SMS campaigns: a short link that opens the app, not the browser

SMS is the channel people actually read. It's also the one where a link is most likely to be tapped on a phone that already has your app installed — and, by default, most likely to open the mobile browser instead. Add a character budget that punishes long URLs and you have a channel that is both your highest-intent and your most quietly broken.

What problem does this solve?

Every SMS link should be short enough to fit, branded enough to look safe, and smart enough to open the app on the right screen — or the store, then the screen — depending on the phone that taps it. And it should attribute, so you know which messages produced which actions.

How do you set the links up?

A custom domain keeps the link short and recognisable; a message that says 'tap this random-looking link' gets treated as spam by the recipient, whatever the carrier thinks. The slug or the payload carries the destination and the campaign. Your messaging tool fills any per-recipient part.

{
  "deepLinkPath": "/appointments/{{appt_id}}",
  "customData": {"cmp": "reminder-24h", "action": "confirm"}
}

What's different about SMS?

• Character budget: every character of URL is a character of message you don't get. A custom short domain pays for itself here alone.
• Trust: recipients judge links by the domain. yourapp.com reads as you; a generic shortener reads as phishing.
• Carrier filtering: some carriers throttle messages with unfamiliar short domains. A branded domain on a consistent sending number is the durable fix.
• Intent: the tap-to-action window is minutes, not days. Smart routing has to be instant; an interstitial page is a lost user.

What about transactional messages?

Same link, same routing, different attribution question. A delivery update or appointment reminder isn't a campaign, but the link still needs to open the app on the right screen. Tag it so it reports separately from marketing, and you'll learn something most teams never measure: how much app engagement transactional messages drive.

Which metric should you watch?

In-app completion of the action the message asked for — confirmed, paid, viewed — as a share of messages sent. SMS click rates are already high; what changes when the link opens the app is the completion rate, and that is the number that justifies the per-message cost.