# Bitly

Bitly is a link management platform that lets you shorten URLs, track clicks, and organize links into campaigns and channels. It's widely used by marketing teams to measure link performance across email, social, and paid campaigns.

Connecting Bitly to Coupler.io lets you pull your link data into spreadsheets, dashboards, or data warehouses — automatically, on a schedule you control.

**Why connect Bitly to Coupler.io?**

* Export click data for all your Bitlinks without manual CSV downloads
* Combine Bitlink performance with data from other marketing tools using Join or Append transformations
* Send your link analytics to AI destinations like ChatGPT or Gemini for automated insights
* Keep Google Sheets, BigQuery, or Looker Studio dashboards up to date with fresh Bitly data

## Prerequisites

* A Bitly account (Free, Basic, or higher)
* A Bitly API access token — available under **Settings → Developer settings → API** in your Bitly account
* Access to the groups, organizations, or campaigns you want to export

{% hint style="success" %}
Start with the **Bitlink clicks** entity if your goal is performance reporting. It gives you the most actionable data right away.
{% endhint %}

## Quick start

{% stepper %}
{% step %}
**Create a new data flow in Coupler.io.** From your Coupler.io dashboard, click **Add data flow** and search for Bitly as the source.
{% endstep %}

{% step %}
**Enter your Bitly API token.** In your Bitly account, go to **Settings → Developer settings → API**, generate or copy your access token, and paste it into the Coupler.io connection field.
{% endstep %}

{% step %}
**Select an entity.** Choose what data you want to pull — for example, **Bitlink clicks** for performance data or **Bitlinks** for a full list of your shortened links.
{% endstep %}

{% step %}
**Set a date range.** Use the date pickers to define the start and end dates for your export period.
{% endstep %}

{% step %}
**Choose a destination.** Select where your data should land — Google Sheets, Excel, BigQuery, Looker Studio, or an AI destination like ChatGPT or Gemini.
{% endstep %}

{% step %}
**Run the data flow.** Click **Run** to execute a manual sync. Once it completes successfully, your Bitly data will appear in your destination.
{% endstep %}
{% endstepper %}

## Available entities

| Entity                      | What it contains                                  |
| --------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------- |
| Bitlinks                    | All shortened links in your account with metadata |
| Bitlink clicks              | Click counts per link over a date range           |
| Bsds                        | Custom branded short domains                      |
| Campaigns                   | Campaign definitions and metadata                 |
| Channels                    | Channel definitions linked to campaigns           |
| Groups                      | Groups within your organization                   |
| Group preferences           | Settings and preferences per group                |
| Group shorten counts        | Number of links shortened per group               |
| Organizations               | Organization-level account data                   |
| Organization shorten counts | Number of links shortened at the org level        |
| QR codes                    | QR code data linked to Bitlinks                   |