QR codes in the municipal newsletter: links that stay valid for months

Municipal newsletters, parish bulletins, and club magazines have a long shelf life. They end up in waiting rooms, on kitchen tables, and in recycling piles that aren’t taken out until spring. The links inside should guide readers to sign-ups, photos, or events. Few people type them in, but many do scan them. To ensure the code remains useful after months, it should be dynamic.

What works well in print

• Sign-up for the holiday program, a course, or a municipal outing
• Photo gallery from the village festival
• Full minutes of the municipal council meeting
• Event calendar
• Forms for applications
• Waste calendar and recycling center

The problem with old issues

An article about the holiday program links to the registration. If it is closed, the reader sees an error page or an empty form. With a dynamic QR code, you can change the destination after the registration deadline to photos from the program or to the date for next year. With time control by date, this happens automatically the day after the registration deadline.

Fixed codes for fixed sections

Some sections appear in every issue: events, municipal council, waste. For these, you create a code for each and print it in the same place every time. The destination always points to the current status. The graphic does not need to insert the code anew in every issue.

One link page per issue

If an issue has many links, you bundle them on one page using the “All links” template. A code on the cover leads there, and each article can still have its own code.

Size and printing

In the magazine, it is scanned from close up. 2 to 2.5 cm are sufficient, as long as a light border remains around it. For the print shop, you download the code as a PDF or SVG; both remain sharp at any size. Write a sentence next to it indicating where it leads; this increases the number of scans.

How often is it scanned?

With a code per article, you can see in the statistics which topics readers continue to follow. Same-QR counts only the scans per code, without recording who scanned it.

Conclusion

A municipal newsletter lives longer than most of the links within it. With dynamic QR codes, every issue leads to something meaningful, even months later. On sameqr.com, the first dynamic QR code is free.

Frequently asked questions