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Have you ever wondered why, despite your efforts, your campaigns don’t seem to be driving traffic to your website?
Imagine this scenario. You’ve carefully planned a series of newsletters or Email Marketing campaigns, paying attention to every detail and sending them to a long list of contacts. Finally, it’s time to analyze the results. You open Google Analytics, ready to see the fruits of your labor… but to your surprise, you discover that the tool hasn’t recorded any visits from the Email channel.
Is it really possible that none of your contacts visited the site? Does that mean all your work was for nothing? Fortunately, the answer is no.
In an increasingly competitive digital landscape, understanding which campaigns are performing best and accurately measuring their results is crucial to ensuring a return on your advertising investment.
This is where UTM parameters come into play, one of the most powerful tools for precisely tracking the source of visits to your website.
But what exactly are these parameters, and how can they help you improve your marketing campaigns?
What Are UTM Parameters: Definition
UTM parameters (Urchin Tracking Module) are snippets of text and numbers that are added to the end of a URL. These tags are inserted into the URL after a question mark and contain information about the traffic source.
For example, you may have seen a URL like this:
https://www.website.com?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=black+friday
In this case, the URL contains three UTM parameters:
- “utm_source=newsletter” indicates the traffic source (the newsletter),
- “utm_medium=email” specifies the medium used (email), and
- “utm_campaign=black+friday” identifies the current campaign (“black friday”).
What Are UTM Links Used For?
By adding information to the URL, UTM parameters allow you to accurately identify the traffic source that brought users to your website.
When analyzing traffic data on Google Analytics, you’ll notice that the tool can already automatically recognize some main traffic sources, such as Organic Search or Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising campaigns, which have an automatic coding system.
However, there are some sources that Analytics cannot automatically identify, such as most newsletters/Direct Email Marketing (DEM) campaigns. In these cases, if we don’t use UTMs, Google Analytics would assign all the traffic generated by these campaigns to the Direct channel, giving the false impression that users manually typed the website URL into their browser.
The result is misleading and inaccurate data, making it difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
UTM parameters solve this problem by allowing Google Analytics to accurately recognize the source, medium, and campaign associated with each user.
When a user clicks on a link with UTM parameters, this data is recorded by Google Analytics and associated with the visit, allowing you to more accurately analyze the source of the traffic and the results of your campaigns (conversions or other actions on the website).
When to Use UTM Parameters
As mentioned earlier, Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads) already have automatic coding that sends traffic details to GA4. Generally, you won’t need to use UTMs in the links of these campaigns.
(However, remember to check within these platforms to ensure that automatic coding is enabled!)
We recommend using UTM parameters in the following cases:
- in links within newsletters or DEM (Direct Email Marketing) campaigns;
- in links used for ads in your Social campaigns (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.);
- in links placed in the bio or comments of your Social channels to direct users to your website;
- in links within your email signature;
- in links within PDF documents or other files;
- in QR code links.
How to Create a Link with UTM Parameters
There are tools that make it really easy and quick to create links with UTM parameters.
One example is Google’s official tool, “Campaign URL Builder”.
Simply enter:
- the destination URL of the campaign (“website URL”),
- the source of the campaign (“campaign source”),
- the medium of the campaign (“campaign medium”),
- the name of the campaign (“campaign name”), or its ID (“campaign ID”).
In addition to these required fields, you can also enter optional parameters related to keywords (“campaign term”) or ads (“campaign content”).
At the bottom of these fields, in the “Share the generated campaign URL” section, you’ll find the complete link with all the UTMs to use in your campaign.
Alternatively, you can also use Facebook’s “Google Analytics URL Builder”, which is very similar to Google’s tool mentioned above.
After entering the UTMs, clicking the “Create URL” button at the bottom will generate the complete link to use in your campaigns.
When adding UTMs, be mindful of the use of uppercase and lowercase letters: if you write “Newsletter” and “newsletter,” Analytics will interpret them as two separate sources! In general, we recommend using lowercase letters.
Additionally, in the case of very long URLs, we suggest using a URL shortener like Bitly to make the link more readable and to avoid character limits imposed by some tools.
Some Examples of UTM Links
Below are some examples of UTMs you could use in your campaigns.
In general, if you’re unsure which parameters to choose, we recommend consulting Google’s official guide on default channel groupings. Here you can understand which UTMs to set as the source/medium based on the channel you want to associate your visit with.
1) Example of a UTM link for newsletters
If you want to track the links in your newsletter, you can use the following UTM parameters:
- Campaign Source = newsletter
- Campaign Medium = email
- Campaign Name = the name of your campaign, e.g., “black friday”
The final result will be:
https://www.website.com?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=black+friday
Note: The Medium must be exactly “email” and not “mail,” otherwise Analytics may not be able to associate the visit with the correct channel (Email).
2) Example of a UTM link for social campaigns
If you want to track the links in your paid social campaigns, you can use the following UTM parameters:
- Campaign Source = the name of the social platform, e.g., “facebook” or “instagram”
- Campaign Medium = ppc
- Campaign Name = the name of your campaign, e.g., “black friday”
The final result will be:
https://www.website.com?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=ppc&utm_campaign=black+friday
In this case, the visits will be attributed to the Paid Social channel.
Where to View Campaign Data in Google Analytics
To analyze your campaign data in Google Analytics, go to the “Reports” section and navigate to “Life cycle” > “Acquisition” > “Traffic acquisition.”
Here you’ll see a list of channel groupings that generated traffic. You can click the drop-down menu within the table and select “Session source/medium” as the primary dimension (instead of “Default channel grouping”). Additionally, you can click the blue “+” within the table and add the secondary dimension “Session campaign” to see specific campaign details.
Conclusion
To be successful, a digital strategy must be data-driven.
By integrating UTM parameters into your campaigns, you can optimize your investments and make more informed decisions that contribute to the success of your activities.
If you’ve never used UTMs, now is the time to start and take your campaigns to the next level!
If you need support, contact our agency for a consultation.
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