The Basics of UTMs

UTM parameters, or UTM tags, are the snippets of code that are added at the end of your URL link. Users create them and Google Analytics then reads them to organize traffic in meaningful buckets.

In the link, these tags are referred to as UTM parameters. They trigger Google Analytics’ custom dimensions campaigns, medium, source, etc., and store the user session information within these dimensions, so marketers can add them in their reports. Some people use “UTM parameters”, “UTM tags” and “UTM codes” interchangeably.

The Five Standard UTM Parameter Groups: Campaign, Source, Medium, Term, And Content.

UTMs need to be formatted in the following way so that Google and the rest of the tracking programs out there can recognize them and use them to segment the analytics data associated with them:

• utm_campaign (required),
• utm_medium (required),
• utm_source (required),
• utm_term, and
• utm_content.

Do I Need To Use All Of The UTM Parameters All The Time?

• Source (utm_source), Medium (utm_medium), and Campaign name (utm_campaign) are pretty much the most frequently used campaign tracking parameters.
• More in-depth and granular information can be received by adding further segmentation of your data via Content (utm_content) type and Keyword (utm_keyword) type.

Many companies are known to add their own custom tracking parameters in addition to the basic ones, including lead source and MIL (Region, Country & Language) to get more granular insights.

Am I Required To Track My Digital Promotions Via UTMs?

• You don’t need to track your campaigns using the UTM parameter-based method if you already have another method in place.
• However, not tracking campaigns at all often results in under-reporting your efforts as you lack the hard data to prove that what you do creates value for your company.
• In result, not being able to provide relevant metrics that showcase how you or your team contribute to the bottom line of your business might affect your status, the size of your budget, involvement in future projects, and your overall performance contribution.

What Are The Main Benefits Of Campaign Tracking?

Campaign tracking through UTM parameters provides invaluable success metrics in near-real time. Subsequently, this enables you to spend your marketing budget smartly, by identifying marketing campaign performance gaps while your initiative is still running. 

You gain full visibility into the reasons why something is not working and drive optimization through A/B testing. In result, your achieve your campaign objectives. Alternatively, you can choose to change gears and refocus your budget onto channels that engage more effectively with your target audience.

How Are UTM Parameters Used In Campaign Tracking?

• In order to “instruct” your analytics tool that you are running a custom campaign, which you would need to measure and analyze, you build special tracking long links.
• These links are your regular website links with specific UTM tracking parameters added to them.
• These UTM codes or parameters serve as “invitations.”

For example, let’s say you are launching a restaurant and everyone in your family has to bring in a certain number of guests for the launch party.

• The invites that are being sent are the same, the only thing that differs is their color.
• Your mom sends yellow invites, your brother sends orange invites, your partner sends green invites, and you send blue invites.
• If you ask the guests to bring the color-coded invites with them, you will be able to tell right away who managed to bring the largest number of guests.
• Website visitors will “bring” their invites with them by clicking on your tracking link, which tells your analytics tool exactly where they came from and to which marketing campaign to attribute everything that happened on your website relative to this particular guest.

Should I Use UTM Codes For Every Single Link On My Website?

We add UTMs to a page before promoting it to the marketing channels we have chosen for a particular campaign. These channels could be Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc., but are external channels. We don’t add tracking links to a page promoted internally within the same website because that will skew our statistics.

A single page (for example a blog post) can be part of multiple campaigns and have different UTM parameters added to it for every promotion. It could be part of a campaign to increase email signups and another campaign to lift traffic numbers at the same time. When you look at your analytics results, you will see the visits to the blog post, split by campaign, based on the number of campaigns that are featuring it.

For more information, view our Connect Self-Serve Guide.