From chaos to clarity: 350,000+ monthly clicks, one source of truth.

Summary

Salzburg AG is one of the largest utilities in the DACH region, an enterprise that runs the city’s trolleybuses, operates hydroelectric power, delivers broadband internet, manages EV charging networks, and heats homes through district heating, all under one roof. Reaching a regional audience of hundreds of thousands means its marketing team ships content every day across social media, paid campaigns, newsletters, print, and QR codes.

For Alexander Speierle-Vidali, Salzburg AG’s social media channel manager, the job is to know what actually works and to prove it to agencies, internal stakeholders, and loyalty-programme partners. That takes one reliable source of truth. For him it is Linkly, a tool he has relied on for six years across two employers, and which now sits at the centre of every link Salzburg AG publishes.

Background: marketing across a sprawling multi-service utility

Salzburg AG is a leading multi-service utility in Austria and the wider DACH region, partly publicly owned and woven into daily life across its home region. It supplies electricity, natural gas, district heating, water, broadband internet, and cable TV to homes and businesses. It also runs the city’s trolleybus and regional rail networks, and is expanding EV charging across the country.

That breadth is matched by the complexity of its marketing. Salzburg AG runs several brands and legal subsidiaries, including a public-transport business and a legally separate grid company required under EU energy regulation. Each has its own audience, voice, and online presence.

Alexander manages social media across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. He sits at the centre of the marketing function, connecting internal teams (product, digital and web, newsletters, and a giveaways platform) with external partners such as a social media agency and the companies behind the loyalty programme. Every one of those touchpoints produces links, and every one of those links goes through Linkly.

The challenge: inconsistent numbers, invisible performance, and a bot problem

Before building a proper tracking infrastructure around Linkly, Salzburg AG’s digital performance reporting had three persistent problems.

Why Linkly: six years, two employers, zero reason to switch

Alexander first adopted Linkly at a previous employer. The entry point was refreshingly low-friction: a generous free tier, no credit card, and no sales calls. It simply worked, so when he joined Salzburg AG nearly four years ago, he brought Linkly with him.

The comparison with alternatives happened early. Bitly was the obvious starting point, but a basic free shortener soon hit its limits. The team wanted a custom branded domain, more functionality, and room to grow beyond a free tier as traffic climbed. On QR codes, Salzburg AG has long run a separate in-house tool, and over the past year Linkly’s QR features have improved enough to cover the same needs, even if formally consolidating tools sits with another department.

How Salzburg AG uses Linkly today

Every link. No exceptions.

The rule at Salzburg AG is simple: every external link the marketing team publishes goes through Linkly. Social posts, paid ads, newsletter calls-to-action, printed QR codes on letters, community-management replies, internal comms. All of it is tracked.

With more than 1,000 active links and over 350,000 tracked clicks in the last 30 days alone, the dataset is rich enough to drive real marketing decisions.

A second source of truth against the platforms

Linkly is Salzburg AG’s impartial measurement layer, independent of both the social platforms and Google Analytics. When Meta reports one number of clicks and GA shows another set of sessions, Linkly is the third data point that sits outside both and counts every click the same way. That consistency is what makes honest cross-channel comparison possible.

Bot filtering: clean numbers for clean reporting

Alexander keeps bot filtering on by default for all standard links. For the loyalty programme, where click data goes straight to external offer partners, clean numbers are essential rather than nice to have. Overstating clicks to a commercial partner is a real reputational risk, and bot filtering removes it.

QR codes for print

Salzburg AG uses Linkly’s QR codes on printed materials, including letters sent to customers and the internal employee magazine. Over the past year Linkly’s QR features have improved markedly: customisable appearance, an embedded logo, and vector export suitable for print. They have advanced far enough to consolidate a separate in-house QR tool the company still runs, though that decision sits with another team.

Smart links for app routing

Salzburg AG promotes a mobility app that needs to send each user to the right place: the iOS App Store, Google Play, or a web fallback. With Linkly’s device targeting, a single printed or posted link routes each person automatically. One short link, smart enough to know where to send everyone.

Multi-brand management

EU energy regulation requires Salzburg AG to run its grid through a legally separate company, and its marketing spans several brands with their own domains and subdomains. Linkly’s custom domain management lets every brand keep its own branded links inside one shared workspace, which keeps reporting unified without blurring the brands.

Reporting workflows that save hours per campaign

The loyalty-programme reporting cycle shows the efficiency gain best. What once meant cross-referencing several sources and reconciling them by hand now takes minutes:

Results

The raw volume is not the point. The point is that Alexander can stand behind every number, and that day-to-day reporting to stakeholders, agencies, and commercial partners rests on data the team genuinely trusts.

That recommendation is aimed squarely at teams in the middle of many workflows: agencies, brand managers, and marketing leads at any organisation with more than one channel. The payoff, in Alexander’s words, is time saved and numbers you can trust.

Frequently asked questions