UTM Parameters : Everything you need to know

UTM Parameters (Urchin Tracking Module) are 5 tags that you can add to the end of the URL of your marketing efforts. These parameters are extremely beneficial and interpret your traffic in Google Analytics in specific ways. When the appended URL is visited it allows the Google Analytic software to track the desired information. Let’s take a quick look at each of the 5 tags and how they can be used.

1. Utm_campaign – which campaign the promotion is associated with.
2. Utm_medium – which marketing channel users are coming from i.e. social, email, CPC etc.
3. Utm_source – which site visitors are coming through from.
4. Utm_term – identifies the keywords that are attached to the campaigns targetting.
5. Utm_content – identifies the exact element that the user clicked to come through.

Using UTM tags can be particularly useful when there are multiple access points to one piece of content or page on your site. It allows you to identify which channels to focus on.

How do UTM Parameters work?

You probably already know where your website traffic is coming from. Places such as Google, email marketing, social media etc. However, UTM tags help you to drill down into specific pages and posts within the main traffic sources you already look at. For example, let’s say you’re promoting a blog post on Facebook. We’ll use one of our recent blog URLs as a model with the added UTM in orange.

In this example, we are saying that anyone who clicks on this link is registered as traffic under a medium of social media and source of Facebook. Meanwhile, the campaign will track exactly what type of content it is. Don’t worry, this won’t affect anything on the page it just helps analytics to easily track specific details otherwise missed. By knowing which channels are working well can help you target both the type of content posted and the source of where it is being posted. All of this will positively impact the campaigns ROI.

Where do I start?

If you still aren’t completely confident with how to create a UTM tag for your URLs then there are some great tools out there to help you. Googles Campaign URL builder can generate links with custom UTM parameters for you so you can track all your promotional efforts.