Zoho Marketing Automation: Getting Started with Smart URLs

Zoho Marketing Automation: Getting Started with Smart URLs

Short links are popular in marketing because they are easy to send in emails, social posts, and text messages, and they avoid the errors that come from copying long web addresses. Zoho Marketing Automation, formerly called Zoho MarketingHub, includes link shortening as a built-in feature, and lets you share, manage, and analyse your short links. This article covers the first step: setting up a custom domain, so your links carry your own brand.

Why you need a custom domain

To use smart links properly, you associate a domain that belongs to your product or brand. A link on your own domain is easier for people to recognise, promotes your brand, and tends to attract more clicks than an anonymous shortened one.

Add and verify a custom domain

  1. From the navigation toolbar, click Engagement and choose Smart URLs.
  2. Enter your domain and click Associate.
  3. Update the DNS records at your domain registrar, using the details shown, so the domain is pointed at Zoho Marketing Automation.
  4. Go back to Zoho Marketing Automation and verify the domain. Once it is verified, you can start creating smart links.
DNS changes take time. A change at your registrar can take a while to spread, so if verification fails straight away, wait and try again before you assume something is wrong.

Smart links and tracked smart URLs

Zoho has described the feature in two ways, and the menu names differ between versions of the product, so look for Smart URLs if yours does not match.

Type What it does
Smart linkA short link with a destination, an optional short key and label, and click tracking. See Zoho Marketing Automation: Smart Links.
Tracked smart URLA link that also carries tracking parameters, so Zoho Marketing Automation can tell where a visitor came from. When you create one, you name it, give the landing page address, choose a source (you can add your own), name the campaign, and generate the link and a QR code. The medium fills in automatically.
Add the tracking code to the landing page. Zoho advises including the tracking code snippet on the page a tracked smart URL points to. Without it, visitor data cannot be captured and the visitor reports will be empty.

Our advice

This section is our own advice, not Zoho's.

  • Use a dedicated subdomain, such as go.yourcompany.com, so your main website's DNS is untouched.
  • Agree your source and campaign naming before you create links, because inconsistent names make reports hard to read.
  • Test a new link from a phone and from a private browser window before you send it to your list.
  • Mind your consent wording. Tracking visitors involves personal data, so make sure your privacy notice and cookie banner cover it.
Need help? As a Zoho Partner serving the UK and Ireland, we can set up your custom domain, DNS, and tracking in Zoho Marketing Automation. Email zoho@1cloudconsultants.com or raise a support request with 1 Cloud Consultants.