The link plan for a product launch
Set up the links a week early, freeze them at launch, and change destinations rather than URLs when things move.
By ShortFreeURL Team · 3 August 2026
Build the link map before the assets
List every surface the launch will touch: the announcement email, each social platform, the changelog, the docs, the press kit, partner posts, the in-app banner, the sales team's outreach. Each gets a row with its own short link and UTM set. Doing this first means every asset producer copies a link rather than inventing one.
Use one campaign name everywhere and enforce it
A launch that appears as launch-x, xlaunch and product-x-launch in reporting is unmeasurable. Pick the campaign value on day one, write it at the top of the link map, and have one person create all the links from a template. This is the least glamorous and most valuable part of the plan.
Point at a destination you can change
On launch day the page will move, break, or need a different anchor. If every asset contains the raw URL, you cannot fix it. If they all contain short links, you edit destinations centrally. Make it a rule that no raw destination URL appears in any launch asset, including the ones you think are internal.
Prepare the pre-launch state
Links go into assets before the page exists. Decide what the links do until launch: a waitlist page, a teaser, or a holding page. Never leave them pointing at a 404 during the review period, because someone will click one in a Slack preview and report it as broken at the worst possible moment.
Freeze the links at go-live
From launch onward, slugs do not change. Anything wrong is fixed at the destination. This is the discipline that makes the rest of the plan work, and it needs to be stated explicitly because the instinct under pressure is to make a new link.
Instrument the funnel past the click
Clicks tell you which channels delivered attention. Whether that attention converted needs the destination side: a signup event, a trial start, a demo request, all tagged with the same campaign value so the two halves join. Set this up before launch, because retrofitting attribution to a launch that already happened is mostly guesswork.
Do a same-day review, then a two-week one
On the day, check that every link resolves, that clicks are being recorded on each, and that any link showing zero traffic is not simply broken in one asset. Two weeks later, do the real analysis, by which time the long-tail channels — documentation, community posts, partner content — will have had time to show up.
Archive the link map
Keep it. The next launch is a copy of this one with new destinations, and the comparison between the two is the only way to know whether your channel mix is improving.