Yet more lessons learned using Twilio for SMS

Michaela_Iery3
Marketo Employee
Marketo Employee

In case you missed it, Marketo just introduced with the Summer 16 Release our new integration with Vibes, a terrific new way to leverage SMS within Marketo. Isn't it great? But many of you have been using, and may continue to use, the services of Twilio, one of our other wonderful Launchpoint partners.

I've previously posted about using Twilio for SMS and wanted to share a few quick thoughts on some additional lessons learned:

I recently received a request to include fairly long URLs with querystring parameters within some SMS messages my client was sending out. Obviously, SMS messages with a long URL could cause an issue - though Twilio does offer messages over 160 characters with its Messages Resource UI. However, Twilio also offers automatically URL shortening, which is probably advised as a very long link with querystrings is not particularly attractive in an SMS message. We did test this functionality and it does work as expected, with query string parameters being preserved with URL shortening.

One thing that is important to understand, though, is that with regard to being able to measure/report on link clicks, this is not something that is out-of-the-box supported with Marketo's analytics tools. There is no "clicks link in SMS" filter to use for smart lists. If you've used a unique querystring for the message, you can create a web page performance report to show known or anonymous leads that visited the page with that querystring. (And of course, if you have Google Analytics or similar, you would see the traffic there as well.)

Keep in mind, people may be cookied on their computer but not necessarily on their phone - it depends on if they've previously engaged with your emails on their phone, going to a munchkined page on that device. So using a "Visited Web Page" smart list to look for that querystring will only show you known leads who visited that page with their cookied mobile device - and that may be a lower number.  (I know for myself, I will typically read emails on my phone but if there's a link to a website, I may wait to do so when I'm back on my laptop, as many pages are, sadly, still not as mobile-optimized as they could be.)

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