Link Management for Agencies: Organise Client Campaigns at Scale

Running links for a single brand is manageable with a spreadsheet and a free shortener. Running links for eight clients across four channels each — with different reporting deadlines, separate analytics dashboards, and zero tolerance for one client's data leaking into another's reports — is a different problem entirely.

This guide is for agencies and freelance consultants managing link campaigns across multiple clients. The goal is a system where you can create, track, and report on links at scale without things getting chaotic by month three.

The core problem: isolation

The most common mistake agencies make with link management is using one pool of links for all clients. Everything ends up in the same analytics view, slugs conflict, and when a client asks "how many people clicked our campaign link last month?" you're doing manual filtering instead of pulling a clean report.

The right architecture isolates clients from each other at the team level, not the URL level. That means:

• Each client gets their own workspace or team with its own analytics view
• Links for Client A are never visible in Client B's dashboard
• Custom slugs can be reused across clients (Client A can have /spring-sale and so can Client B, without collision)
• Reporting is done per client, not filtered out of a global dataset

Truthylink's team workspace supports this: you create a team per client, invite the relevant team members, and link creation + analytics is scoped to that team by default.

Naming conventions that scale

Naming discipline is what separates a manageable link library from an unmaintainable one. Establish a convention before you scale, not after. Here's one that works well:

[client-code]-[campaign]-[channel]-[variant]

Examples:
acme-summer24-email-header
acme-summer24-email-footer
acme-summer24-ig-story
nova-q3launch-linkedin-post1

The advantages of this structure:

• Searchable — filter by client code to see all links for one client; filter by campaign to see a campaign's full link set
• Self-documenting — anyone on the team can read a slug and understand what it is without looking it up
• Unique by design — the channel and variant components prevent slug collisions within a campaign

Document the convention in your agency's SOPs. New account managers should be following it from day one, not inventing their own.

Setting up UTM parameters consistently across clients

Agencies often run analytics for clients inside the client's Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics account. That means your UTMs need to match the client's existing taxonomy, not yours.

Before you create any links for a new client, establish:

1. What source values they use for each channel (is it newsletter or email-newsletter?)
2. Whether they want campaign names formatted as dates, product names, or both
3. Whether they track utm_content for link placement variants
4. Who owns the UTM taxonomy document — you or them

Build a client-specific UTM template using Truthylink's UTM builder and save it. Every time you create links for that client, start from that template. Consistency at the start saves hours of analytics cleanup later.

Reporting: what clients actually want to see

Most clients don't need raw click data — they need evidence that the work is driving results. Shape your link analytics reports around three questions:

1. Which channels drove the most clicks? — This validates channel allocation decisions.
2. Which specific links or placements performed best? — This informs creative and CTA decisions.
3. How did this period compare to the last? — This shows trajectory, which matters more than any single data point.

Export click data from Truthylink and combine it with conversion data from the client's analytics platform. The click-to-conversion rate per channel is the metric most clients care about by the time the relationship matures — they can get raw clicks from anywhere, but the conversion attribution story is what justifies your retainer.

Managing link expiration for time-limited campaigns

Promotional campaigns have end dates. A link that still routes to an expired offer a year after the campaign ended is a small but genuine brand problem — and if you're managing dozens of campaigns for multiple clients, it's hard to track manually.

Set expiration dates on every campaign-specific link at creation time. A max_clicks cap is also useful for clients running influencer or affiliate promotions with a fixed budget — once the click budget is exhausted, the link stops routing traffic rather than continuing to spend.

These features are available on Pro and Business plans and take 10 seconds to set per link. The discipline of setting them upfront is what distinguishes a managed link library from an unmanaged one.

What to document for each client

Keep a per-client link management document that records:

• The team/workspace the client's links live in
• Their UTM taxonomy (source values, campaign naming format)
• Active campaigns and their associated link slugs
• Any custom domain configuration
• Which team members have access

This takes about 20 minutes to set up per client and saves significant time during onboarding, offboarding, and handoffs. When an account manager leaves and a new one takes over, they should be able to understand the full link setup without asking anyone.