Are your marketing efforts actually paying off for your business?
You likely use Google Analytics, social media insights, or other data-tracking tools to understand how your marketing campaigns are performing. But maybe you wish you could gather even more information about your traffic and site visitor behavior.
UTMs can give you that information. That’s what we’ll cover in the blog below: what UTMs are, what they tell us, and why that information is beneficial to our business.
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What are UTMs?
“UTM” stands for “urchin tracking module.” A UTM is a simple piece of code that you add to the end of a URL that gives you data on marketing performance. You might also see them referred to as UTM codes, UTM parameters, or UTM tags.
They were developed by Urchin Software Corporation, which Google acquired in 2005. Urchin Software actually serves as the base for Google Analytics now! Which makes sense that the two have similar-sounding functions.
With Google Analytics, you can see how people are getting to your website. Google Analytics data helps you understand what works in driving traffic to your site and what doesn’t. It’s a handy tool that I’ve talked about on the blog before, but it won’t tell you the whole story alone.
That’s where UTMs come in. Actually, you can’t use UTMs without Google Analytics! They need each other to run properly. I always recommend that you add Google Analytics to all websites that you own, as well as any other locations your potential customers will pass through on their journey, like your sales funnel or shopping cart.
That’s the power of UTMs. They provide an extra source of data and knowledge to your traffic sources. In turn, you can make better decisions in marketing your business.
What does a UTM look like?
Let’s talk about what a UTM looks like, because you’ve probably seen one before. (You may not have even realized it!)
Take this basic URL, for example:
URL = karipoppleton.com/dashboards
When you add UTM parameters to this URL, it looks like this:
https://www.karipoppleton.com/dashboards/?utm_source=activecampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_term=learn-more&utm_content=link1&utm_campaign=data-measurement
There’s a lot going on in that URL. Let’s break it down.
The part of the URL that starts with the question mark, the part in bold, is the UTM parameter. Adding this part doesn’t impact your link at all, as long as it’s set up correctly. It just changes the tracking.
What can UTMs tell you?
There are five parameters that can be tracked in Universal Analytics.
Here’s that same example from above, with the different parameters broken down:
https://www.karipoppleton.com/dashboards?utm_source=activecampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_term=learn-more&utm_content=link1&utm_campaign=data-measurement
- Source (utm_source) tells you the “brand” where your visitors came from, whether it’s Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and so on. In our example, it’s the email provider ActiveCampaign.
- Next, we have Medium (utm_medium), which tells you the type of traffic that is being sent to your site. This will often be referral, social, cpc (or paid traffic). In our example, is “email” since it’s coming from ActiveCampaign.
- Campaign (utm_campaign) tells you why you are sending the traffic to your site. For example, is it to highlight a specific product or a spring sale? In our example, “data measurement” is the product name.
These three UTM components are required for all UTMs that you create. The second two allow you to be more specific about where your traffic is coming from.
- Term (utm_term) is used to identify the subject line of the exact email that pushed the site traffic.
- Content (utm_content) helps you get more specific and granular with your data. If you have multiple links pointing to the same URL, like an email with multiple CTA buttons, you can use this component to identify the link that was clicked.
Okay! What does this all mean? When someone clicked on our example link, I’d be able to see that someone arrived at this page:
https://www.karipoppleton.com/dashboards
…from an email I sent, with the subject line “Learn More,” in a campaign with information about my data measurement services. Oh, and they clicked on the first link of multiple in the email.
Neat, right?
Furthermore, I’d be able to see what actions that person took after they landed on the page, like if they booked a call, became a lead, or made a purchase.
This is all data that can be gathered by simply taking an extra minute to add the UTM parameters to the links in my email.
The data-gathering power of UTMs
By now, you’ve seen how powerful it can be to use UTMs to evaluate the impact of your marketing efforts.
Remember, UTMs are simple pieces of code that you add on to your URL. They’re often called UTM tags, UTM parameters, or UTM codes.
Five parameters can be tracked in Universal Analytics. The first three are required for all UTMs that you create:
- Source, which tells you what “brand” your site visitor came from, such as Google or Instagram or ActiveCampaign.
- Medium, which tells you the type of traffic you got, such as social, referral, or email.
- Campaign, which tells you why the traffic was sent to your site, such as a sale or product launch.
There are two other parameters you can use to be even more specific about your site traffic: Term and Content.
You can only use UTMs with Google Analytics, and you should only use them for websites or property that you own or can install code on.
This takes us more into the process of using UTMs and the data they provide, which I’ll be covering in my next post.
