Skip to main content
Bitly is a link management platform that lets marketing and growth teams shorten URLs, organize them into groups and campaigns, and measure click performance across channels. Beyond the familiar short links, Bitly tracks every click by date so teams can see exactly how each link is performing over time. Connecting Bitly to Parabola lets you pull that performance data out of the Bitly dashboard and into automated workflows — joining it with ad spend from Facebook Ads, campaign data from HubSpot, or revenue data from Shopify so your link analytics become part of a bigger reporting picture instead of sitting in isolation.

​
How to authenticate

Bitly uses Bearer token authentication with a Generic Access Token.
1
Log in to your Bitly account at app.bitly.com.
2
Click your profile avatar in the top-right corner, then go to Profile > Settings > API.
3
Enter your Bitly account password to unlock the token section, then click Generate token.
4
Copy the token that appears — this is your Generic Access Token.
5
In Parabola, add a Pull from Bitly step, click Authorize, and paste the token when prompted.
Bitly Generic Access Tokens are scoped to your user account. If you manage multiple Bitly organizations, make sure you’re logged into the right account before generating the token — each token only grants access to that user’s groups and links.

​
Available data

The Pull from Bitly step gives you access to link and performance data across your Bitly account:
  • Bitlinks by Group — the full list of shortened links in a given group, including the short URL, the original long URL, title, tags, creation date, campaign associations, QR code IDs, and whether the link is archived. Filter by date range, tag, campaign, or creator.
  • Clicks for a Bitlink — the click count for a specific link broken out by date, with flexible time granularity (minute, hour, day, week, or month). Useful for building time-series views of individual link performance.
  • Click Summary for a Bitlink — the total click count for a specific link rolled up into a single number over a defined time window. Useful when you need a simple aggregate rather than a day-by-day breakdown.

​
Common use cases

  • Report on campaign link performance: Pull clicks for every Bitlink associated with a campaign and join with ad spend data from Facebook Ads or TikTok to calculate cost-per-click and compare channel efficiency in one place.
  • Audit your full link library: Export all Bitlinks for a group with their creation dates, tags, and archived status to identify stale or untagged links, flag duplicates, or enforce naming conventions across teams.
  • Build a weekly marketing digest: Schedule a flow to pull click totals for your top links each week, format the results, and post a summary to Slack or send it via SendGrid so stakeholders get a consistent pulse on content performance.
  • Track link performance over time: Pull daily click data per link, load it into Snowflake, BigQuery, or Google Drive, and build a running history that lets you spot seasonal trends or measure the impact of a campaign push.
  • Reconcile links to revenue: Join Bitly click data with order or revenue data from Shopify or Stripe to estimate attributed revenue per link or campaign, giving your team a cleaner view of what’s actually driving conversions.
  • Monitor QR code campaigns: Filter your Bitlinks to those with associated QR code IDs and pull click summaries to report on offline-to-online conversion — packaging, events, print ads, and in-store displays all in one feed.

​
Tips for using Parabola with Bitly

  • Use the Group GUID to scope your pull. The Bitlinks by Group endpoint requires a Group GUID. Find yours in Bitly under Settings > Groups, or grab it from the URL when you’re browsing your group’s links. If you have multiple groups (by brand, region, or team), run one Pull from Bitly step per group and combine the results with a Merge tables step.
  • Loop over links for click data. The click and click summary endpoints pull data for one link at a time. Use a Loop step in Parabola to iterate over a list of Bitlinks pulled from the group endpoint and retrieve clicks for each one automatically.
  • Schedule the flow to match your reporting cadence. Daily is the right default for most link performance reports; weekly if you’re building campaign summaries. Set the schedule in your flow’s Run settings.
  • Filter archived links upstream. The Bitlinks by Group endpoint includes an archived filter. Set it to off if you only want active links, or both if you’re running a full audit. Filtering here reduces the data you need to process downstream.
  • Use tags to organize and filter. If your team already tags Bitlinks by campaign, channel, or region in Bitly, you can pass those tags as filters in the Pull from Bitly step to pull only the links relevant to a given report.
  • Set up Alerts for traffic anomalies. Add a Parabola Alert step after your click pull to notify your team in Slack when a link’s clicks spike above or fall below a threshold — useful for catching broken links or flagging viral content early.
With Bitly and Parabola connected, the click exports your marketing team pulls manually and the campaign recaps built by copying numbers from the dashboard run on a schedule, with output landing wherever your team already works.
Last modified on June 18, 2026