Beware of URL shorteners in email
Many of us use tools like bit.ly to shorten long website addresses in our Tweets, but they've been causing some problems when used in emails. Learn more and how to get around the problem.
Over the past couple of years many of us have become familiar with URL shortening services such as bit.ly. While these services can be great for shortening websites for use in social media, we’ve noticed them causing some problems when being used in email messages.
We recently had a client who was noticing that many of his recipients were reporting they weren’t receiving email messages he was sending. After some investigation, we noticed he was directing people to a specific page of his organization’s website in his email signature and the link was shortened using the bit.ly service. Many email filtering services place emails with shortened URLs into the spam folder - since you can’t tell where a bit.ly link is going from its address, it’s a common tactic for spammers to use them to send people to nefarious places.
To ensure that your emails make it to inboxes instead of spam folders, we recommend avoiding the use of URL shorteners. If you want to send someone to a website with a very long address, you can instead use the tools to insert links that are provided by most email tools. These allow you to embed the link behind the text of your choosing in a way that doesn't trigger the spam filters.
- Elaina Buzzell
URL Shorteners