The video is in the works. Until then, the guide will get you there.
Step-by-step guide
Where to find the Campaign URL builder
In the side menu, click "Acquisition".
A submenu opens. Choose "Campaign URL builder" there.
The Campaign URL builder opens.
Which links you should tag
Not every link needs a tag. The rule of thumb is simple: you tag whatever you send out yourself.
Required
- Newsletters and email sends. Without a tag, these visitors show up as "Direct" because email programs pass along no origin.
- Paid ads. This is about your money. Skip the tag, and you pay for clicks without knowing afterward which ad brought them.
- Your own posts on social networks. Above all when you want to tell individual posts apart.
- QR codes on print. The only way to make a poster or a flyer measurable at all.
- Links you hand to a partner. Then you see what actually came of the collaboration.
Off limits
- Links inside your own website. A tag on an internal link overwrites the visitor's real origin. "Came through Google" then turns into "came through my own campaign", and your numbers no longer hold up. For navigation on your own website, you need none of this.
Not necessary: visitors from Google search, from other websites, or from social networks that you did not link yourself. Trustlytics recognizes that origin on its own. You find visits like that in the reports of their own.
The two tabs at the top
The page has two tabs at the top:
- New campaign: this is where you build a new link.
- My campaigns: this is where you find every link you have saved. Next to the name sits a small number telling you how many campaigns are already in your library.
New campaign (building a link)
Choosing a channel
The first box is called "Pick a channel". It holds a lot of tiles, each with an icon and a name. Click one, and the builder fills in the right technical values by itself. So there is nothing for you to memorize and no expert knowledge required.
These tiles are available:
- Newsletter
- Email (general)
- Display ads (banner ads on news sites, for example)
- X (Twitter)
- YouTube
- TikTok
- Google Ads
- Facebook Ads
- LinkedIn Ads
- Print / QR code (for printed materials)
- Affiliate / Partner
- SMS
- Podcast
- Digital PR
- Custom (for anything that fits no tile)
As soon as you click a tile, it gets highlighted. The "Source" and "Channel type" fields fill themselves in, and the cursor jumps straight into the "Campaign name" field so you can keep typing without a detour. With Google Ads, the "Search term" field appears as well.
Filling in the fields
The input fields are on the left. Everything with an asterisk (*) is required, the rest is optional.
| Field | What it means | Required? |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Your internal name for this campaign, "Newsletter May 2026" for example. It shows up in your library later. | Yes |
| Target URL | The page on your website the visitors should click through to. Usually prefilled with your home page. | Yes |
| Source | Where does the visitor come from? (newsletter, linkedin, google for example) |
Yes |
| Channel type | What kind of channel? (email, social, cpc for example) |
Yes |
| Campaign name | What is your campaign called? (newsletter-june-2026 for example) |
Yes |
| Variant (optional) | When you test several variants, two subject lines, for example, or "header-banner" against "footer-cta". | No |
| Search term (optional) | Paid search only: which keyword? This field only appears with matching channels such as Google Ads. | No |
| Notes (optional) | An internal memo (send date, audience, and so on). Visible only to you, with no effect on tracking. | No |
Source or channel type? The difference.
The source is the specific sender, meaning the name of the place the visitor comes from. The channel type is the kind of route, meaning the drawer that place belongs in. A few examples make it clear:
| You send out | Source | Channel type |
|---|---|---|
| Your newsletter | newsletter |
email |
| A post on LinkedIn | linkedin |
social |
| An ad on Google | google |
cpc |
| A flyer with a QR code | flyer |
print |
Several sources can share the same channel type, and that is intended. LinkedIn and Instagram are both social, and that is exactly why the report later lets you look at all social networks together with one click. When you click a tile, the builder fills in both fields correctly anyway. You only have to touch them when you are building something custom.
The builder takes care of the spelling for you
Below the fields sits the note "Lowercase, hyphens, no umlauts. We format it for you." In practice that means: while you type, Trustlytics irons out your entries. Capital letters become lowercase, spaces become hyphens, and umlaut characters get replaced (ä becomes ae). That way "Newsletter" and "newsletter" do not turn up in your reports as two separate campaigns but correctly as one.
That sounds like a small thing, but it is the most common reason for botched reporting. Other tools let you walk straight into that trap. Not here.
One thing still stays with you, though: the builder corrects the spelling, not the choice of words. Whether you call your source newsletter or mailing is something it cannot know, to it, those are two different things. So settle on a handful of fixed terms once and stick with them. The easiest route is to always go through the tiles, then the source is automatically the same every time.
The target URL field is deliberately not lowercased. Web addresses have to stay exactly as they are, otherwise the link ends up going nowhere.
The finished URL
On the right you watch the finished, tagged URL come together live while you type. No button to press, it just happens.
As long as required fields are missing, a note appears there like "Pick a channel and fill in the required fields." or "Please fill in source, channel type, and campaign name.". Once every required field is filled, the finished URL appears, and the buttons below it become clickable.
The buttons
- Save to library: files the campaign under "My campaigns". While editing, the button is called "Save changes".
- Copy to clipboard: copies the finished URL so you can paste it straight into your newsletter or post. A short "Copied!" message confirms it. This button only becomes active once the URL is finished.
- QR code: opens the detail view with a QR code for your link (more on that in a moment). Also, only active once the URL is finished.
- Reset: clears the fields again, but the target URL stays. While editing, this button is called Cancel instead and takes you back to the library.
The QR code, for posters, flyers and business cards
Click QR code and the detail view slides in from the right, with the QR code for your tagged link. Anybody who scans the code with their phone lands directly on your page, and the visit gets assigned to your campaign cleanly.
And that is the clever part: suddenly you can measure what your printed material brings in too. The poster downtown, the flyer in the mailbox, and the sticker on the packaging. Until now that was a blind spot, now it is in the report.
The window has a "Download as PNG" button. With it, you save the QR code as an image file and drop it into your poster or your flyer.
And a tip about the look: the shorter the address, the coarser and therefore easier to scan the pattern gets. So keep campaign and variant names short for QR codes. On printed material the rest applies too: big enough, enough space around it, and dark code on a light background. A code squeezed prettily into the layout that nobody can scan does nothing for you.
My campaigns
Click "My campaigns" at the top, and every link you have saved is right in front of you. The big advantage: you never start from scratch again, and you always use the same, consistent values. That keeps your reporting clean all by itself.
In the top right sits the "Create new campaign" button, which takes you back to the first tab. If you have saved nothing yet, it says: "You haven't saved any campaigns yet. Create one under the «New campaign» tab."
The table
Every row is a saved campaign. The columns:
| Column | What it means |
|---|---|
| Name | Your internal name with a matching icon. If you added notes, they appear in small type underneath. |
| Source / Channel | Where from and through which channel type. Below it, the campaign name, if needed. |
| Target URL | The finished, tagged address. One click opens it in a new tab. |
| Created | When the campaign was created. |
| Origin | "Manual" means you created it. "Imported" means it was taken over automatically from your existing tracking data at the start. |
What you can do per row
Four small buttons wait at the right edge of every row:
- (Copy): copies this campaign's finished URL straight to the clipboard.
- (Edit): opens the campaign in the form again so you can change something.
- (Performance): takes you to the Campaigns report with one click and shows the results for exactly this campaign. The shortest route from the link to the result.
- (Delete): removes the campaign from the library. Trustlytics asks first to be safe: "Delete campaign?". Important: visits already recorded stay in your reports. You are only deleting the saved link entry, not the statistics behind it.
Practical examples
Enough theory. Let us look at what a real campaign looks like. Say you launch a spring promotion in March and push it four ways: in the newsletter, with a post on LinkedIn, with a Google ad, and with a flyer.
The most important rule up front: the campaign name stays the same everywhere. Only the source and the channel type change. That is exactly what lets you answer two questions in the report later. How did the spring promotion do overall? And which channel contributed the most?
| You send out | Source | Channel type | Campaign name |
|---|---|---|---|
| Newsletter in March | newsletter | spring-promo-2026 | |
| Post on LinkedIn | social | spring-promo-2026 | |
| Ad on Google | cpc | spring-promo-2026 | |
| Flyer with QR code | flyer | spring-promo-2026 |
Four links, four tiles clicked, the same campaign name typed four times. That was all. In the Campaigns report the spring promotion then shows up as one row, and below it, broken down, what each individual channel contributed.
And what is the variant for?
The variant answers a question all the other fields leave open: which link was the best one? You need it whenever several links belong to the same push.
An example everybody knows. Your newsletter has three links to the same page: the big image at the top, a text link in the middle, the button at the bottom. Without a variant, those are three identical links to Trustlytics, and you never find out which one got clicked. With a variant you do:
| The link in the newsletter | Variant |
|---|---|
| The image at the very top | image-top |
| The text link in the copy | textlink-middle |
| The button at the end | button-bottom |
Everything else stays identical: same source, same channel type, same campaign name. Only the variant tells them apart. After you send, you see in black and white whether your readers click the image or only hit the button at the very bottom. For the next newsletter you then know where the link belongs.
Three more cases where the variant pays off
- Trying two subject lines. You send the same newsletter to two halves of your list, with different subject lines. Variant
subject-aandsubject-b. Afterward, you know which wording brought more visitors, not just who opened the email. - Comparing two ad images. Same campaign, same landing page, two different images. Variant
image-mountainsandimage-city. As soon as it is clear which one pulls, you switch the other one off and save money. - Several posts over several weeks. You post the same promotion three times on LinkedIn. Variant
post-1,post-2,post-3. That way you see whether the third post still brings anything or whether you are just annoying your readers.
And what do I call all this?
There is no right or wrong, but there is practical and impractical. What has proven itself:
- Short and meaningful.
spring-promo-2026makes sense to your colleague too.sp26-new-finalmakes sense to nobody in three months, yourself included. - Put the year or the month in. Otherwise this spring's newsletter and last spring's run together in the report.
- Always the same words. Decide once between
newsletterandmailingand stick with it. The builder corrects the spelling, but it cannot know that you mean the same thing by both. - No people's names. Colleagues move on, campaign names stay in the report forever.
The easiest way to run this: build the first link, save it to the library, and use it as a template next time. Then your spelling stays consistent on its own, without you having to remember anything.
What is in it for me?
Campaign tracking has exactly one tedious spot, and that is building the links without mistakes. That is precisely what this tool takes off your hands:
- You need no expert knowledge. Click a tile, fill in three fields, copy the link. What UTM values are is something you may safely forget again.
- The naming chaos goes away. No more jumble of "Summer Promo", "summer-promo" and "Summer_Promo" that all mean the same thing and still sit in the report as three rows. The builder standardizes it while you type.
- Printed advertising becomes measurable. Through the QR code, you see for the first time how many visitors come in through your poster or your flyer. Something that was pure guesswork for decades.
- You build every link only once. For the next send you pull it out of the library. That saves time and prevents exactly the typos that ruin a report.
- From the link to the result in one click. Through "View performance" you jump straight from the library into the matching report. No searching, no filtering.
The real gain, though, is a different one. A single badly built link is enough for a whole newsletter send to land in the wrong bucket, and you only notice when it is too late. Two minutes of care beforehand spare you the question "where did those 300 visitors last Tuesday actually come from?" which by then has no answer.
If you take away only one habit: always build the link through the tiles and save it to the library. Then your sources stay consistent by themselves, and the Campaigns report shows you clean numbers instead of a list full of duplicates.
Common questions
What are these “UTM” values anyway?
Small additions at the end of a web address. They tell Trustlytics where a visitor came from. You do not have to understand them, the builder puts them together correctly for you.
Do my recipients see this tag?
Not in the newsletter or in the post, because your link text is what is shown there. After the click, though, the values appear in the browser's address bar. So they are not secret, but they are completely harmless: there is nothing about the person in them, only where the click came from. Most visitors never look at the address bar anyway.
What is the difference between “source” and “channel type”?
The source is the specific place, so linkedin or newsletter. The channel type is the drawer it goes in, so social or email. Several sources may share the same type, and that is even desirable. In the report it lets you either look at one single source or at every source of a type together. When you click a tile, the builder fills in both correctly.
Why do I not see my campaign in the “Campaigns” report?
The report only fills up once somebody has actually clicked your tagged link. On top of that, check that you really used the finished link from the builder and not the plain address without the tag by mistake.
The link was finished, but the visit lands under “Direct” in the report. What is going on?
Most likely a redirect on your website swallowed the tag along the way, for instance, when the target page redirects internally to a different address. Do a test click before you send: if the UTM values are still in the address bar after the page loads, everything is fine.
How should I name my campaigns?
Best by a fixed pattern, so the list stays sortable later. Topic plus time period has proven itself, so something like newsletter-2026-06 or spring-promo-2026. Putting the year first pays off if you repeat the same push every year. And keep it short, the name turns up in every table.
Do I have to save every campaign?
No. You can simply copy the link and use it without filing it. Saving pays off when you want to find it again later or reuse it.
May I tag links inside my own website?
Absolutely not. A tag on an internal link overwrites the visitor's real origin, and your numbers no longer hold up afterward. Only tag links that lead to you from the outside.
Can I still change a QR code that is already printed?
No. A QR code is a fixed pattern containing exactly one address. Once the flyer is printed, that is that. With a wrong target page, only one thing helps: keep the page alive at the old address and redirect from there. Which is why we strongly advise scanning it yourself before it goes to print.
Can I make a QR code for a newsletter link too?
You can, it just rarely makes sense. The QR code plays to its strength on printed material, where nobody wants to type out a long address. On a screen the copied link is enough.
I deleted a campaign. Are my numbers gone now?
No. Only the saved link entry in the library gets deleted. Every visit that campaign already brought in stays in the Campaigns report.
Does this also work if I shorten my link first?
Yes. Short links redirect to your full address in the end, so the tag comes along. Still, do a test click and check that the values are in the address bar after the page loads. And keep in mind: once shortened, you can no longer tell from the address where it leads. So note down which short link belongs to which campaign or file the full link in the library.