Marketing Redirects and Tagged URLs
The following information is specific to marketing materials and communications from the Office of Communications and Marketing. For other communications, use third-party online tools like https://tinyurl.com/ to shorten URLs and https://www.adobe.com/express/feature/image/qr-code-generator to create QR codes.
We are making an effort of tagging URLs used in marketing campaigns so that we can track the success of the campaigns and the methods that they use. We add a query string to the end of the URL that contains a series of parameters and values. Those values are then picked up by Google Analytics and allow us to filter traffic to UAMS websites that came from a URL with those values.
If you need a vanity URL or a tagged URL for your marketing campaign, request one online.
Offline Marketing, Vanity URLs and Branded Domains
Offline marketing pieces that do not have clickable links will require the creation of vanity URLs that use the branded domains. These vanity URLs are short redirects to our full tagged URLs, preventing users from having to type in a lengthy URL.
Examples of offline marketing include advertisements in print publications, radio commercials, television commercials, flyers and billboards.
Once a vanity URL has been used for one marketing piece, it should not be used for a different marketing piece for 12 weeks. This way, the consumer has plenty of time to visit that URL and arrive at the appropriate destination.
A vanity URL can only redirect to a single destination URL.
We have multiple branded domains that are used for vanity URLs: uams.info, uams.health, uamsbaptist.health. Any destination that is on the uams.edu domain should use uams.info. Any destination that is on uamshealth.com that is related to the partnership between UAMS Health and Baptist Health should use uamsbaptist.health. Any destination that is on the uamshealth.com domain should use uams.health.
How Many Vanity URLs for Offline Marketing
For marketing pieces that require users to type in the vanity URL, every unique marketing channel in a campaign should use a unique vanity URL. This will allow us to subdivide the traffic by marketing channel.
For marketing pieces in a single campaign that have significant content differences within a single marketing channel, there should be separate vanity URLs to account for those differences.
Ideally, every unique marketing piece should use a unique tagged destination URL (and accompanying vanity URL, if necessary). This will allow us to subdivide the traffic by variables like source (example: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette vs. Talk Business & Politics), medium (example: advertisement vs. advertorial) and content (example: photo of a building vs. photo of a provider interacting with a patient).
Digital Marketing, Tagged URLs and Bit.ly
If the marketing piece is digital and does not display a URL to the user, a vanity URL is not necessary, as it will simply be clicked by the user. One or more tagged URLs will still be created.
For digital marketing where a link can be added to a button or a text phrase (e.g., emails and display advertising), the tagged URL is all that is needed.
For digital marketing where the link must be a URL (e.g., Facebook posts), a bit.ly URL should be generated instead of creating a vanity URL that uses a branded domain.
How Many Tagged URLs for Digital Marketing
Unique URLs should be created for each variant of those digital marketing pieces, accounting for variables like campaign, source (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, the Arkansas Times website), medium (e.g., post, image ad, video ad), differentiating content (e.g., different text or different images), specs (e.g., ad dimensions, date, QR code) and audience (e.g., consumers, prospective employees, donors).
Facebook Image Ads
Use the tagged URL created by UAMS Web Services as the value for the Website URL input when creating your Facebook image ad.
UAMS Web Services will not create vanity URLs for the for Facebook image ads.
Do not include a visible vanity URL in any element of the Facebook image ad — the image, the Primary text input, the Headline input, the Description input or the Display link input. Use the relevant domain or subdomain instead (e.g., uamshealth.com, jobs.uams.edu).
Clicking the ad will take users to the full tagged URL created by UAMS Web Services.