
6. UX
To improve the user experience (UX) on websites, sometimes A/B tests are run with tracked links.
This helps track the number of successful conversions on the webpage to the call to action.
A sample illustration can be seen below with 2 variations of where the blue box and 2 different tracked links are swapped laterally across the webpage.
At the end of a set period, the numbers going through each tracked link can be compared to see if there is a significant difference.
If there is a significant difference, then it is highly probable that one of the experiences enables the tracked link to be clicked more.
Similarly, A/B testing of the user experience can also be used for Social media advertisements.
Tracking links have a variety of uses, as new platforms and channels emerge, new ways to use tracking links may emerge.
I hope my sharing has given you some ideas or inspired you a tad bit on how you can utilize tracking links.
Stay creative and happy exploring!
If you liked reading about how tracking links can be used differently, you may also want to read a guide I wrote on creating a proper vanity URL naming convention -