Running a QR Code Campaign: Branded, Tracked, and Self-Expiring

A QR code on a poster for a two-week sale doesn't need to work forever — it needs to work well for two weeks, look like it belongs to your brand, and stop being a live link the moment the sale ends. That's a different job than a QR code printed on packaging that ships for years, and it's worth treating it differently.

Start with a dynamic website QR code

A static QR code bakes its destination in permanently — fine for something that never changes, wrong for a campaign where the landing page might get swapped, paused, or redirected to a "sold out" page halfway through. A dynamic QR code points to a redirect you control, so the printed code on the poster, flyer, or storefront window never has to change even if the destination does.

Make the link look like yours, not ours

By default, a QR code redirect runs through everscans.com — fine for testing, not ideal on something a customer might actually glance at before scanning, or type out by hand. On the Business plan, you can point your QR codes and short links through your own domain instead (links.yourbrand.com instead of everscans.com/r/...), so the link itself reads as part of your brand rather than a third-party tool — see why a branded short link beats a generic one for the fuller case.

Give the campaign an end date

The easiest way for a campaign QR code to go stale is to just leave it running after the campaign's over — someone scans a poster for a sale that ended weeks ago and lands on a dead or outdated page. Dynamic website QR codes on Pro and Business now support an optional expiry date: set it once when you create the code (or add it later from the QR's edit page), and once that date passes, scanning the code shows a clear "this code has expired" page instead of quietly redirecting to something no longer true. No manual cleanup, no remembering to deactivate it the day after the campaign wraps.

Know whether it actually worked

None of the above matters much without knowing whether the campaign performed — full scan analytics on dynamic QR codes show device, location, and time for every scan, so you can tell whether the poster by the entrance is pulling its weight compared to the one on the counter, and whether people are scanning during the hours you'd expect.

Putting it together

A campaign QR code built this way — dynamic, on your own domain, with a real end date — behaves less like a generic scan-and-redirect and more like a piece of infrastructure you'd expect from a proper marketing tool: branded, measurable, and self-cleaning. Create a website QR code to start, and add the domain and expiry once you're on Pro or Business.