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Make Your QR Codes Trackable, For Free

Jacob Stansky
Person scanning a QR Code

Yep, with one extra step, you can measure how each QR code actually performs (or doesn't)

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people use the internet

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Legal Demand letters are sent to businesses each year

Key Takeaways

  1. Free QR Code Generators are just the start. Go beyond the graphic.
  2. Use Google’s UTM tool to make a trackable url. This free tool has been around for 20+ years and is total gold.
  3. Take your customized QR Code and track all sorts of data in Google Analytics. Your Google Analytics account will do all the work for you.
QR Codes Done Right

We love QR codes but unless you’re paying a monthly fee for a QR Code generation tool like qr-code-generator.com that will apply tracking on your QR’s for you, you not getting the best of these little magical elements. Never fear, we’ll show you how to harness the full power of your QR Codes at no cost.

 

QR 101

You want to send people to your website, a specific page on your website or even a section on a page on your website. You copy & paste a url into a QR code generator and it spits out a quirky graphic for you to put in a physical location for people to scan with their phones and go right to the website location of your desires.

There are a lot of free QR Code generators on the internet but if you’re just using these tools on their own, your missing out on a big piece of QR Code magic – tracking the codes.

 

Track Your QR Code For Free – Meet UTM’s

Just because people scan your QR Code it doesn’t mean you’ll ever see how many times it was scanned, what they did after they scanned it. What if you have multiple QR Codes? How do you measure these to see how each one did? This is where free QR Codes Generator tools fail you but this is where a very old school, free tool will save you!

Meet Google’s free UTM Generator tool which will superpower your url and make your QR Code trackable.

UTM parameters are descriptive pieces of information that appear after a question mark (?) in a URL. They provide specific details about the traffic source, enabling detailed analysis in a web analytics platform. 

There are five standard UTM parameters: 

  • utm_source:

Identifies the specific source of traffic, such as “google”, “facebook”, or “newsletter”. 

  • utm_medium:

Specifies the general channel or marketing medium, like “organic_social,” “email,” or “paid_search”. 

  • utm_campaign:

Names the specific campaign, promotion, or product associated with the link, for example, “summer-sale”. 

  • utm_term:

Typically used for paid search campaigns, this parameter identifies the keyword that led the user to the site. 

  • utm_content:

Differentiates between similar links or ads pointing to the same URL, such as different banner ads or calls-to-action (CTAs) within a single email

 

Here’s The Easy, Free “How To” For Trackable QR Codes:
  1. Open Google Campaign URL Builder (UTM Generator)
  2. Copy and paste your desired url into the “website url” field.
  3. Fill out the remaining fields – be intuitive so you can easily spot your QR codes in your Google Analytics
  4. As you fill in the fields, your url will be generated in the “Share the generated campaign url” section
  5. Copy and paste the generated url into your QR Code Generator tool and voila – you have a tracked QR Code!
 
Bonus – if you have Bitly – you can shorten your url. The simpler the url, the cleaner the QR code. 
Campaign URL Generator
URL Shortner

Everything after the ? in the url is what will track your url and when scanned, track your QR code. If you don’t have a Bitly account you can’t shorten your url but that’s ok.

 

See How The QR Code(s) Performed

Once you put your “trackable” QR coded out in the world and people are using them, you can go into your Google Analytics account (whole other blog post if you don’t have this setup) and under Reports > Acquisition you’ll be able to see how your QR Code did. 

Here’s an example of a QR Code that was used on a Flyer for a non-profit’s event:

  1. Click on Reports
  2. Click on Acquisition
  3. Click on Traffic Acquisition
  4. Change the filter from ‘Default Channel Group” to “Session source/medium” 
  5. Look for your QR Code UTM tag(s) or search the bar and search for your UTM keywords

 

You can change the filter to medium, source, source platform or campaign – all the fields in the UTM Builder process.