With Custom Domains you are able to track your clicks (active leads), export your clickers, re-target your clickers using event responders or Bulk SMS broadcasts and redirect clicks to a long URL that would otherwise not be suitable for a 160 character message.

Please note, when using a custom domain to shorten URLs you must additionally follow the instructions in this article to ensure your domain has a valid SSL certificate - Custom Domain SSL

Step 1 - Tell your IT department to create a DNS Record for your SMS Domain

Step 2 - Click on Responders > Settings > SMS Link Tracking

 Step 3 - Create DNS record by entering a domain name, a reference and a holding page

“Click.txtgo.co.uk” in this case represents the text message link for your client.  Click is the CNAME that you need to ultimately add to your DNS record (see next step).  The reference is simply a name for your custom name; if you have many custom domains the reference helps you identify which one you want to use in your SMS.  

“Holding page” is the website that your link will send the client to.  The holding page should be used if you want the custom domain (without the unique code) to redirect to your website.  NOTE: When an SMS is created we append a unique code i.e. click.txtgo.co.uk/xR4Ur.  If you do not enter in a holding page URL we, by default, print "Domain is correctly configured"

Step 4 - Make sure your DNS CNAME records are pointing to LeadByte 

If you do not do this, tracking will not work!  We need to take ownership / control of the CNAME to power the click tracking.

Step 5 - Verify

At first, your SMS Domain will appear as Not Verified. As soon as your friendly IT Department has set added the DNS record to your domain, you can go ahead and click verify.  NOTE: Allow up-to 24 hours to allow this to happen.  In reality, it can be as quick as 1 hour.  Make sure the TTL (Time Till Live) is set on your DNS as short as possible).

From this, you can see we check to make sure verified domains are still working

Step 6 - Responder

Click on the Responders tab on LeadByte, followed by Add SMS Responder, if you don't have one already.

On the page that opens, fill in or select values for the required fields before clicking "+ Add Push"

Here, you can tailor what your text message will look like to your client:

You can add your custom domain to shorten a URL by clicking "Tracking Link" and choosing your domain.

The window that pops up is shown below:

Once you select your domain, the Custom Domain tag will be added to the push text message. The domain redirect box that appears will need to be populated with the URL that you would like your short link to re-direct to. You can even include lead data tags into this URL to send lead data as part of the URL. This is commonly used by clients that want to pre-pop form fields or push lead meta data into the URL for deeper reporting in external systems.

Step 7 - Save and Push

Once you save, you can then text the push in the previous screen. Your message will look like the following (below).  We append a /{code} to the link to track the activity of every SMS sent.  

Congratulations! You’ve created your DNS Record, your Text Campaign and the text message.