Creating Dynamic Links and QR Codes

This article will walk you through creating dynamic links and QR codes.

Dynamic links and QR codes are an extremely powerful tool that allow you to route your visitors to specific destinations based on variables like day, date, time, language, device, and location. One link or QR code can route your audience to relevant content or landing pages based on where they are located, which device they are using, day or date that they clicked your link or scanned your QR code and more. 

BL.INK supports dynamic link routing for the following variables:

    1.    Day of Week

    2.    Time of Day

    3.    Date/Time

    4.    Device

    5.    Language

    6.    Geography (by US States or by Country)

You may use any combination of the above variables to create incredibly simple or complex dynamic links.

Here's a video tutorial of the steps outlined below:

Step 1: Before getting started...

Before jumping in to create your dynamic campaigns, we strongly recommend outlining your desired outcomes. We recommend using a spreadsheet software to assist or even a piece of paper and a pencil to define your goals.

So if your team is creating a campaign based on device type, you will want to define the following:

1. Which devices do we want to route?
2. Which landing page do we want each device to end up at?

So let's start with the device example:

In this example, we want to create a campaign that takes iPhone users and iOS users to the app store, but will take Android users and Windows users to an alternate destination.

Once we have these rules, variables, and outcomes defined, we can get started.

Step 2: Creating your rule links

Once you have defined your variables and their outcomes, we can start building the rule links. For each of the variables in your list, we are going to create a branded short link to serve as our rule links. 

In the device example from above, we will create a short link for each of the devices.

In BLINK, click New Link > Branded Link and then paste the Destination Link in the long link field. Then, you may customize your keyword (or leave it as the auto-generated keyword).

Click Save to save your link. Then repeat these steps to create a short link for each of your variables.

Step 3: Creating your dynamic link

Once all of your rule links have been created, you may create your dynamic link. At the top of the dashboard, click New Link > Dynamic Link. Select the dial for ● Custom, and enter a custom keyword (optional). Click Save.

Next, you'll click on Assign Link to enable next to the Catchall rule:

Find the catchall rule link you created earlier. Click on the link, and it will assign to the catchall rule.

Once you have assigned the catchall link to the catchall rule, click on the button with the + symbol in the upper right to create a new rule.

Select the variable for your new rule from the drop-down. In this example, we're using Device. Then select the condition from the second drop-down. 

For most of the variables, Is or Is Not will show here. For time and date rules, you will have the option to choose from Before or After. 

For this example, we will use Is. 

From the third drop-down, select the first variable option for the ruleset. In this example, we will use Android.

Next, click Select Link. Find the link in your list associated with the rule. In this example, we're setting up the rule for Android, so we will select the Android rule link we created in step 2. 

For each rule that you defined from your first step, you will follow the steps above. Create a new rule, select the variable, condition, and option, and then assign the rule to the short link.

Once you have successfully created all of your rules and assigned them to their short link, you will see all of the rules and their assigned short link. From here, you may update the sort order or click on the link keywords to view the short link details.

Step 4: Almost done...

Click Links > My Dynamic Links and then click on the dynamic link's keyword to view the Link Details for your new dynamic link. 

From here, you may absolutely share the dynamic link directly or download the QR code, but please note, that click data will be stored in the individual short links and not on the dynamic link. 

If you wish to have a more comprehensive view of all of the clicks for a dynamic link or QR code, as a best practice, we strongly recommend setting up one final short link.

Copy the dynamic link from this page. In this example, our dynamic link is https://blink.training/dynamic-example

Then, at the top of the page, click New Link > Branded Link.

Paste the dynamic link in the long link field.

Click Save to create the new link.

This new link is the link we recommend sharing. This tip allows you to use this new short link as an entry point. In this example, our new short link would be https://blink.training/example and this is the link we would share on social media or where we would download the QR code to print on product packaging.

This extra step is important, because it allows you to track all clicks or scans for the dynamic link in one location, and then you may view the individual short links for a more in-depth view of the engagement for each rule.

In our example, we could view the https://blink.training/example link to get an idea of overall traffic to our campaign, and then drill down further to view the analytics for https://blink.training/Android specifically. 

Now you are ready to share your dynamic link!

If you have questions on dynamic links, please reach out to BLINK support.