UTM codes are an excellent way to track results across a range of campaigns and are a key tool in generating accurate reports, allowing for effective decisions to be made based on reliable data around the performance of your content and campaigns.
In this article we’ll explore everything you need to know about UTM codes, how to deploy them, and how to properly track them to generate useful campaign data.
A UTM code (Urchin Tracking Module) is a way of inserting tags into a link to track where this link was clicked. They allow us to track specific marketing or sales campaigns and differentiate between a link clicked within a marketing email or on a social media platform. UTMs are useful, because standard tracking softwares are not always accurate in terms of origin.
It is worth noting that UTM codes only apply to outbound marketing campaigns, for example email marketing, social media, paid ads etc and cannot be applied to direct or organic traffic (except for Google My Business which we’ll discuss further down).
UTM codes allow you to keep track of how users are landing on your website and how successful, or otherwise, a campaign is in driving engaged traffic to your content. Without UTM codes traffic cannot be so specifically attributed and so it I not as easy to track the success of each element of your campaign content.
Without this information, controlling spend on paid campaigns, or understanding whether social posts are an effective way of engaging with users becomes very difficult and hard to plan and justify.
UTM codes identify where traffic originates from in terms of interaction with your campaign, using parameters specified in the code. The data they deliver can then then be filtered by a specific parameter in Google Analytics, or other software, to easily analyse performance.
Each UTM code has a number of elements but there are 4 key parts to the code that you need to be aware of. Don’t worry, there are tools that generate the codes for you, you don’t need to be a coder to create them!
The four elements to consider are:
Medium describes how users arrived at your content, whether it was through a paid advert, a social post, an email, etc. The list below uses specific language based on Google Analytics’ categorisation so you should avoid using your own words to describe a medium wherever possible:
If you use affiliate marketing, you should use whichever medium is most appropriate to the situation i.e. email, offline, referral, etc. The campaign attribute can be used to recognise affiliate traffic.
Source (required)
Source describes the place users have come from when clicking your content like a search engine or another website (e.g., Google, Facebook, bbc.co.uk etc). Sources cannot be listed as there are millions of them but when creating a source manually, you need to keep it consistent to ensure it will help analyse the data correctly.
This describes the specific campaign you’re running such as a Google Ads campaign or a PR campaign. You can make up a name for it but, again, ensure that it is used consistently across different platforms to be able to analyse the data correctly.
This describes the type of content you’re promoting such as a banner ad, a video or a blog. It can be useful to add this parameter to your link if you want to A/B test two different ads you’re running from the same campaign. Again, ensure you keep the naming consistent for accurate analysis.
We’ve got some useful steps to aid you in creating your own personalised tracked link, using time saving tools.
Here’s a useful online tool to help with UTM creation. You can create your tracking code by filling out the following:
Once this has been completed, your URL will be generated ready for tracking. You copy the URL and use it where you would normally add a standard URL link to your content etc.
Innovation Visual have provided a spreadsheet below, where we’ve created several tabs to aid in creating your very own links and tracking them for reference going forward.
UTM Creation and Tracking Spreadsheet Template
Choose the type of tracked link you are creating by selecting the appropriate tab in the spreadsheet. We have categorised them as follows:
Title
For identification purposes only. The title will not appear in the tracked link. Make sure it's easily findable for future reference.
Untracked link
Enter the link you wish to track (i.e., https://www.yoursite.com).
Source & Medium
These are very important and need to be accurate and consistent. Remember the golden rules of UTM parameters:
We’ve added data validation to avoid mistakes. Follow the examples on the spreadsheet or contact Innovation Visual if you need any help.
Campaign ID
Follow the same rules as source and medium but keep it unique to the specific campaign you are running. The Campaign ID will allow you to identify your specific campaign in Google Analytics and demonstrate its effectiveness. If your campaign is spanning multiple platforms and mediums, then you can replicate your campaign ID on multiple lines and tabs of the spreadsheet. For example, a campaign used across multiple platforms, with multiple sources and mediums might return tracked links like these:
Paid Social Campaign:
Google Paid Campaign:
Email Newsletter Campaign:
This will allow you to track the success of your wider campaign across multiple platforms, whilst still being able to attribute specific goals and conversions to each individual platform. The smallest typo or change in any of these links might make it impossible to track the campaign as a whole and attribute success appropriately. It’s a good opportunity to create a naming convention across your business to ensure you can track campaigns accurately and consistently.
Tracked link
Automatically produces a tracked link for you, by combining the elements you have entered across the spreadsheet.
Shortened Links
You can use shortened links at this point (Bitly, TinyURL) and the tracked link will still work. This is particularly useful when the link is visible in plain text (for example in an email).
It’s worth being aware that users often like to be able to see where a link is going to take them before they click – as this provides greater confidence and trust. So, in situations where the user is not familiar with your site, using the full un-shortened link is advisable. However, you could also create a shortened link using GTM.
It is important to keep past tracked links on the spreadsheet. This will allow you or other members of your team to go back and refer to the sheet in the future. It keeps a record of all of your Campaign IDs as well as the source and medium you attributed them to.
As experts in the digital marketing field, using tools like GA (Google Analytics) 4, we can offer a full review of tracking to ensure everything is accurate and help you achieve your business goals.
For more information or any queries you may have, contact us here or give us a call at 0333 772 0509 and discuss your tracking challenges.