At Yu3, we’re always working to improve our platform to ensure it meets your evolving needs, especially when it comes to compliance with industry regulations. Today, we’re excited to announce that Yu3 now supports the addition of prefixes in shortened URLs, a feature that directly addresses the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) Regulations.
You can review the official circular by TRAI for more details on these requirements here.
As per the new regulations, SMS marketing campaigns must include specific headers in the URLs they send. Our new feature allows you to effortlessly add the required prefix to your shortened URLs, ensuring full compliance while maintaining the simplicity and professionalism of a shortened link.
Here’s how our prefix support works and how it can benefit your campaigns.
📢 Learn more about how to create these prefix URLs here.
1. Compliance with TRAI Regulations
SMS marketing campaigns sent in India are now required to include a header or prefix in the URL for better identification and to enhance transparency for customers. To comply with these TRAI regulations, your URLs must have a distinct prefix that relates to your business or campaign.
With Yu3, we’ve made it easy to include a prefix when shortening your URLs. For example, you can create a link like:
https://yu3.io/YOURPREFIX/code123
The prefix here (YOURPREFIX) fulfills the compliance requirement, ensuring your SMS campaigns are ready to go. What’s even better? Your links are still accessible without the prefix! So, customers can also use:
This flexibility ensures that the regulatory needs are met without sacrificing user experience or convenience.
2. Seamless Tracking and Analytics
At Yu3, we know how critical tracking and analytics are to optimizing your marketing campaigns. Our platform ensures that adding prefixes to your shortened URLs doesn’t interfere with your ability to monitor link performance. You’ll still be able to track:
- Click-through rates (CTR)
- Traffic sources (e.g., SMS, social media, email)
- Geographic locations of your audience
- Device types (mobile, desktop, etc.)
This means you can maintain full visibility of your campaign performance, analyze the data, and make informed decisions for future optimizations — all while staying compliant with TRAI regulations.
3. Enhanced Brand Recognition with Custom Prefixes
In addition to regulatory compliance, prefixes offer a unique branding opportunity. You can create custom prefixes that reflect your brand, product, or campaign. For example, if you’re running a summer sale, you could use a prefix like:
https://yu3.io/SUMMER21/discount
This level of customization adds another layer of professionalism to your SMS campaigns, ensuring your audience immediately recognizes your brand when they see the link.
4. Optimize SMS Campaigns with Shortened URLs
SMS marketing thrives on brevity, and using a URL shortener with a prefix ensures that you stay within character limits while complying with TRAI’s rules. The short, clean URLs not only meet regulatory requirements but also leave more room for engaging, action-oriented messaging in your SMS content.
Instead of sending long URLs that clutter your messages, you can now send compliant, easy-to-read links like:
https://yu3.io/YOURPREFIX/promo2024
This optimization improves the chances that your message will engage your audience and encourage them to click through to your offer or content.
5. Flexibility in Accessing Links
While adding a prefix is essential for certain campaigns, especially those sent via SMS in India, we’ve made sure that your users can still access the link without the prefix. This dual-access feature means your links can be shared widely across different platforms without creating confusion.
For instance, both of the following URLs will lead users to the same destination:
This flexibility allows you to use the prefix when necessary (e.g., in SMS campaigns) while still leveraging the same URL across other marketing channels like social media, email, or even QR codes.
6. Maintain Tracking Across All Links
Even though your URL can be accessed with or without the prefix, Yu3’s tracking features remain consistent across both. Whether your users visit the link with the prefix or without, you’ll still have access to all the valuable analytics, ensuring you never miss a click or a conversion.
7. One Tool for All Marketing Channels
The ability to add prefixes to shortened URLs enhances your ability to comply with SMS regulations, but that’s not where the benefits stop. This feature is part of Yu3’s comprehensive URL shortener, which also includes:
- Customizable short links for brand consistency
- QR code generation for cross-platform versatility
- In-depth analytics to track engagement across SMS, email, social media, and more
By using Yu3, you gain a powerful, versatile tool that helps you manage your marketing campaigns more efficiently and effectively, no matter the channel.
Get Started with Prefixes Today
Whether you’re running SMS campaigns in India or simply want to enhance your marketing efforts with custom, trackable URLs, Yu3 has you covered. With our new prefix support feature, you can meet regulatory requirements without compromising on the user experience, all while maintaining robust tracking and analytics.
Start shortening your URLs with prefixes today at app.yu3.io, and take your marketing campaigns to the next level.
