Mobile Deeplinks

Enabling deep linking for a mobile application will allow you to invoke links from within an email that open an app and launch specific, defined screens within the app, much like a link to a standard web page. Deep linking is especially useful for promotional efforts because it allows you and any third party to open the app when a link is clicked, rather than driving to a website or to your app’s listing on the iOS App Store or Google Play.

Some mobile applications, such as Facebook, include deep linking capabilities natively. If you're curious to learn whether an app you'd like to link to supports deep linking, ask your Account Manager or Liveclicker Support.

Note: If you would like to deep link within your own app, ask your mobile app developer whether your app supports deep links. If your app does not support deep linking, the capability will need to be added. There are several third party resources you can use to add deep links to your mobile app. Alternatively, if you'd like Liveclicker to add deep links to your app, this can be provided as a Professional Service. Below are resources to help you understand how to add deep links to your app:
- App Links - An open, cross-platform solution for app-to-app linking that gives you the tools you need to expose deep links in your app or to link out to other apps.
- Mobile Deeplinking - A collaborative industry effort to provide a consistent, high-quality source of documentation, sample code, and SDKs to help mobile app publishers create effective, seamless cross-media user experiences and marketing campaigns.

Deeplinking in iOS 9/10/11

Apple now requires universal links to be set up for deeplinking into apps in iOS. Many widely used apps already have this set up: The App store app, yelp, X, etc. In this experience:

If the device has the app installed, your universal link will direct the opener to the correct place in the app.
If the device does not have the app installed, the user will be directed to the corresponding page on the mobile web.

Here are instructions from Apple on how to set up Universal Links for your app:

1. Create an apple-app-site-association file that contains JSON data about the URLs that your app can handle.

2. Upload the apple-app-site-association file to your HTTPS web server.

3. Prepare your app to handle universal links.

Outlined in this developer article are the specific steps for creating universal links for your app: https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/General/Conceptual/AppSearch/UniversalLinks.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40016308-CH12