What are UTM Tags and how can they help you?
UTM tags are used in online/digital marketing to increase the granularity and value of the data collected from traffic being pushed to your website.
As an online marketer, gaining as much insights as possible will allow you to better tailor your marketing efforts and better optimize your ad spend.
In essence, UTM tags are additional pieces of data that are appended to an inbound link to your website, to give you further insights about that website visitor.
Why is it called a UTM tag?
UTM is an acronym for “Urchin Traffic Monitor”.
Urchin Tracker was the software that was acquired by Google that then became Google Analytics.
UTM tags will allow you to further track data about inbound traffic being directed to your website.
What data can UTM tags help me track?
5 possible parameters:
There are 5 different UTM tags you can use to further track your traffic and marketing efforts. These 5 tags are:
Source, Medium, Campaign, Content, Keyword
NEED to have at least the first 3.
Source
Tag: utm_source
This tracks the location WHERE the traffic came from.
Ex: utm_source=facebook
Medium
Tag: utm_medium
The utm_medium tag, although often confused with the utm_source tag, tracks which method was used to originate the traffic.
Ex: utm_medium=social
Campaign
Tag: utm_campaign
The utm_campaign tag allows you to track the performance of a specific campaign. For example if you are running multiple different campaigns on the same medium and source, example multiple facebook/instagram/email etc campaigns, this tag will allow you to further differentiate between the traffic.
Ex: utm_campaign=book-a-demo-campaign
Content
Tag: utm_content
The utm_content tag allows you to track which specific link was clicked in case you have multiple links in the same e-mail for example.
Ex: utm_content=footer-link
Keyword Term
Tag: utm_term
The utm_term tag is used for paid search ads. It allows you to track which specific search keywords were used for that particular ad.
Ex: utm_term=learning+software+demo
How to use UTM Tags
To use the UTM tags, we simply need to append a question mark to the end of any incoming links to the website, followed by the tag and its value.
How do I create links with UTM tags?
Although links with UTM tags may look complicated, they are relatively simple. You have 2 ways to create your links: either automatically or manually
Automatically creating links with UTM tags
You can automatically have your URL’s generated for you by using a tool such as Google Analytics Campaign URL builder.
https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
Simply enter the desired URL, and fill out the information in the form, and the tool will generate the URL for you.
This is the easiest method of integrating UTM tags into your links.
Manually creating links with UTM tags
Creating UTM tags manually is quite easy.
Step 1: Start with the link you want to use: https://assima.net/book-a-demo
Step 2: Add a question mark to the end of the link : https://assima.net/book-a-demo?
Step 3: Add utm tags and their values individually, separating them by an ampersand
Ex: https://progressivewebsolutions.ca/contact-us/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=e-book-download-oct-20
Important to note :
Each URL may only have 1 question mark that delimits the start of the variables.
Question mark must be at the end of the normal URL
Each parameter must be separated by an ampersand (&)
Special characters such as spaces and such must be URL encoded
If any of those last 4 sentences sounded too complicated, just save yourself the trouble and use the tool.