BL.INK blogs about link management, mobile microsites, GS1 Digital Link, QR code innovation

Why BL.INK is the best link management platform • BL.INK

Written by Keven | May 27, 2022 12:51:17 PM

What separates BL.INK from the competition? What makes BL.INK the best link management platform?

BL.INK has been in business since 2008 and we prioritize hearing our customers. We want to know all about their pain points, and ultimately, we strive to provide a solution to fit their needs — both now, and as those needs change. Over the years, we’ve heard some consistent feedback about what our platform offers, and how we are different from the rest.

Value for the price

BL.INK was designed for Enterprise, but we also know that link management is a crucial piece of marketing strategy for companies of all sizes. 

BL.INK offers more than just link shortening – link management allows users to collaborate efficiently, organize links, analyze data, monitor activity and campaigns, connect with other platforms, all while keeping their data secure.

With BL.INK, you can create, manage, and edit short links. You’ll have full control over and instant access to link analytics. Users and teams can collaborate to keep links consistent and in one centralized location. Generating QR codes is a breeze, and distributing links across social media, via SMS or messaging platforms, or internally among colleagues, all while tracking your clicks or scans is made easy with BL.INK.

These are just a few of the powerful features offered with BL.INK. Enterprise clients have even more flexibility, and can be customized to meet your ever-evolving needs.

And we’ve created plans at every price point – so whether you’re a start-up, small business or part of a global enterprise organization, you can reap the benefits of BL.INK’s link management tool.

Ease of use

On first glance, link management can be intimidating. However, the majority of our clients are digital marketing teams working to promote their business and gain valuable insights into their customers.

BL.INK’s user interface was made for any team to hit the ground running. Our intuitive platform was made to fit the needs of all users – no matter their technical experience.

For day-to-day management, most users will feel completely comfortable and in control of link distribution at any scale. And for more advanced users, we offer access to our incredibly robust API (more on that below!).

Don’t just take it from us – many of our users find that BL.INK is extremely user-friendly.

A crucial step in your workflow

Adding a step to your workflow can seem tedious and even a bit overwhelming, however BL.INK offers multiple ways to streamline your workflows to maximize your performance. 

Whether you have BL.INK natively integrated into Khoros, Sprinklr, Salesforce, or other applications, use our browser extensions, mobile app, or low-code integrations like Zapier, Pabbly, Integrately, or Microsoft PowerBI, BL.INK has multiple ways to ensure you stay in the zone and are not only more productive, but gain deeper insights along the way.

Once integrated into existing workflows, most users find that it’s quick and easy to generate and distribute links. And most importantly, BL.INK gives your team incredibly valuable insights into how campaigns are performing and the opportunity to make changes in real-time so you can capitalize on any opportunity.

Integrations

BL.INK integrates directly with the most popular tools already in your stack. Connect with thousands of platforms via Zapier, Zoho Flow, and Integrately. BL.INK also offers native integrations with Khoros, Sprinklr, and more to connect with your existing enterprise stack.

We also offer access to our robust API for link management within your own ecosystem and connect tools like messaging platforms or Salesforce, ServiceNow, or Twilio. Our API was built to be open and ready to serve new ideas as fast as our brilliant customers can dream them up.

Don’t see what you need? Let us know! We’re always looking to make improvements, and if there are tools from your existing stack that aren’t already integrated with BL.INK, we’d love to explore adding an integration.

Speedy redirects

Customers are sometimes concerned that adding a branded link into their customer experience will cause issues like SEO, load times, and extra hops. 

Since we use a 301 or 307 redirect, search engines are savvy and no SEO value is lost when using short links so the use of BL.INK is completely transparent. Redirects are measured in milliseconds and are often missed entirely if you blink (hence, our name), so the customer experience is not degraded. 

Yes, there is an extra hop involved when you shorten the links, but this is so commonplace that we have never seen it become an issue for our customers or their audiences. Using branded short links is a welcomed experience by everyone and the confidence and trust created by them increases engagement.  

Using one tool, instead of many

Many of our users find that while link shortening is offered through their email programs, social tools, etc., it’s much more convenient having all of their short links and click data in one central location.

Links in BL.INK can be added, managed, and edited all in one place. And users have full control and access to their links and click data without having to wait on a third party. 

And if you are transitioning between tools? Our customers that have transitioned tools while using BL.INK never skip a beat. 

Transitioning from one social management platform to another?  Maybe switching SMS providers? When BL.INK powers your links, transitions become easier and migrations are not required. 

The links, data, and experience is entirely yours from beginning to end. Your team can keep doing what you’re doing in the existing tool, while ramping up the new tool. The links don’t belong to a third-party, so you don’t have to worry about who owns the data, where it is stored, or how it’s presented. Your audience will never notice the transition, and it’s a smooth, seamless process for your team without any downtime.

Your brand is everything

Branding is key. BL.INK allows and encourages the use of a custom domain. With a branded domain, your links are consistent and they promote your brand – not someone else’s. Using a branded link has also proved to boost audience engagement.

Using a branded domain name increases trust and click confidence. If you’re sending your links via messaging or SMS, or sharing the link on social media, users are more likely to click on a link that matches your branding because they know where the link is coming from, and know where it’s going. 

First impressions are also important! With all the competition, it’s important to make sure your brand stands out. Branded short links are memorable, identifiable, and more likely to generate more traffic.

Building the perfect link

BL.INK’s URLBuilder enables users to create ideal attribution strategies and build out frequently used tracking parameters within the account settings, making these available to all users across an organization. URLBuilder helps to standardize URL construction and analytics tags across your teams and makes building URLs a breeze.

Our customers frequently started with complicated spreadsheets to build and manage analytics parameters. Once they standardized on BL.INK, every vendor, team, and department is now working in harmony to create the perfect link and amplify attribution data for their analytics teams.

When your data and analytics teams are receiving properly formatted data and attribution values, they are able to provide better insight into campaign performance and investments.This provides a better allocation of budget with clarity and efficiency for all parties.

Streamlining throughout your entire company

BL.INK offers the ability to easily and efficiently collaborate with other users, teams, and brands under your organization. When employees, teams, agencies, and vendors around the globe need a unified, multi-brand platform to create the perfect link, BL.INK delivers on each point with ease and experience. 

The BL.INK platform supports customers that have integrated hundreds of marketers, teams, engineers, and agencies around the globe. We have customers with thousands of users where every employee is given access to BL.INK for both internal and external communications. When BL.INK is at the fingertips of an entire organization, value is returned exponentially.  

Unify every engagement across every team, campaign, and product with BL.INK.

Agencies love us

As we mentioned above, BL.INK makes collaboration easy. Many customers include their agency contacts as users within their BL.INK account, allowing them to collaborate seamlessly. 

We offer tiered levels of access from user specific links, to full administrative access on each domain under the account. Each user will have the access they need in order to create, manage, and track their links, without having to wait on a third party.

Our agency users love us:

In-depth, real-time, easy-to-digest Analytics

BL.INK’s analytics offer users full control over campaign insights. We offer in-depth analytics for links and QR codes that include device, referrer, and location data down to the city-level.

Each analytics platform is different, and tracks their clicks differently. We’re very transparent in how we track clicks, and many of our users will use our analytics as a baseline to compare against different analytics platforms.

With BL.INK, you can gain insight into how a campaign is performing – whether it’s on your site or a third-party website. By creating a short link for your campaign running on another website, you’re able to instantly see how the campaign is doing, and make adjustments as needed in real-time.

No more waiting on a third-party or a different department to make tweaks or provide analytics information – it’s all at your fingertips within your BL.INK account.

 

Ready to get started? Reach out!