Campaigns

What Is a Campaign?

A campaign is a tag you assign to one or more shortened links. It's free text, up to 100 characters, and works on every plan. For example, if you're running a summer promotion, you might create links for Instagram, Facebook, and email — all tagged with the campaign name "summer-2026."

This lets you compare the links in a promotion side by side: which platform drove the most clicks, and how one promotion's links did against another's.

Step-by-Step: Create a Campaign Link

1. Click Link Shortener in the sidebar, under Tools
2. In the Destination URL field, paste the URL you want to track
3. In the Campaign (optional) field, type your campaign name (e.g., "summer-promo"). Autocomplete suggestions appear based on existing campaigns.
4. Optionally expand Advanced Options and use the UTM Tagging block to set UTM source, medium and the other fields
5. Click Shorten URL

The campaign tag shows in the Campaign column of Your Links, in the Marketing report's Top Links, and in Campaign → Bookings. It can't be changed after the link is created — only the notes can be edited.

Tip: Use consistent naming conventions. For example: season-year (summer-2026), platform-purpose (ig-listing-push), or event-name (memorial-day-sale). No format is enforced, so the convention is yours to keep.

Viewing Campaign Performance

1. In the sidebar, click Reports to expand the menu
2. Click Marketing
3. In Top Links, each link is listed with its Campaign tag, Channel and Clicks for the selected period. Compare the links sharing a tag to see which channel worked best.
4. Campaign → Bookings shows which campaigns line up with actual bookings, split into exact, probable and unattributed matches.

Top Campaigns (Weekend Host or higher) lists your GA4 campaigns taken from the UTM Campaign value, with visitors, sessions and conversions. It doesn't list your link campaign tags. To see a link there, fill in UTM Campaign when you create it and make sure GA4 runs on the destination site.

For a deeper guide to the analytics page itself — what each column means, how to compare campaigns, and what to look for — see the Marketing insight article.

UTM Parameters

Hostmatic adds UTM parameters to a link only when you fill the UTM Tagging fields. The one exception is QR scans: if the destination has no UTMs of its own, scans get utm_source=qr and utm_medium=print added at redirect time.

If GA4 runs on the destination site, it records these values, and they appear in Top Campaigns once GA4 is connected to Hostmatic. GA4 can't run on an Airbnb listing page, so UTMs on those links are only useful inside Hostmatic's own reporting.

Campaign Best Practices

1. One campaign per promotion — Create a new campaign for each distinct marketing push
2. Multiple links per campaign — Create separate links for each platform or channel
3. Consistent naming — Use a convention you'll remember when reviewing reports later
4. Add notes — Use the Notes field in Advanced Options to record each link's specific purpose within the campaign