Configure Your Account for Deep Linking
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Understand how deep linking works.
- Plan where your email links open.
- Decide which types of deep linking to implement.
Skip to the Good Part
The promise of any link is that it connects you to a specific resource or location. Click a restaurant’s link to see tonight’s menu. Click a manufacturer’s link to make sure the replacement part actually fits your model. Click a store link to instantly buy just the right pair or shoes, boots, or whatever you choose to put on your feet. No matter what the specific action is, the general concept is that you get what you want directly without needing to step through a complex maze of directions.
We drop links in all sorts of messages and posts that we take the directness for granted most times, but sometimes marketers need to make that path a little more explicit. Bouncing a customer from page to page via links is easy enough, but getting that customer to a specific location in a mobile app (or even to the app in general) requires a little more effort. In this module, we look at how Marketing Cloud Engagement helps you direct your customers to specific locations within your mobile app.
The app checks for a deep linking reference. If the link is found, the link takes the user to the app. If not, the link goes to the default browser.
Two Different Paths
When it comes to mobile apps, there are two major players. We’re not here to play favorites, but we do need to call out a major difference when it comes to iOS apps and Android apps. Let’s take a look at how you work with both platforms in the following example from Northern Trail Outfitters (NTO).
Meet Pia
Pia Larson is Northern Trail Outfitter’s data architect, and she’s plotting how to use deep linking with the NTO mobile app. Pia wants links from email messages to open directly on a specific product page or account page, depending on the call to action. She also needs to make sure that these links work correctly with both the iOS and Android versions of the NTO mobile app, because she doesn’t want to leave any customer out. She considers some facts about deep linking with Marketing Cloud Engagement.
- iOS Universal Links requires an active SAP with an SSL certificate.
- iOS Universal Links affect all links sent in an email, so you need to include codes that prevent non-app-related links from going through the Universal Link process (we cover that more in the next unit).
- Android links require a different configuration and reference file for deep linking.
- The existing apps will require some additional modification to make the deep links work.
All these considerations require additional support from NTO’s app developers. Pia decides the extra steps are justified by the customer experience, so she forges a plan to move forward.
- Pia plans to use iOS Universal Links because the functionality is native to Marketing Cloud Engagement.
- She also plans to use Marketing Cloud Engagement’s Android Deep Linking feature.
Pia identifies the product pages to include and a default app location, so she can make sure she gets the customer into the app when possible. In the next couple of units, we’ll follow along with Pia as she implements deep linking for iOS and Android platforms.