Campaign Link Manager
The link you need almost always exists already. Somebody built it in March, pasted it into a message, and it has not been findable since. A link manager is mostly about finding.
Where campaign links actually live today
Ask a marketing team where their campaign links are kept and the honest answer is usually: a spreadsheet that three people update, a channel in a chat app, somebody's notes, and the sent folder. Most links exist in exactly one of those places, and which one depends on who made it.
The spreadsheet is not a bad instinct. It fails for a specific reason: it is a record of what somebody meant to do, written after the fact, by hand. Nothing checks it against the links that were actually sent, so the moment somebody builds a link without adding a row, the spreadsheet is wrong and nobody knows which row is the wrong one.
A link manager inverts that. The record is not written after the link; the record is the link. The URL is produced from the record, so there is no second copy to keep in step.
What a library gives you that a spreadsheet does not
Search that matches reality
The list is built from the links that exist, not from the rows somebody remembered to add. Searching it tells you what was actually created.
Links grouped by campaign
A campaign's links can be listed together, because each link carries the campaign it was built against rather than a campaign name somebody typed into a cell.
Reuse instead of rebuild
Finding the existing link is faster than rebuilding it, and it guarantees the parameters match. Most duplicate links are not a decision, they are a failed search.
Duplicates refused, not merged later
A new link with the same destination and the same parameters as one that already exists is refused when you try to save it. You are pointed at the link that already does the job.
A state you can see
Each link has a status rather than a colored cell: a draft is not live, an active link is. Nothing goes live because somebody forgot to change a column.
An edit history you did not have to keep
When a link was created and when it was last changed are recorded automatically, in your property's timezone rather than in UTC, which is how a record created at nine in the evening stops appearing to be from tomorrow.
The life of a campaign link
The states a link moves through, and what each one means for the people using it.
| State | What it means | What you can do |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | Created but not live. This is what a new link is by default | Finish it, get it checked, then activate it. Nothing goes live by accident because a field was left blank |
| Active | The link is in use | Send it. Edit the parameters if you need to, and the URL is rebuilt from the record |
| Edited | Not a separate state, but worth knowing | Editing a saved link keeps its identity and rebuilds its final URL. Removing a parameter removes it from the URL as well, rather than leaving it behind |
| Deleted | Removed from the library | A deleted link stops working. That is the point, and it is also why the confirmation says so before you do it |
Deleting a campaign does not delete its links. A campaign is an organizing record; its links may be live in places you cannot recall them from, and removing an organizing record should not silently break them.
Who this is actually for
Link management earns its keep at a particular scale, and not before.
Worth it when
- More than one person builds campaign links
- Campaigns repeat, so last year's naming matters to this year's comparison
- Links go into places you cannot edit later: print, email sends, partner sites, QR codes
- Somebody has been asked to explain why one campaign appears four times in a report
- You manage more than one website, brand or client
Probably not worth it when
- One person builds a handful of links a year and remembers all of them
- Every campaign is one link to one landing page
- Nothing is ever compared against a previous period
- You have no analytics reporting that depends on campaign values being consistent
Automated testing does not replace a manual accessibility review.
Frequently asked questions
More on managing campaign links
The rest of the Relay pages, and the free builder for when you only need one URL.
- UTM Campaign ManagerFrom building single URLs to managing a campaign's links in one place.
- UTM GovernanceAn agreed naming template, enforced when the link is created.
- Agency UTM ManagementMany clients, many properties, one taxonomy per client.
- UTM BuilderBuild one tagged campaign URL. Free, no signup, nothing leaves your browser.
- Campaign URL BuilderThe same builder, with the naming decisions spelled out before you tag.
- GA4 UTM BuilderWhere each parameter lands in a GA4 report, and what GA4 does with it.
- Relay overviewEverything the Relay module does inside TagPipes.
Find the link instead of rebuilding it.
Build a campaign URL in the free builder, then save it into Relay from the result. The link you just built becomes the first one in your library, and nothing you typed has to be entered again.
Start with a free campaign URLGenerating a URL is free and needs no account. You register only when you save one into Relay.