Marketing Cloud custom url expiration

Question

Is it possible in Marketing Cloud to set custom expiration which applies only to one particular URL? We include lots of different links in our emails, these have to stay valid as long as possible as direct to product pages and so on.

But in one email we include a promotional link, which has to expire after 14 days.

Is there any way to perform this setting on single-url-level?

Answer 1

You can create a custom redirect setup, using CloudPages. In you email, you use CloudPageUrl, given your redirect CloudPage has ID 1234:

<p>
<a href="%%=RedirectTo(CloudPagesURL(1234, 'ExpirationDate', '2018-11-25', 'Destination', 'http://www.salesforce.com/','Fallback','http://www.exacttarget.com/')=%%" alias="Link to somewhere">
Take me there
</a></p>

Here you define both the expiration date, the correct URL, and the fallback URL, which is followed after expiry date is reached. Your CloudPage should not contain more than the code below:

%%[
    SET @FormattedExpirationDate = Format(@ExpirationDate, "yyyy-MM-dd")
    SET @Today = Format(Now(), "yyyy-MM-dd")
    IF (DateDiff(@FormattedExpirationDate,@Today,'D')<0) THEN
    Redirect(@Destination)
    ELSE
    Redirect(@Fallback)
    ENDIF    
]%%

Using Redirect takes the URL defined in the CloudPageUrl in your email, and picks the URL depending on the date.

Please keep in mind, that CloudPage impressions consume SuperMessages, so be aware of this solution having a potential impact on your license - depending on how much traffic you generate to this page.

To avoid using SuperMessages, you can utilize a code resource for redirect. This can be a simple TXT code resource, which will simply redirect the visitor to either destination or fallback url.

Answer 2

Generally URL expiration is configured at MID level, which would affect all the links in Emails.

However in your scenario I would suggest trying out Content Builder block Live Images, as this comes with a function to set dynamic assignment to expire content on Emails, this is available on Classic Builder and Content Builder.

From documentation:

Use Live Image in Email Studio to offer an image for a limited time and replace the original offer with another image after a certain time.

It was added to Content Builder with January 2018 release and you'll need to contact your Account Executive if you don't have it enabled.