What your campaigns really deliver

Q: What does source under the campaign name mean?

That is the origin you entered when building the link, for example newsletter, linkedin or google. It helps you tell identical campaign names from different channels apart.

The video is in the works. Until then, the guide will get you there.

Step-by-step guide

Where to find the Campaigns report

In the side menu, click "Acquisition".

A submenu opens. Choose "Campaigns" there.

Where to find the Campaigns report - Step 2 - Trustlytics

The Campaigns report opens.

Where to find the Campaigns report - Step 3 - Trustlytics

When you should check here

Unlike the other reports, this one only fills up when you do something yourself. So there are clear moments when it matters:

The day after you send. A newsletter shows almost all of its effect in the first 24 to 48 hours. Check two weeks later, and all you see is the afterglow.
While a paid ad is running. This is about your money. A weekly look is enough to notice when an ad is collecting clicks that turn into nothing.
Before you repeat a campaign. Planning the next newsletter or the next push? Look first at what worked last time. Under "Variants and keywords" you can even see which subject line pulled better.
At the end of the month, when you hand out budget. The performance matrix will not make that decision for you, but it makes it a lot easier.

And one look that always pays off: shortly after starting a campaign, check whether it shows up here at all. If it is missing, the tag in the link was probably incomplete. That can be fixed in five minutes while the campaign is still running. After that, the chance is gone, because nobody can tag anything retroactively.

What is in here, and what is not

A quick word so nothing surprises you: only visits that came to you through a tagged campaign link land in this report. A visitor who simply drops in through Google, through another website, or from a social network, without the link being tagged, does not show up here. You find that person in the reports of their own.

Put differently: you decide what appears here. As soon as you tag a link with the campaign URL builder and send it out, it becomes a campaign that this report counts.

One rule that has ruined plenty of reporting: only tag links that lead to your website from the outside. So from the newsletter, from a post, from an ad. Put a tag on a link inside your own website, and it overwrites the visitor's original origin. "Came through Google" suddenly turns into "came through my own campaign", and your numbers no longer hold up. For internal links, you need no tag.

The four metrics at the top

Four big numbers sit at the very top. Your overview in three seconds:

Metric	What it shows
Visits from campaigns	How many visits came in total through all your tagged links.
Active campaigns	How many different campaigns brought visitors in the selected period.
Best campaign	The name of the campaign with the most visits.
Best campaign visits	How many visits that best campaign brought.

If there is a "—" everywhere, there simply were no campaign visits in the selected period. Not an error, just no data yet.

About the "best campaign": what is meant here is the one with the most visits, not the one with the best effect. Those are not the same thing. Which campaign really achieved something you only see further down, once visit duration and bounce rate come into play. So treat this metric as a volume figure, not as an award.

Campaigns report: The four metrics at the top - Trustlytics

Your campaigns

Below that comes the main part of the report. A toggle with two views in the top right and a row of channel filters underneath.

The toggle: table or performance matrix

In the top right you choose how you want to look at the data:

Table (default): the classic list of your campaigns.
Performance matrix: a chart that sorts your campaigns into four rating fields. More on that below.

The channel filters

Below it sits a row of buttons. With them, you hide everything except one channel. One click, and both the table and the matrix show only that channel.

All: shows everything (default). The total number of visits sits next to it.
Email: your newsletter, for example.
Social: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and the rest.
Paid search: paid ads in search engines, Google Ads for example.
Display: banner and image ads on news sites, for example.
Messenger: WhatsApp for example.
Other: everything that fits in no drawer.

On every button you see an icon, the name, and the number of visits for that channel. Handy: channels with no visits in the selected period are not shown at all. That keeps the bar tidy and shows only what is actually running.

Where the channel comes from: Trustlytics does not decide that, you do. When you build the link, you enter a medium, and the assignment follows from it. If something lands under "Other" even though it was a newsletter, then the link held a medium that could not be sorted. Next time, simply fill in the field in the campaign URL builder the way it is suggested there.

Campaigns report: Your campaigns - Trustlytics

The table

In the table view, another toggle waits right above the table: simple ordetailed.

Table (default): the lean overview with the essentials.
Detailed table: the same list, but with every detail value about the quality of the visitors.

Columns in the simple table

Column	What it means
Campaign	Name of the campaign with an icon, and below it the source (where the visit came from, "newsletter" or "linkedin" for example).
Channel	A colored label for the channel (email, social, paid search, and so on).
Visits	How many visits this campaign brought.

Campaigns report: Table (simple) - Trustlytics

Columns in the detailed table

Four columns come in here. And they are the ones that tell you whether these were good visitors:

Column	What it means	What it gives you
Campaign	Name, icon, source.
Channel	Colored channel label.
Visits	Number of visits from this campaign.	Your volume figure: how many visitors the campaign brings.
Actions	The sum of all pages these visitors viewed.	More actions means more active visitors.
Actions per visit	Actions divided by visits.	Shows how deep the visitors dive in. A value close to 1 means one page viewed, then gone again.
Visit duration	How long the visitors stay on average.	Longer means the campaign brings interested people, not accidental clickers.
Bounce rate	Share that disappears right after a single page.	Low is good. High means the campaign brings visitors who are not a fit.

With paid campaigns, this view counts double. Every click cost you something, whether the visitor stayed or not. An ad with a thousand clicks where nearly all of them bounce immediately was expensive and returned little. A small campaign with long, active visits is often worth more than the bare number suggests. So never do the math on visits alone.

Campaigns report: Detailed table - Trustlytics

What you can set here

Sorting: click a column heading to sort ascending or descending.
Entries per page: at the bottom you choose how many rows are shown (10, 25, 50, or All).
Paging: with long lists, you page through at the bottom.

The period being analyzed always follows the date selection at the top. Set a different period there, and the entire report adjusts immediately.

When the table is empty

If no campaign visits came in during the selected period, the table shows a note about it, along with the tip to build a campaign URL in the campaign URL builder first. That is not an error either. A campaign only appears once the first visitor finds their way to you through the tagged link.

Is the same campaign in the list twice? As "Newsletter" and as "newsletter" for example? Then the links were named differently. For Trustlytics those are two separate campaigns because it takes the names exactly as they appear in the link. Merging them afterward is not possible. The remedy is simple: always write everything in lowercase, no spaces, hyphens instead. So newsletter-may instead of Newsletter May. Settle on one spelling once and stick with it, and you have peace forever.

The performance matrix

One click on Performance matrix in the top right, and your campaigns appear as dots in a chart. Each dot is a campaign. This view answers what may be the most important question of all at a glance: where is the effort worth it, and where is it not?

Here is how to read the chart:

To the right: the further right a dot sits, the more visits.
Upward: the further up, the higher the engagement. Meaning the visitors stay and click onward instead of bouncing right back out.
Size of the dot: bigger dots stand for more visits.

The area is split into four fields, each in its own color:

Field (corner)	What it means	What to do
Stars (top right)	Lots of visits and high engagement.	Running beautifully. Keep going exactly like this.
Potential (top left)	Strong quality, but few visits so far.	Give it more reach. Post more often, more budget.
Volume drivers (bottom right)	Lots of visits, but weak engagement.	Adjust the landing page or the content so the visitors stay.
Rethink (bottom left)	Few visits, little engagement.	Rebuild it or stop it entirely.

Hover over a dot with your mouse, and a small info window appears with the name, channel, visits, and engagement. Click the dot, and the full detail view opens (more on that in a moment). If there is nothing to show, the note "No data for the matrix view." appears.

A warning about the matrix: with very few visits, the position of a dot does not say much yet. A campaign with four visits can land in "Potential" in the top left just because one of those four visitors stayed a long time. Only rely on the placement once a campaign has collected a few dozen visits. Before that, the matrix is a snapshot, not a verdict.

Campaigns report: Performance matrix - Trustlytics

Campaigns report: Performance matrix info window - Trustlytics

The detail view

You open it two ways: click a row in the table, or click a dot in the matrix. The detail view then slides in from the right. A click on the X closes the window again.

Campaigns report: Detail view - Trustlytics

In the detail view you see:

Statistics

Four metrics about this exact campaign:

Metric	What it means
Visits	How many visits this campaign brought.
Unique visitors	How many different visitors are behind them (somebody who comes several times still counts as one).
Ø Visit duration	How long these visitors stay with you on average.
Bounce rate	Share that is gone right after one page.

Campaigns report: The detail view: Statistics - Trustlytics

Trend

A small curve shows how the visits from this campaign developed over time. There you see the spike on the day the newsletter went out, for example, followed by the gentle fade afterward. Hover over the curve with your mouse, and the exact value appears for each day. If there is nothing, a "—" appears.

Most visited entry pages

Which page the visitors from this campaign landed on first. With the visit count and a small bar for comparison. That way you see right away whether your campaign link points to the right page. No data? Then it says "No entry pages in the selected period."

Most visited follow-up pages

Where the visitors clicked next. That tells you whether they really look around or disappear again right after the first page. No data? "No follow-up pages in the selected period."

Devices

A small column chart shows which device these visitors were on: desktop, phone, tablet and others. Solid thing to know, because a campaign whose visitors nearly all come from a phone needs a landing page that genuinely looks good on a phone. No data? "No device data in the selected period."

Variants and keywords

If you added extra details while building the campaign URL, two different variants of the same newsletter for example (two subject lines, say) or a keyword for paid ads, you see here which variant brought the most. That tells you exactly which subject line pulled better and which one you can drop next time. If the detail is missing on an entry, "(no variant)" or "(no keyword)" appears. If you used no variants at all: "This campaign recorded no variants or keywords."

How to use variants properly: when you want to compare two things, only ever change one of them. Two subject lines with the same content, or two images with the same text. Change both at once, and in the end you will not know what made the difference. And give your variants names that speak, like subject-short and subject-long. In three months nobody remembers what a and b stood for.

Campaigns report: The detail view: Variants and keywords - Trustlytics

Aha moments you will recognize

This report is often the moment when a cherished assumption bursts. A few patterns you will recognize quickly:

The expensive ad that returns nothing. A paid campaign brings clicks by the truckload, but in the detail view you see that nearly all of them bounce right away. In the matrix it sits at the bottom right with the "volume drivers". A clear sign that the ad and the landing page do not match.
The small newsletter that shines. Few visits, but a long visit duration and plenty of follow-up pages. Top left in the matrix, in the "potential" field. Every extra dollar pays off here.
The wrong entry page. In the detail view you notice that your link does not lead to the right page. A tiny fix with a noticeable effect, often a five minute job.
The better variant. Under "Variants and keywords" you see which subject line or which image pulled better. And you know exactly what to bet on for the next campaign.
The campaign that never shows up. You sent it, visitors came, and there is nothing here. Then the tag was missing from the link, or a redirect on your website cut it off along the way. Annoying, but instructive: from now on, you check the link before you send.

What is in it for me?

This report is your test bench for the question "where does my marketing effort go, and is it worth it?". It answers what actually matters:

Which campaign brings me real visitors? The metrics and the table show it at a glance.
Are they the right visitors too? Visit duration and bounce rate separate the active ones from the accidental clickers.
Where should I invest more, where less? The matrix sorts that into four fields for you, so you do not have to puzzle over it.
What works in detail? The detail view shows entry pages, the trend, and the best variant.

The real value is that you stop guessing. Most people hand out their marketing budget by feel and hope for the best. Here, by contrast, you see what is actually happening, in numbers you cannot argue away. That is the difference between "I think the newsletter does something" and "I know it does".

If you take only one thing from this report: look at the matrix and find the "volume drivers" field in the bottom right. That is where your most expensive misses sit. Campaigns that bring lots of visitors, but the wrong ones. Fix those landing pages, and you get more out of what you are already paying for, faster than anywhere else.

Common questions

Why do I not see my campaign at all
Usually the tag in the link is missing. Only visits through a link tagged with UTM values land here, meaning a link from the campaign URL builder. And one more thing: only real, human visitors are counted. Automated programs (bots) are filtered out by Trustlytics beforehand.

The link was tagged, and still nothing appears. What else?
Then a redirect probably swallowed the tag along the way. That happens when the target page redirects internally to a different address, from an old page to a new one, for example. The tag can get lost in the process, and the visit lands in your numbers as "Direct". So before you send, quickly check that the campaign link leads to the intended page without a detour. A single test click is enough: if the tags are still in the address bar after the page loads, everything is fine.

My Google Ads clicks are under "Referring websites" instead of here. Why?
Because those clicks arrived without a campaign tag. For this report the information about which campaign it was is then missing, and we do not want to guess it. So if you see an ad network in the referring websites, that is a pointer: your ads are not fully tagged. Add the tag to the target address of every ad, and those visitors will show up here from then on, under the name you gave them yourself.

What does "source" under the campaign name mean?
That is the origin you entered when building the link, "newsletter", "linkedin" or "google" for example. It helps you tell identical campaign names from different channels apart.

What does "engagement" mean in the matrix?
A measure of how active your visitors were. Do they stay, do they click onward? High means the campaign brings interested people, not passers-by.

Why do the numbers differ slightly from my ad platform?
Small differences are normal. Your ad platform counts every click on the ad. Trustlytics counts the visits that actually arrived on your site afterward. Between the click and the arrival, a small share always gets lost when somebody cancels the loading, for example. That is not a counting error, it is the difference between "clicked" and "arrived".

Can I correct a badly named campaign afterward?
No. Trustlytics takes the name exactly as it appeared in the link, and that assignment is fixed. So two rows for the same campaign stay two rows. From your next send on, you can do it right, and one simple rule helps: all lowercase, hyphens instead of spaces, always the same spelling for the same source.

Do I have to tag every link?
No, and it would not make sense either. Tag what you want to measure: newsletters, ads, planned pushes. Everything else arrives in the other reports anyway. And links inside your own website must never be tagged, that distorts your numbers.

How often should I look in here?
Whenever you have a campaign running. With a newsletter, in the two or three days after you send, because after that the curve flattens out anyway. With running ads, a weekly look pays off, so you do not keep putting money into a campaign that is stuck in the "rethink" field.

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