Campaign link shortener

SMS and MMS messages have limited character space, which makes long personalized links impractical. The link shortener automatically replaces hyperlinks in your campaigns with shorter versions. Every click is tracked as a campaign event with a clicked status, and the character counter in the preview reflects the real message length including shortened links.

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Feature enablement

Contact your Customer Success Manager to enable this feature.

Set up the link shortener

Configure project settings

Once the feature is enabled, go to Campaigns > General > General campaign settings in Project settings. Here you can:

• Choose which channels use the link shortener (SMS, MMS).
• Select the default short domain for your project.

You can configure multiple short domains and select the one to use at the campaign level.

Manage shortening per campaign

The link shortener is on by default for every campaign once enabled. To adjust it for a specific campaign, open the SMS/MMS action node in your scenario and click the Settings tab. From there you can:

• Choose a short domain from your configured domains.
• Turn link shortening on or off for that campaign.

Preview

The scenario node preview highlights all detected links in green and shows the final message with dummy shortened links on the right.

Note that not all links can be detected during preview — for example, links stored in customer properties or generated through Jinja rendering won't be highlighted or counted. Links that Jinja can resolve (such as consent or unsubscribe pages) are highlighted and counted correctly.

For example, a message like this:

Hi {{customer.first_name}}, don't miss our special discount offer this week! Shop now on https://www.shop.com/categories/sale?utm_source=bloomreach&utm_medium=sms&utm_campaign=Sale%20promotion.

appears in the preview with the long URL highlighted in green and replaced with a shortened version in the final message preview on the right.

Link format requirements

Links must include the protocol (http:// or https://) to be recognized and shortened. If you don't want a specific link shortened, omit the protocol.

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Special characters in URLs

Some links with special characters may not be matched correctly. URL-encode any special characters before using them — for example, use Google's encode/decode tool. For example, a semicolon (;) must be encoded as %3B to be matched correctly..

Link expiration

Shortened links expire after 3 months by default. This is configurable per instance. After expiration, the link is deleted and anyone who visits it sees a 404 page..

Domains

You can use 2 types of domains with the link shortener: shared domains and custom domains.

Shared domains

Multi-tenant instances include one default shortener domain (for example, exp.cx) that's ready to use immediately.

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Single-tenant instances

We don't provide shared domains for single-tenant instances. All single-tenant instances need to use a custom domain.

Custom domains

You can use your own domain for link shortening on both single and multi-tenant instances. When choosing a domain:

• Dedicate it exclusively to link shortening.
• Keep the name as short as possible.
• Make sure it matches your brand.

One custom domain can be shared across multiple accounts, as long as they're on the same instance.

Set up the custom domain

1. Follow the four-step instructions in the Custom Domain Management article.
2. Once your DNS records are valid, go to Project settings and select your domain.

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Domains added by Bloomreach IT

If your domain was set up by the Bloomreach IT team before this setting was available, you'll see an info message in settings. These domains can't be managed from the UI. Contact the Bloomreach IT team for any changes.

Advanced configuration

The following settings can be changed at the instance level.

Entropy

Entropy controls the randomness of generated short links. The string length defines the level of entropy and is configurable at the instance level. The default is 10 characters (for example, https://exp.cx/pskE82In5h, using the character set a-z, A-Z, 0-9, -, and _. This gives 64^10 possible combinations. This makes links difficult to guess or exploit, which is especially important for unsubscribe and consent links.

Link expiration

See Link expiration. Expiration period is configurable per instance.