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Intro to UTM Parameters and Best Practices

on April 23, 2014
by Jared Polivka

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Intro to UTM Parameters and Best Practices

Do you know exactly where your site traffic comes from? Or which of your campaigns drives the most traffic? If not, read on ;) This post is for website owners who use Google Analytics but want more insight into where their traffic is coming from.

Maybe you know how much  traffic you’re getting from Twitter, but do you know what percentage of this traffic comes from your Tweets? You can get this data by using Custom Campaigns and adding special tags to your URLs; these tags are called UTM parameters — they are crucial for a deeper understanding of your traffic.

What are UTM Parameters?

UTM parameters are simply tags you add to a URL — when your link is clicked, the tags are sent back to Google Analytics and tracked.

With UTM parameters, you can tag your links to gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns and identify the best ways to drive more visitors to your website.

Using UTM parameters, you can find out how much traffic came from a particular Facebook post instead of Facebook referrals in general. You can tag your Tweets and compare traffic from your Twitter account to overall Twitter referrals. You can use UTM parameters in newsletters, cost per click (CPC) campaigns, on your blog… the possibilities are endless! I’ll get into more examples below.

Example URL with UTM parameters:

www.awesome-example.com/book-launch?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=book-launch-2014-may

Let’s analyze the URL above. Pretend you’re an author launching a book. Obviously you want to drive traffic to your book’s landing page (e.g. www.awesome-example.com/book-launch). To understand how much traffic comes from your marketing efforts, you tag your links with UTM parameters. You reveal the book launch to your audience by posting the tagged link on your Facebook page.

In the upcoming week, approximately 20,000 visitors come to your landing page from Facebook. Upon checking Google Analytics, you discover that 15,000 visitors clicked your tagged link and the remaining 5,000 visitors came from other Facebook pages and profiles outside your control.  By using a tagged link, you know exactly how well your Facebook post performed. Pretty neat right?

Aside – UTM Meaning & Origin
UTM is short for Urchin Tracking Module. Google acquired Urchin Software in 2005, resulting in the creation of Google Analytics.

UTM Parameter Brainstorming

You can use UTM parameters in an almost endless number of ways. To get you brainstorming, here are a few examples:

  • Instead of a general overview of traffic from your newsletter, you could use UTM parameters to gauge which links and calls to action (CTA’s) are most effective within your email.
  • You could use UTM parameters to compare newsletters over time. You could spot the newsletters that were most effective at driving traffic to your site. You could then hypothesize why certain newsletters were so effective and test your assumptions in upcoming newsletters.
  • Maybe you know how much traffic comes to your product page from your blog, but you want to know which calls to action are driving the most traffic. Again, UTM parameters.
  • I think you get the point :)

Types of UTM Parameters

There are five UTM parameters (three are required):

  • utm_source (required) – identify the source of your traffic such as: search engine, newsletter, or other referral.
    • example: utm_source=newsletter
  • utm_medium (required) – identify the medium the link was used on such as: email, CPC, or other method of sharing.
    • For a newsletter, the medium would be “email”
    • example: utm_medium=email
  • utm_campaign (required) – identify a strategic campaign (e.g. product launch, new feature, partnership, etc.) or specific promotion (e.g. a sale, a giveaway, etc.).
    • example: utm_campaign=book-launch-2014-may-7
  • utm_term – suggested for paid search to identify keywords for your ad. You can skip this for Google AdWords if you have connected your AdWords and Analytics accounts and use the auto-tagging feature instead.
    • Let’s say you you’re running a Google Adwords campaign for your non-profit WordPress theme. You’d have specific keywords picked out for your campaign.
    • example: utm_term=wordpress-theme , utm_term=non-profit-theme, utm_term=non-profit-template, etc.
  • utm_content – suggested for additional details for A/B testing and content-targeted ads.
    • Let’s say you have three calls to action (CTA’s) on your blog. You have a Hello Bar CTA in your header, a big button CTA in your sidebar and a CTA farther down the page after your blog post but before the comments. Which CTA is sending the most traffic to your product page?
    • examples: utm_content=cta-top-banner,  utm_content=cta-sidebar,  utm_content=cta-bottom

How to Build UTM Tagged URLs

To understand how to build URL’s containing UTM parameters, let’s dissect the example URL from earlier:

www.awesome-example.com/book-launch?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=book-launch-2014-may

  • UTM parameters are initialized by the question mark “?” at the end of the base URL.
  • Every UTM parameter starts with it’s name (e.g. utm_source, etc.) which is followed by an equals sign “=” which is then followed by the input/argument (no spaces).
  • Each UTM parameter is separated by an ampersand sign “&”.

Now that you understand how  URLs with UTM parameters are organized, you can create them manually. However, it’s much easier to use Google’s URL builder. Just fill out the form and presto — you’re URL is ready for copying and pasting.

Dealing with Lots of UTM URLs & Staying Sane

UTM Parameters Spreadsheet

Let’s assume that you’ll need to create lots of URLs containing UTM parameters. How would you build your URLs efficiently? How would you stay organized? Google’s URL builder would become tedious fast.

Dear reader, you’re in luck! The Rafflecopter team has a link tagging tool that we’re happy to share with you. The tool is a Google Doc spreadsheet that uses formulas to build out custom URLs with UTM parameters. Enjoy :)

*Please Note* The Rafflecopter link tagging tool is a modified version of Epik One’s link tagging tool. Thanks for the awesome spreadsheet Epik One! The credit and applause belongs to you.

I hope this introduction to UTM parameters augments your marketing efforts and helps you draw new insights from Google Analytics.  If you enjoyed this post, check out the sibling post: 6 Tips for Naming UTM Parameters

If you have questions or feedback, please post in the comments below. Extra points for posting how you use UTM parameters (or plan on using them in the future).

Filed Under: Marketing

About the author

Jared Polivka

Jared was previously the Head of Growth at Rafflecopter, the world's easiest way to run a giveaway online. He writes about startups, social media, marketing and productivity.

Follow @@jaredpolivka
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  • databackup

    Have to admit utm codes are something that took me longer than expected to get my head around. They make a serious impact to my stats and marketing strategy i use http://www.whysr.com now too an external Urlbuilder which supports Omni marketing. Great post.

    • make up

      I hope this introduction to UTM parameters augments your marketing efforts and helps you draw new insights from Google Analytics. If you enjoyed this post, check out the sibling post: 6 Tips for Naming UTM Parameters

    • breakfast

      You can use UTM parameters in newsletters, cost per click (CPC) campaigns, on your blog… the possibilities are endless! I’ll get into more examples below.

    • Travel Photos Instagram

      With UTM parameters, you can tag your links to gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns and identify the best ways to drive more visitors to your website.

    • Homemade xmas gifts

      Google Analytics but want more insight into where their traffic is coming from.

    • Print a Calendar: January 2019

      UTM parameters in newsletters, cost per click (CPC) campaigns, on your blog… the possibilities are endless! I’ll get into more examples below.

  • Taglynx

    Hi everyone,

    Creating campaign tracking links is giving you a big headache? Forget using spreadsheets and spend less time tagging. Take a look at Taglynx

  • Michael Killen

    Is there anything I need to do in Google analytics with UTM’s or just building the link do enough?

    • Dave Criswell

      Great question Michael!

      As long as the syntax is correct in the URL and your site has the Google Analytics code on it, that’s all you need to do for GA to collect the site visit data.

      • Michael Killen

        Great news! I’ll start adding these in today (: cheers for the quick response!

  • Pingback: Complete Customer Profile Data | Zaius BLOG()

  • Janice Smithers

    Hi Jared,

    We had to alter the UTM code slightly to accommodate restrictions on our server. Could the alteration break the tracking? Ex: http://www.tdstelecom.com/LP/tdstvtpb.html?utm_source=171996&utm_medium=digital&utm_content=test&utm_campaign=instant_gratification

    • Dave Criswell

      Hey Janice, Google recommends using dashes instead of underscores (see this article – https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/76329?hl=en), except for the utm syntax. Other than that it appears to look OK.

      Of course it’s always a smart idea to test the parameters in Google Analytics :)

  • Laura Hawkins

    How important is parameter syntax in building the coded URLs? Mostly in UTM links I see source, medium, then campaign. In the Rafflecopter tagging tool, though, it’s ordered with campaign first, then source and medium. It’d probably be easy enough to reorder the formula, but I’m curious if this would even matter.

    • Dave Criswell

      Hey Laura – great question!

      There is no requirement on the order of each parameter for either Google Analytics or Rafflecopter analytics to record them correctly.

      • Laura Hawkins

        Awesome, thanks for the quick response Dave!
        This post is such a great resource. Excited to be on the path to more organized data. :)

  • Derric Haynie

    Google’s URL builder has been my go-to for a while, but now I use Rebrandly’s built in UTM builder which has the ability to save and load presets and then instantly create a branded short link with the UTM parameters built in.

    Probably saves a good 30 seconds per link.Makes it so you don’t need a spreadsheet!

    I’d recommend taking a look at a post I wrote about it: https://blog.rebrandly.com/utm-parameters-made-simple-guide-for-marketers/

  • Iana Marconi

    Could you tell me where to fill this url at facebook ad?
    I filled it at URL parameters but it does not work…

    • Dave Criswell

      Hey there! Facebook has one option to add parameters under the tracking section of their ad builder. Here’s a help article for that: https://business.facebook.com/business/help/1016122818401732

      Alternatively, assuming you are promoting website and the campaign objective is clicks to a website, you could add the parameters manually and use that URL.

      Hope that helps!

  • Taglynx

    Thank you Jared for writing such an insightful article. We have been dealing with UTM tracking for a while as well. In fact, we have a solution online that creates UTM codes for you while checking that the syntax is correct. Learn more at http://ta.gl/qTDzUr

  • Jeenfer Wilson

    I have created a modified version of this spreadsheet. With this free spreadsheet you can

    * Create fully tagged campaign URLs
    * Shorten the URLs using Bit.ly and TinyURL
    * Keep track of all campaign and short URLs created
    * Share your short links to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest with a single click!
    * Track number of clicks on your short links

    Here is the direct link to the spreadsheet – https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kV-xMYzJ5G5LQiu3CY1G7pRtOLukdKWV1ntuZ2FPoRw/edit#gid=217059655

    Hope this will be useful.

  • Angel Smith

    Awesome article. Thank you. Btw, have you heard about “Taglynx”? It’s a really cool app for UTM Codes.

  • Philip

    I like the spreadsheet. I used a similar one some years ago in Excel. Nowadays I would also work in Google Sheets to share it with colleagues. Last year I started to develop a custom URL Builder that solved a key issue I had when working with multiple team members: Consistency. I just preset certain UTM values in dropdowns from which everyone can select the right ones resulting in very tidy campaign reports in Google Analytics – no more duplicate entries for email and Email. You can check it out at http://www.linkdolphin.com. Maybe it’s even an idea to make the UTM values selectable from dropdowns in your spreadsheet, too. In my opinion it’s really important that a consistent naming is used because otherwise the campaign reports will be difficult to read.

  • Oraprofiles

    can i add client-id in utm parameters and how

    • Dave Criswell

      Hey Oraprofiles – that can get tricky.

      As you probably read above, there are 5 recognized UTM parameters including utm_campaign, utm_source, utm_medium, utm_content, and utm_term and you can add any value you want to any one of those parameters.

      Where it can get tricky is “Google policies mandate that no data be passed to Google that Google could use or recognize as personally identifiable information (PII)”.

      So, if client-id can be PII, then you shouldn’t add it as a UTM parameter.

      Hope that helps!

    • Clipart Fish

      UTM parameters are simply tags you add to a URL — when your link is clicked, the tags are sent back to Google Analytics and tracked.

  • Ankit Kachhava

    Hi @disqus_5hQnSDQXuv:disqus
    I have been using Drupal and in order to test UTM parameter values i tested the code in local, but it didn’t work because the hidden parameters are not capturing the values.Kindly help

    • Dave Criswell

      Hey Ankit, unfortunately I’m not all that familiar with Drupal. It may be because your are only local and the parameters aren’t reaching Google.

      My apologies I can’t be of more help.

  • one fora

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/80455651ebd9127fac52ff37c442a247ec5946de12d3f6312bbafe137a172226.png
    Hello Jared, I have only google ad-sense account not a ad-word, but some time google analytic show me (Paid User is come). so what is the effect of paid user on my ad-sense account.

  • m

    Good. But what does “UTM” stand for?

    • Momma Bish

      Urchin Tracking Module

  • Prajukta Banerjee

    how to ADD, Device_type with UTM

    • Robert Kingston

      GA tracks that by default based on the device’s user agent.

  • Antim Pandey

    Hi Jared Polavika, I loved your article about “Intro to UTM Parameters and Best Practices”. But I have a few doubt about this.

    1.Where have to use UTM Parameters? In browsers URL’s (or) Post’s Source code

  • Manoj Menon

    Hi Jared Polavika, It was very informative article. I followed your article and now I know more about my traffic. Like, Location, Device, Browser and more and thanks for sharing such a wonderful article.

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