Tracking Your Marketing Campaigns with UTM Parameters
Most small businesses promote themselves in several places at once. There might be a monthly email, a few social posts, a printed flyer and a paid ad or two. The hard part is working out which of these actually sends people to the website. Without some simple tracking, every visit from those efforts can end up lumped together.
UTM parameters are a free and simple way to fix this. They are short tags added to the end of a link that tell Google Analytics where a visitor came from. Once they are in place, your reports can show which email, post or ad earned the click. This guide explains how they work and how to use them without making a mess of your data.
What UTM parameters are
A UTM parameter is a small piece of text added to a web address after a question mark. It does not change the page the visitor lands on. Instead, it passes extra details to your analytics tool when the link is clicked. Google Analytics reads these details and records them against the visit.
A tagged link looks something like this: example.com/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=spring_sale. The part before the question mark is the normal page address. Everything after it is the tracking information. Each tag is joined to the next with an ampersand.
The three tags you should always use
Google’s own Analytics help page on collecting campaign data with custom URLs says you should always use three tags. These are utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign. Together they answer the basic questions of who sent the visitor, how and why. Leaving one out weakens the whole picture.
- utm_source names the referrer, such as google, a newsletter or even a billboard.
- utm_medium names the type of marketing, such as email, banner or cpc for paid clicks.
- utm_campaign names the product, slogan or promotion, such as a spring sale.
Google also notes that missing UTM parameters will result in (not set) values in your reports. That happens when you add some tags but skip others. A report full of (not set) entries tells you very little. It is far better to fill in all three every time.
Optional tags that add more detail
There are several other tags you can add when they are useful. The utm_content tag helps you tell apart different creatives or links. For example, you could give two buttons in the same email different values. That way you can see which one people actually clicked.
The utm_term tag is used to record a paid keyword. The utm_id tag identifies a specific campaign or promotion by an ID. Google recommends setting all relevant parameters, and in particular utm_id and utm_source_platform where they apply. For a small business running a few simple campaigns, the three main tags plus utm_content usually cover most needs.
Why consistent naming matters
UTM values are case sensitive. Google’s help page points out that utm_source=google and utm_source=Google are treated as two different values. The same goes for SpringSale and Spring_Sale. Its advice is to use lowercase as a standard practice.
This is where most tracking goes wrong. One person types Facebook and another types facebook, and the report splits into two rows. Over a few months these small differences make the numbers hard to trust. A short naming guide that everyone follows will save a lot of cleaning up later.
A simple shared spreadsheet works well for this. List each campaign with its exact source and medium values plus the full tagged link. Anyone who creates a link can copy from it rather than making up new names. It also gives you a record of what you ran and when.
Where to use tagged links
Tag the links you place outside your own website. Good examples are email newsletters, social media posts and profiles, digital flyers and QR codes on printed material. If you share custom infographics in your local marketing, the link that goes with them is a good one to tag. Each placement can then be measured on its own.
Social media is a common use. Different categories of social media tend to send different kinds of visitors. Tagging each platform separately shows which ones bring people who stay and take action. That helps you decide where to spend your time.
Online stores benefit too. When you are designing an ecommerce store, think about how promotions will link to product and category pages. A tagged link in a sale email can show how many shoppers came from that message. Paired with sales data, it gives a clearer view of what each promotion is worth.
Keep tags off your internal links
UTM tags are meant for links that bring people to your site from somewhere else. Links between your own pages should be left as plain addresses. The tags describe where a visitor came from before reaching you, so they have no job to do once someone is already on your site. Good site structure for SEO already relies on clean internal links, so there is no need to tag them.
Building tagged links
You can type tags by hand, but a URL builder is easier and avoids typing errors. Google provides a Campaign URL Builder for links to websites. You fill in the page address and each value, and it produces the finished link. Copy that link into your email, post or ad.
Tagged links can be long and look untidy in a social post. Many people use a link shortener or a QR code to tidy them up. The tags still work as long as the full link is kept behind the short version. Always click the final link once before you publish it.
Finding the results in Google Analytics
According to Google, campaign data appears in the Traffic acquisition report under Acquisition. From there you can view session source, session medium and session campaign. You can also view source and medium together. Filtering by campaign name lets you see visits, engagement and any conversions you have set up. Give a campaign a little time to collect data before drawing conclusions.
Google also notes that UTM parameters are left out of the page path and landing page dimensions that include the query string. They appear in the page location dimension instead. This is handy to know if you go looking for your tags and cannot find them. It simply means they are stored in a different field.
Frequently asked questions
Do UTM tags change the page visitors land on?
No. The tags sit after the question mark in the link and only pass details to your analytics tool. Visitors see the same page as normal. Use them on links you share in emails, posts and ads rather than on links within your own site.
Which tags are required?
Google advises always using utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign. Other tags are optional. Add them when they give you useful extra detail.
Why do I see (not set) in my reports?
This usually means some tags were added and others were missed. Google says missing parameters produce (not set) values. Fill in all three main tags on every link to avoid it.
Should I use capital letters in tag values?
It is best not to. Values are case sensitive, so capitals can split one source into two rows. Google suggests using lowercase every time.
