Tip: Short Link Danger

Who knew that using short links in your emails would get them treated like spam?

In the past, I would rarely use the “Check Spam” feature in my autoresponder service before sending out my ezines and promotional emails but one day, in a text-only email, after putting in a short link created by “tinyurl”, the spam filter automatically popped up and warned me that the short link would surely get my email relegated to my subscribers’ junk folders.

So I wound up just using the regular old long link. Now, if I had been sending an html email, I could have simply cloaked the long url behind a string of words, you know, like when you see a live link that says: Click here.

Then, just a couple of weeks ago I learned that if you try to use bit.ly short links, those will get you treated like spam as well.

The lesson here is simply not to use short links — those created by services like “tinyurl” and “bit.ly” in your email messages because using them will trigger the spam filter of your subscribers and may get your email deleted altogether.

And the reason for this is because, like so many other useful online tools, the short links have been co-opted by real spammers and that wrecks things for the rest of us who are sending legitimate marketing email.

Sigh.

Related: Short Links Trigger Spam Filters