Using Shortlinks in Broadcasts

How to use shortlinks in your text broadcasts

1. In your broadcast (new or draft), find the recent shortlinks section.

2. Here, you will see your recently created shortlinks and can also create new ones as needed.

3. Scroll down to the Compose Message section and click Edit Message.

4. A new window will pop up where you can type your message and add your link directly by clicking Tracked Link.

5. This will open up a drop-down option of all of your shortlinks

6. Select the link you’d like to insert and it will populate into your text.

   1. This format will allow your links to be tracked down to the individual recipient. You will be able to see who clicked on your link and, if you have an ActBlue integration set-up, you will be able to see who clicked your link but didn’t donate.

See here if you want to insert a shortlink into your email blast.

Donation Tracking

In Switchboard, we can track clicks and resulting ActBlue donations from links, using unique tokens per message. To do so, put the link in quotes and wrap it in braces with the keyword sb_link. For example:

• {{ "<https://swtch.to/donate>" | sb_link }}

• {{ "<https://actblue.com/switchboard>" | sb_link }}

You can also take advantage of our ActBlue tracking features without using a shortlink. To do so, put the ActBlue link in quotes and wrap it in braces with the keyword sb_actblue. This will add the tracking parameter we need to your ActBlue link in the message, but won't convert the whole link to a shortlink. For example:

• {{ "https://actblue.com/switchboard" | sb_actblue }}

Note that this will track donation information but not click information; tracking clicks is only possible with a shortlink.

Passing the Switchboard tracking token to ActBlue after a form

Sometimes you may want to send your recipient to a form (e.g. ActionKit) before redirecting them to an ActBlue donation page. Some, but not all web form providers will allow the tracking token to be passed through (and many require set-up to do so).

Use this syntax below to enable the tracking:

{{ "https://putyourformurlhere.com" | sb_actblue | sb_link }}

If you omit "sb_link" then it won't convert the URL into a shortlink, in case you want to preserve the longer link in the message. However, if you do that, we will not be able to track clicks, only the donation.

We recommend testing this flow to ensure it's working. If you insert this into a broadcast, we'll generate test links to your form, and you can fill out that form and see if the resulting ActBlue page has a query parameter that matches refcodeSB= - if so, that means it's working!

Further Customization Using Jinja

You can use "jinja" syntax to nest infomation into your shortlinks. You can find about more about that process here.

Advanced (Switchboard Shortlink Specific)

There are ways to play with custom fields so you can customize shortlinks based on the recipient you are sending your messages to:

Option 1: Hiding the unique recipient parameter inside a custom shortlink (without a vanity slug) in Switchboard

If you want to make sure that each individual you are sending a message to gets their own unique shortlink, but you don’t want the refcode to be visible to the end-user, you can follow the below template.

{{("https://secure.actblue.com/donate/my_donate_page?refcode=" ~ source_list) | sblink}}

• URL in quotes: the URL you want to redirect to

• ~ is telling the jinja template to append the custom field value to the URL you put in the quotes

• source_list is the name of whatever custom field data you are pulling in. Typically this is the column header for data in a CSV you upload into the texting platform

• RESULT: myshortlink.us/l/ABC123

Option 2: Adding a unique recipient parameter inside a custom shortlink with a vanity slug in Switchboard

If you would prefer there be a “/unique-slug” vanity slug attached to your shortlink to indicate where the short link is redirecting to, you can do that with a unique parameter attached as well. Use the following template:

{{"myshortlink.us/donate"| sblink }}&refcode={{source_list}}

• &refcode= is saying to append a specific code that you indicate to the end of this link

• {{source_list}} is the name of whatever custom field data you are pulling in. Typically this is the column header for data in a CSV you upload into the texting platform

The benefit of this method is that since there's no spaces, the customizations will still all blend nicely into a URL. The tradeoff here is that the recipient will see the &refcode={{source_code}} piece (it's "outside" the shortlink)