Running a campaign without tracking is like driving with the windshield painted over. The good news: you don't need an expensive analytics stack to know what's working. You need tagged, shortened links and one place to read the results. Here's a simple system.
Step 1 — Plan your channels
List every place the campaign will appear: email, Instagram, a paid ad, a printed flyer, an SMS. Each one gets its own tracked link so you can compare them fairly.
Step 2 — Tag each link with UTMs
Use the UTM builder to add a consistent utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign to every link. This is what lets your analytics separate "email" traffic from "instagram" traffic. See how to add UTM parameters.
Step 3 — Shorten and (if needed) add a QR
Shorten each tagged link so it's clean enough to share, and grab the auto-generated QR code for anything printed. Now your flyer and your email both report into the same campaign.
Step 4 — Read the analytics
As the campaign runs, watch your dashboard:
- Which channel drove the most clicks/scans?
- What devices and locations is your audience on?
- Which creative (via
utm_content) performed best?
Step 5 — Double down
Kill the channels that didn't move, shift budget to the ones that did, and re-point any dynamic links without changing your creative. That feedback loop is the whole game.
Why do it in one tool
lynkily bundles short links, QR codes, the UTM builder and analytics together, so a campaign's digital and physical touchpoints report side by side — free to start, analytics from $5/month. Compare it to the alternatives in cheap link tracking tools.