How does Performance Tracking work?
Links in your SMS will be replaced automatically with short links by our own URL shortener. An individual URL is created for each recipient of your campaign and for each link in the SMS.
This makes it possible to evaluate exactly which contact clicked on which link. Performance Tracking is available for single transactional SMS as well as for mass SMS campaigns.
Short link domain
Without any setup, the short links run on our shared domain svn.me. If you prefer your own domain, e.g. click.example.com, add it under Settings -> Conversion Tracking, see Specify custom domain for links. If Performance Tracking is not enabled for your account, the toggle in the dialog is greyed out and API requests with performance_tracking are rejected with error code 603. In that case, please contact support.
Send SMS campaign with Performance Tracking
The webapp automatically detects links in your SMS body. To enable per-recipient tracking, click New message, write your message including a link and expand the Conversion Tracking section in the right panel. Toggle Enable Conversion Tracking to on.
The system then generates an individual short link for each link and each recipient of your campaign, so clicks can be attributed exactly to the respective link / recipient.
Track performance via webhooks
You can also receive click and view events via webhook. Open Developer -> Webhooks, click New to create a webhook (or the pencil to edit an existing one) and pick Tracking as the Event.
Conversion Tracking
You can also measure conversions of your campaign - for example a sign-up, an order or any other action the recipient takes. Each click sets a cookie that is read by the seven tracking pixel on your page.
Open Settings -> Conversion Tracking to configure your Custom Domain and Redirect URL, and to copy the Tracking Code. Paste the code on the page where the conversion happens (e.g. the sign-up confirmation page).
Evaluations
You can see views, clicks and conversions per SMS in the Journal: click a message, and the detail view shows the values in the Conversion Tracking section. With bulk SMS, each recipient receives their own SMS, so the values always refer to one recipient. An aggregated evaluation of the whole campaign is not available at the moment. To evaluate clicks and views across all recipients yourself, have the events sent to you via webhook (see above).
Tips
It is best to place the link at the end of the SMS – this automatically generates a link preview for the recipient device if it is able to do so. This increases the click rate and allows us to evaluate the views of the message.
Changing the URL also changes the length of the SMS. In some rare cases, this can lead to higher costs per message if the shortened URL is longer than the original URL and the message thus exceeds the 160 character limit.
What else can I do?
In the future, scenarios will be possible in which you can run A/B split tests or optimize your campaign fully automated according to click rate or conversion rate.
Do you have any questions, criticism or suggestions regarding Performance Tracking or Conversion Tracking? We look forward to your message!