CEO Andy Meadows Talks BudURL — Celebrating 10 Years of Advocating For Businesses Through Robust Link Management and Data-Tracking Solutions

TL; DR: It’s no secret that better customer experiences lead to increased returns for businesses. And, for the past decade, BudURL has been helping organizations discover insights about their users to drive decision-making through powerful link management and data-tracking solutions. The company’s tools come packed with labeling and automation features that simplify tracking digital footprints and optimizing user journeys around online touchpoints. We recently caught up with CEO Andy Meadows, who gave us the scoop on how BudURL continues to advocate for the agencies, developers, and marketers it serves by helping them make genuine and relevant connections with their audiences.

Most generous soda aficionados would agree with the famous jingle that sings “I’d like to buy the world a Coke.” But, in Canada, the law requires cola drinkers to also “offrir au monde un Coca.”

When soft drink giant Coca-Cola began researching packaging options for products shipping to Canada, the company’s compliance team quickly learned Canadian law required inclusion of both English and French content. This seemed simple enough; however, squeezing in two separate language-specific offers onto the limited space on a bottle proved difficult. That’s when Coca-Cola turned to BudURL for help.

BudURL’s solution was to create a new kind of routing technique to detect the language of a user’s phone upon scanning. Though BudURL’s platform was built to deliver customized link routing, this was the first case where rules-based routing was used in relation to language.

Coca-Cola found BudURL’s solutions to have an array of use cases, providing real-time insight into how and when products are purchased and how to improve the consumer experience with its brand. And businesses around the world took notice.

“Coca-Cola started a sort of domino effect for other organizations thinking about what they were doing and really wanting to have their own branded, short domains,” said BudURL CEO and Founder Andy Meadows.

Launching an Advanced URL Shortening System

As seen in the Coca-Cola’s case, many of BudURL’s features were borne out of necessity. When the company was founded in 2008, BudURL buttered its bread with its URL shortening solutions — a service few others offered at the time.

Since then, URL shortening has become well-known and widely practiced. Thus, BudURL emerged at the perfect time, providing a novel service while beating out the competition. BudURL delivers branded shortened URLs that help build brand trust and encourage high click-through rates.

In addition to impeccable timing, BudURL distinguished itself as a more professional and business-oriented alternative with paid services, gaining numerous clients seeking branded URLs. In contrast to the freemium model used by competitors, BudURL’s upfront approach appealed to a wider range of business types.

“Free service is great for many things, but certain businesses felt more comfortable paying for a service with clear longevity to it,” Andy said. “Our paid plans attracted a different audience which then attracted a lot of different feedback.”

This varied feedback inspired most of BudURL’s unique features, as every customer and industry has its own unique problems.

A Link Management Platform Built for Devs, Agencies, and Marketers

While link management is simple and straightforward, BudURL’s approach empowers professionals to do so much more than shorten URLs or update a handful of links.

“To my knowledge, we have the largest breadth of features and functionality for the customers in our space,” Andy said. “When a customer compares us to somebody else and we can check off all the things our competitor is doing, as well as show them 32 other things no one else provides, that really opens their eyes.”

BudURL’s primary features include a default link builder and a tool for easily creating secure, branded links. BudURL’s Link Builder eliminates the need for spreadsheet tracking and lets users manage all their campaigns and tracking parameters in one place, as well as view analytics in real time.

Meanwhile, BudURL makes branded URLs with a few simple clicks and also ensures link consistency across the entire business.

“It’s very easy for teams to work together across multiple brands,” Andy said. “As an organization, you spend so much time building your brand and audience that it makes no sense to use something unbranded to connect to something you can’t manage, monitor, or measure.”

Flexibility That Supports a Variety of Sectors and Stakeholders

BudURL was designed with marketers, agencies, and developers in mind. For marketers, advanced analytics are available alongside options for campaign tagging and organization. BudURL also easily integrates with external social media management platforms.

For agencies, BudURL makes it simple to manage multiple clients from a single account, allowing for flexible yet secure brand management. Agencies can take advantage of dynamic routing capabilities related to device, language, country, and even specific times and dates.

Also targeting the developer community, BudURL simplifies approaches to security and compliance with a highly flexible open API. Developers can manage users, initiate security lockdown features, and view audit logs.

At the same time, IT departments can directly consult with the Infosec compliance team to ensure the company is meeting all of its security and privacy requirements.

“We want developers to engage with us and ask questions and request features,” Andy said. “We always check the boxes that matter most, and we want our clients’ technology side to be just as happy as the business side.”

By ensuring consistency and ease of use across the entire enterprise, BudURL acts as a supplement to IT and marketing teams.

Fostering Stronger Connections Between Businesses and Customers

BudURL’s entire business model is based on putting customers first — and that means both its own clients and end users. As seen in Coca-Cola’s case, BudURL listens to customers and designs new features based on suggestions and feedback.

“We’re very open to customer feedback, and our platform was built in a flexible manner that allows us to evolve it based on the needs of that paying audience,” Andy said.

When a customer suggests a certain feature or presents a problem to the BudURL team, the idea gets passed around to several other customers. More often than not, Andy finds many customers have the same problems and can benefit from the same improvements.

“Because somebody asked, we can now solve that problem not just for one, but for all of them,” he said. “That’s the beauty of a cloud service.”

BudURL is on a mission to make its service more accessible and useful to organizations around the world. In 2018, that will mean adding more features and making it easier for brands to customize their links with more options. 2018 also marks BudURL’s 10th anniversary, and the team is more than eager to celebrate. This major milestone is made possible by BudURL’s responsive and loyal client base.

“A lot of companies don’t have this kind of longevity,” Andy said. “We’re very lucky to have worked with such great customers who put so much trust and faith in us to support them with their most valuable connection, which is that with their customers.”