The level of detail would be impressive from a paid tool: set up UTM right and you can see how much traffic came from a specific tweet, or from a specific image in a particular email. If you still have questions about UTM parameters after reading this post, feel free to leave a comment and we will respond to your question. What Is A UTM Parameter? UTM parameters sometimes called UTM codes are specific text strings that you can append to URLs that allow you track those URLs when they get clicked on. UTM parameters make Google Analytics pick up on the data in the code and log it with the pageview. The resulting data is visible in Google Analytics, meaning you can track traffic in terms of where it came from and how it got to you. Google will track traffic with cookies — but UTMs let you overwrite standard Google tracking with your own, custom tracking, tailored with parameters that exactly fit your needs. What Can You Track With UTM Codes? Social UTM parameters let you track social media efforts, allowing you to show which content was most effective on which channel. Emails In-email links can have UTMs attached. You can get differential click-through metrics from the same email — are more people clicking the link at the top, or the bottom? Tag the same landing page or signup URL in emails sent to different or at different times and get a unique level of granularity. Advertisements PPC advertising can be monitored closely with UTMs. And More… Anything that involves someone clicking on a link or typing a URL to come to your website can be tracked with UTMs. Even print ads can offer a shortened URL, usually a redirect to keep your domain visible, which can then be used to track response rates. Anatomy Of A UTM Code A naked, UTM-free URL might look something like this: But the whole URL including the UTM code looks like this: Everything from the question mark onward are tracking modules. Campaign, Source and Medium are compulsory. The other two, Term and Content, are optional, so you see them less. Typically, you can use the site name as the Source. But one major exception to this is email campaigns. It might seem intuitive to do this, but it will make a mess of your analytics by causing email clickthroughs to show up as self-referrals or visits sent from your own site. Google recommends using this field to identify the marketing medium, tagging traffic from emails, PPC, and so on. You can separate them by choosing single parameters, either source… …or medium. Here, the campaign tag is the same as the source tag. GA lets you track both stats and raw numbers. URLs tagged ReviveOldPost pulled in 48 sessions, 31. Compare that to email, responsible for 50 sessions, and it seems almost level; but 78% of the sessions email produced were new. UTM tracking gives you the raw material to draw conclusions about which channels are most successful. You can use the Content tag to give you the data you need to differentiate and test different versions of the same ad, for instance, since it identifies the specific content even if it shares its destination URL with another ad. This works for different ad placement, design, wording and any other variable you want to test. Content can also be used for marketing campaigns. You can use it to differentiate links within an email, so you can compare text and image, for instance. In an email with multiple links you can compare link placement by flagging links at the top, middle or bottom of the email with different Content tags. UTM Setup Setting up your UTM tags is simple. UTM parameters are case sensitive and need to be entered exactly the same each time. It integrates with Google Sheets too. This one: … Is 150 characters. You can also use 301 redirects to create a shortened URL that redirects to the UTM-bearing URL. However this can have adverse SEO ramifications. Find your ad in , select your ad and scroll down to Tracking, then paste your UTM parameters into the URL Tags box. Conclusion UTM parameters excel in two distinct ways at the same time: you get excellent granularity, and you get it across channels with the results all in one place. One final note for those concerned about SEO. Be sure to use canonical tags in the head of your webpages. This will eliminate any duplicate content issues UTM links may create. Richard Bayston Richard Bayston is a freelance blogger and copywriter covering tech, digital marketing and content strategy for SMBs. I've also been known to write on health and fitness. Find out more: Richard RBCopywriting. The rest of my time is spent arguing amicably with my wife and Googling the answers. Thanks for this post. It is very timely for me. These include 8-10 links to new content on our site on a weekly basis. In reading what you wrote above, I am concerned that if I attached a UTM parameter to each URL link that I would end up with 8-10 new visits being recorded which would really mess of our analytics. Am I understanding this correctly? Thanks for the kind words and happy to hear you enjoyed the post. If you were to add eight links to the email, you would have eight different ways for people to get to your site. This would only appear as one visit on the website, though. If they clicked all eight links this would be eight sessions, but one user. Please let me know if this is not clear enough : Hi guys, great post! I had a quick question regarding the UTM codes once they are created. After I create a UTM code, I simply put it as the destination URL for a campaign in that specific platform. So an example is if it is a MailChimp email ad… I do it as the destination URL when something is clicked. Do I have to add the UTM code in Google Analytics manually or will it organize everything based on the source, medium and campaign name that I input? Excellent blog you have here but I was curious if you knew of any user discussion forums that cover the same topics talked about here? If you have any suggestions, please let me know. Theere is not somethіng you wiѕh tto prevent yʏou from requesting doubts in the plumber himself. Ꭲhе ssteam shower cabin can be a somewbat new concept for thee bathrooms which includes the truth iѕ been a god send to us all. These cаmpaigns will օften be very costly, as they require tо be continued over a long time of time. So I just made three different paid Fb ads, and as content the name of the three cities I was trying to target since content tracks the specific ad or link location that produced the traffic to differentiate and test different versions of the same ad, for instance, since it identifies the specific content even if it shares its destination URL with another ad. But where can I find the content tag in the Google Analytics? Thank you so much!
