Everything you need to know about UTM parameters

Tracking with UTM parameters

When it comes to tracking UTM parameters can be very useful. Unfortunately, a high percentage of businesses are still not using them. And as a result, many companies deprive themselves of the simple possibility to analyze their online marketing measures quite precisely.

So what are they and how should you use them?

The abbreviation UTM stands for “Urchin Tracking Modules”. Urchin Software was bought by Google in 2005 and developed the predecessor of Google Analytics. In case you’ve used Google Analytics before, you might’ve already stumbled across UTM parameters. If used correctly, they help you learn more about your online target group by keeping track of your individual campaigns and measures.

To ensure a correct application of those parameters you should understand the basics of UTM parameters and know how to use your tracking tools optimally. Only by applying this, your campaign tracking will improve and you will be able to allocate your marketing budget a little bit better.

But what is a UTM parameter?

Query parameters

Before we discuss that question you need to understand the difference between UTM and query parameters.

In one of our last articles we’ve already made a short introduction into query parameters. But if you haven’t read the article you’re probably wondering right now what query parameters are and what they have to do with UTM parameters. So let’s go back to that topic for a few seconds.

Query parameters are a short snippet of code that you can attach to the end of your URL in order to save information. Every UTM parameter is a query parameter, but not every query parameter is a UTM parameter.

So what’s the difference?

A query parameter is always indicated by a question mark after a hostname and page path (as you can see in the example above). A UTM parameter on the other hand, is indicated by a question mark and the UTM variable “utm_source”. That being said, if there’s no UTM source, it’s not a UTM parameter but just a query parameter. Just keep this in mind.

In our example above, you can see a query parameter that includes a UTM parameter.

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What are UTM parameters?

UTM parameters are five tags, again, additions that can be added as an ending to a URL in order to evaluate the success of a marketing or advertising measure and optimize it if necessary.

As soon as the page with the modified URL address is called up, Google Analytics can track and analyze the calls of your visitors. For example, you can find out which channels visitors used to get to your website. You can also find out if and how visitors interacted with the content shown for the campaign. This is especially important if it is possible to access your online presence from multiple channels and you need to find out which one is working successfully and which channel you want to focus on further as you expand your campaign in the near future.

Adding the UTM parameters does not change anything in the content of the post, of course. However, Google Analytics can see where visitors came from when they accessed the page and how they interacted with it through the UTM parameter.

Example: We want to measure how many users accessed this article via our organic Facebook posts. The common URL is: https//url.com

With UTM parameters, it looks like this:
‍http://www.url.com?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=blog

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The five possible UTM parameters and their meaning

utm_source : Indicates from which page the visitor came to your site.

utm_medium : Indicates which marketing channel brought the visitor to your site, e.g. via email, social media, or cost-per-click. Based on the medium, Google Analytics should assign acquisition channels, by the way.

utm_campaign : By specifying this, you can determine which campaign is linked to the advertising campaign.

utm_term : This tag allows you to identify paid keywords that you used to target your campaign. (utm_term is not used in HubSpot).

utm_content : Allows you to identify the exact element that was clicked on in your ad or promotion. For example, you can also use this to find out which of several links within a newsletter was clicked on more frequently.

You should use especially the first three parameters. You are basically free to choose the values you use. There are no defaults here. However, you should still pay attention to source and medium, as these values are responsible for assigning the traffic to the correct channels in Google Analytics.

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Why are UTM parameters important?

The utm_content tag can be enormously important for optimizing your campaign. Once you have found out which triggers cause a visitor to go to your page, you can specifically strengthen these stimuli and possibly also remove less effective elements of the website from your web presence altogether.

You can quickly find out which advertising measures are successful and which should be improved. You can therefore experiment with the design of your website using current and statistical data on the user behavior of visitors and optimize your presence in a timely and targeted manner, since you now know numerically validated what type of promotion and content works for your target audience.

You’ll also learn which channels are most important to your buyers and whether you should ideally run campaigns through Facebook Messenger, other social media, or email. Knowing what makes your customers tick then naturally has a positive impact on your bottom line and the ROI of your campaigns.

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Problems with UTM parameters

But what’s the problem with those code snippets?

Privacy First browsers can now detect UTM parameters and block them, which for you means that you won’t be able to track your potential customers. For now, this doesn’t concern a lot of browsers but the restrictions will be growing in the future. To ensure that your tracking won't be affected by those restrictions, you should be using other tracking methods on top of your UTM parameters.

So what's your best option?

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OneTrack as your solution

OneTrack doesn’t solely rely on UTM parameters that can easily be restricted. Instead, we are using multiple tracking methods at once to ensure the greatest collection of first party data possible. And the best part: We're setting up everything for you, so you don't have to waste your time on figuring out how to implement everything yourself.

OneTrack is the perfect solution for you if you want to be able to rely on the accuracy your data and focus on your media buying. We’ve been studying the problems in digital advertising over the past few years and created a product that helps our customers lower their ad costs while simultaneously increasing their conversion rates.

Try it out yourself and you’ll be surprised about how good it works!

Why wait? Schedule your free consultation today and stop wasting your money on ads that don’t work anymore:

https://www.one-track.io/pricing