How can I implement SMS link tracking with Customer.io?

Customer.io provides out-of-the-box delivered and converted metrics for SMS messages but does not currently provide any type of tracking for clicked links.

There are a couple of ways to get an idea of how many people are clicking a given link as well as sending information back to Customer.io when a person clicks a link. However, neither of these methods will result in SMS clicked metrics showing in Customer.io dashboards or reports.

Tracking Total SMS Link Clicks

Some customers will use a link-shortening tool like short.io or a deep linking tool like Branch.io or Appsflyer to shorten their links before including the link in the constructed SMS message. You can use hardcoded parameters to create more specialized links for reporting using these methods as well. Using a solution like this, it’s possible to get link tracking on their end for whatever metrics dashboards they provide. However, it’s not possible to tie the clicked link back to a person profile in Customer.io.

Attributing a Clicked SMS Link to a Person

Some customers will use the API provided by their link shortening or deep linking tools to dynamically generate links in a Customer.io workflow step that will be used in a subsequent SMS message. In this case, the workflow would:

• Fire a webhook to the external solutions endpoint, inputting a fully formed URL that includes URL parameters dynamically populated with Liquid for the link itself, the profile’s email and/or id, and any other desired information.
• The solution should send back the shortened/deep link in the response payload that will be saved to the person’s profile.
• This shortened link attribute can then be referenced by Liquid in the next SMS message step.

Another set of steps is required to get this clicked information back to Customer.io, including:

• Custom coding within your web or mobile app’s logic to pull information from the URL parameters and then send an event back to the specified profile in Customer.io using the track API.
• Creating Customer.io segments for the incoming click-associated events.

This second set of steps will allow you to see which profiles clicked a link (based on the returned event) and how many in total, as well being able to use the segment for trigging campaigns and branching within workflows. However, the click metrics would still not be included in the Customer.io dashboard and reporting metrics.