Chapter 1: Know the Two Pillars of Tracking

Learn more about UTM Parameters in these articles here:
• UTM Parameters Best Practices: A Course for Beginners and Experts
• 7 Most Frequently Asked Questions About UTM Parameters
• Terminus UTM Builder – Features

http://www.mysite.com/sale?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=summer_sale

How to Utilize Google Analytics to Effectively Track Your Campaigns

What is Campaign Tracking?

Campaign tracking can be vital to making your online ads more effective. In short, campaign tracking involves identifying the activities of users to pinpoint where your website’s traffic is coming from. By seeing which ad placements are drawing the largest number of visitors to your site, you can optimize your campaigns and budget more effectively to capture a larger audience at a reasonable cost to you.

Google Analytics is a great tool for campaign tracking. It brings all of your resources together in one convenient location to give you a quick look at your statistics. In general, Google Analytics helps you track campaigns in two categories:

Organic campaigns, such as direct traffic, unpaid search results, and social media/email traffic
Paid campaigns, such as paid keywords and Google Ads

Where to Start

Tracking campaigns through Google Analytics is an easy process. Your biggest helper here lies in UTM parameters, which are tags added to your URL to help determine where traffic is coming from. There are five types of UTM parameters:

Campaign: letting you see which ad campaign the link came from
Source: identifying traffic sources like search engines and newsletters
Medium: which indicates how traffic is reaching you such as email or social media
Content: highlighting a specific call to action
Term: which tells you which certain keyword is present in a successful ad

In addition to the “campaign” term that we’re focusing on here, these other UTM parameters are ideal for giving you a more detailed look at where your traffic is originating from. You’ll be able to instantly see where people are viewing your ads, so you can focus your efforts on the most successful channels.

To take advantage of UTM Parameters, you will need to understand UTM Naming Conventions in order to build a custom URL in order to track the parameters. While manual tagging isn’t that difficult, it can be less time-consuming to use a UTM builder from Terminus. This way, you’re guaranteed to make no mistakes and can more accurately determine which results you want to see.

For example, if you’re wanting to track your traffic from Facebook, your URL might look like this:

You’ll simply enter the destination URL and the requested parameters into the URL builder, and it will automatically be drafted! You also have options to save preset parameters and add UTM tracking to all URLs in your emails.

Setting Up Goals and Tracking Your Progress

Tracking campaigns through Google Analytics is a quick and easy way to make sure you’re on the right path to meet your goals. You can keep track of certain behaviors and reproduce the ads that have elicited those behaviors. Using Google Analytics to create and track goals is a convenient way to have this information all in one place.

Once you’re in Google Analytics, head to “Admin” at the gear-shift symbol toward the bottom of your page, then click “Goals” in the right-hand menu and select “+ New Goal.”

From there, you’ll enter your goal description and details to your exact specifications, including the engagement you’re tracking and the destination type.

You can also use Google Analytics to identify conversions, when your visitors answer the call to action you present, like completing a form or buying a product. In Google Analytics, head to the “Conversions” menu, select “Goals” and then “Overview.”

Here, you’ll see exactly how your conversions are faring, so you can plan to replicate the methods that are working for you and your visitors.

Tracking Your Campaigns on Google Analytics

There are a few quick steps to take to start tracking your campaigns through Google Analytics. To start, log on to Google Analytics, then head to the “Acquisitions” page and click “Campaigns” and “All Campaigns.”

The initial page here will give you a summary of your campaigns and their success. You can see how many users, new users, and sessions have resulted through a certain campaign. You can also view more statistics about the behaviors of your visitors and your conversion rates. Simply scroll down to view this information.

These figures will give you a better look at the trends in your traffic. If there’s a certain campaign that’s converting at a higher rate, you can easily track it to see where your success lies. Over time, you’ll be more able to identify trends to maintain and increase visitor numbers by mimicking the campaigns that have been successful in the past.

Once your campaigns are being tracked, you can run reports to take a closer look at your metrics. To see an overview, head to the “Acquisition” tab, then select “All Traffic” and “Channels.” You can then view your trends over a day, week, or month, or look toward the bottom of your screen to see your acquisition, behavior, and conversion numbers.

In the end, campaign tracking through Google Analytics can make a huge difference in the way you run your ads. By creating and utilizing customized UTM parameters, creating goals, tracking your campaigns, and identifying conversions, you’ll have a fuller picture of the success of your online ads, leading you to a clearer vision for the future of your business.

If You Would Like to Learn More About UTM Parameters, Check Out These Articles:

All About UTM Parameters (Infographic)

Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters are an essential tool when it comes to tracking the effectiveness of your ad campaigns. Essentially, UTM parameters are tags that you can add to the URLs you are sending to potential customers through channels such as Facebook ads, email promotions, or any other ways of outreach. By utilizing UTM parameters, you’ll be able to easily keep track of where people are seeing your ads so that you can put more time and attention into the most beneficial platforms for you.

There are five types of UTM parameters: campaign, source, medium, content, and term. These terms help to narrow down your results and give you a more detailed look at where your traffic is coming from. UTM parameters are a great tool to help you make the most of Google Analytics, and you’ll be able to easily create reports that show what’s working and what’s not. If you’re considering utilizing UTM parameters in your ads, it is crucial to first understand UTM naming conventions. With just a little research, you can quickly be on your way to creating the most effective ad campaigns for your business.

Download the Infographic

If You Would Like to Learn More About UTM Parameters:

The Beginner’s Guide to UTM Parameters + Best Practices

If you already use analytics platforms such as Google Analytics, you probably think you already have this covered. While you may have the basics under control, the problem arises when your analytics tools mark your website traffic as direct. This is an unhelpful way of saying that someone arrived at your website by clicking on a direct link, but the analytics tools cannot detect where that link was originally posted or hosted.

1. What are UTM Parameters?

UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module. It takes its name from the software company that created it, Urchin Software Corporation. The Urchin software provides web analytics for marketers.

In a more practical sense, UTM parameters describe five tags that you can add to the end of a URL to track its performance from specific locations. These tags create the parameters that help you to narrow down tracking information. Here is an example of a URL with UTM parameters added:

2. Types of UTM Parameters?

The types of UTM parameters are synonymous with the five available tags you can use for tracking. Below you will find each tag, followed by what they mean and an example:

utm_campaign: This names the specific campaign the link was a part of. For example, you could use opening_day_deals or black_friday_sale. Example: utm_campaign=black_friday_sale
utm_source: Use this to identify where the traffic comes from. Possible sources include search engine, newsletter, or other referrals. Example: utm_source=facebook
utm_medium: This indicates what marketing channel directed a visitor to your website, such as email, social media, PPC ads, guest blog or brand partnerships. Example: utm_medium=social
utm_content: This highlights the call to action that worked. Example: CTAs include buy_now, click_here, learn_more, shop_now, or try_demo.
utm_term: Identifies keywords used in PPC ads, such as “dashboard cam” or “eye drops for allergies,” so you can see what most people are looking for when they find your ads. Links with this tag rarely show up in organic searches. When they do, this may indicate a website indexing problem. Example: utm_term=tennis_shoes or utm_term=utm_builder

3. What Do UTM Parameters Do?

Implementing UTM codes in Google Analytics will allow you to paint a more accurate picture of various data points which will help you track your marketing efforts. You’ll obtain basic engagement information about visitors, such as their average session, bounce rate, and conversion rates. Remember that not all visitors are profitable, so Google helps you to identify where your money is coming from.

Keep it Simple – Automate Your Parameters

http://www.terminusapp.com/google-analytics-url-builder/

4. Are There Any Potential Drawbacks?

There is one potential problem that marketers will need to account for when using UTM parameters. When these tags are added to URLs, they do not automatically change when the links change platforms or medium. For example, a customer could copy a link from your Twitter campaign to Facebook. Any potential clicks from that link would still show Twitter as the source in Google Analytics.

Most people share links by copying and pasting. They generally only pay attention to the URL structure if it becomes too long to fit. However, if they delete the UTM parameters, it may once again show up as direct traffic in your analytics.

5. Why are UTM Parameters Important?

Tracking down your revenue’s origins is one of the key benefits UTM parameters bring to the table. Here is some additional information on why UTM parameters form the foundation of strong marketing campaigns and advertising efforts:

Reduce Trial and Error

Sometimes a marketer has no choice but to opt for trial and error in a new market to see what works and what doesn’t. However, running multiple campaigns in this manner can be expensive. UTM Parameters help marketers find their footing in new markets while either eliminating trial and error or limiting the timespan of that strategy. When marketers know exactly what works, they can focus on those specific activities, thereby saving on marketing dollars. Specifically, campaign tracking allows marketers to understand their progress and make adjustments so that campaigns perform at their peak. So, it’s essential to understand the process of campaign tracking.

Finetune Your Funnels

Not all funnels cost money; some cost time. These may involve guest blogging on other websites or using specific social media channels. For example, some companies are surprised to learn that even though Instagram URLs are not clickable in captions, Instagram may still provide most of their website traffic. Similarly, whereas they get lost in the noise of multiple daily posts from big news agencies, they receive tons of referrals from a guest blog on a smaller niche website. In short, you can use UTM tags to find out what funnels work best and invest your time there.

Create Reports

Marketers often face strong demands from in-house employers or external clients to prove the effectiveness of specific campaigns they lead. UTM parameters allow them to narrow down exactly which of these campaigns work and which do not. It also allows marketers to show ROI or growth over a specific period of time versus another.

More Accurate Than Referrer

If you have been using Referrer to take advantage of these benefits before, you may believe UTM parameters are unnecessary. However, hopefully by now we have shown why these parameters provide much more accurate and granular data and why that accuracy is beneficial. This is especially important to account for all the traffic that gets lumped under “direct.”

Facilitates Affiliate Marketing

Have you hired social media influencers to represent your brand online? How will you know if customers used their affiliate links to reach your company? Some businesses provide special codes to bloggers and social media influencers, who then have to remind consumers to use those codes when making a purchase. UTM parameters provide a clear link back to a specific brand ambassador, making it possible to pay more accurate commissions, while also seeing who the most valuable influencers are.

6. Best Practices to Follow When Tagging URLs

When looking at the five types of UTM parameters, it may appear that these tags are complicated to use. This is not necessarily true. Once you understand the basics of how they work, they are easy to put into practice. Also, most marketers do not create these tags manually. Here are some best practices to ensure successful tagging:

Create an Effective Naming Convention

Some businesses get carried away when creating names for their UTM parameters. Use these tips to keep your UTM parameters inline:

Keep things simple and specific. This makes it easier for you to keep up with tags as your practice expands. It also makes it easier for someone else to pick up where you left off when you need assistance.
Consistency is key or you could miss out on the ability to draw accurate automated conclusions. For example, all your social media posts should share the utm_medium “social.” If some are “social” but others are “social_media,” graphs will create a separate bar for each of them.
Use lowercase letters as Google Analytics is case sensitive. This way, you won’t need to remember what should or should not be capitalized.
Remember to use dashes or underscores. Use just one or the other to preserve consistency. Spaces may, in some cases, disrupt the URL and cause it not to work.

Here is a more in-depth guide for all your UTM Naming Conventions questions!

Shorten Links

When URLs become too long, they pose a problem. Millennials are extremely tech-savvy and may recognize and delete the UTM parameters to meet their character counts for social media posts, thereby robbing you of valuable information. Some studies also suggest that users are more likely to click on shortened links. Finally, keeping character counts under 2,000 ensures compatibility with all browsers.

Avoid Duplications

One way to keep URLs short is to avoid repeating yourself in the tags. For example, a utm_campaign called “annual_year_2016” is redundant. You could use either “year_2016” or “annual_2016” and provide the same information. Sometimes the duplication comes from different UTM tags. For example, some marketers may put “linkedin” as both the utm_source and utm_medium.

7. Mistakes to Avoid When Tagging UTM Parameters in URLs

Now that you understand the best ways to go about adding tags to URLs, here are some of the practices you should steer clear of:

Using UTM Parameters in Internal Links

Because of the many benefits business owners get from using UTM parameter links, they may feel tempted to use them everywhere. However, UTM links are useless when used internally and can distort tracking information. When linking internally on your website, there is no need for additional tracking.

Using Every Parameter at the Same Time

Take another look at the example of a URL with UTM parameters that we provided earlier. What do you notice?

http://www.terminusapp.com/?utm_campaign=sale&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

There are several UTM parameter tags missing from this example. You may have believed this was an error, but it is deliberate.

Using all parameters at the same time creates problems. This is one of the reasons URLs with UTM tags end up being too long. Only use the UTM parameters you absolutely need per link or per campaign. It is also well to note that utm_term is most often reserved for use with keywords from paid ad campaigns.

Using UTM Tags for SEO

Contrary to popular opinion, using UTM parameters will not affect your website’s search ranking, While you can use it to track what keywords are performing well for PPC ads, using it to improve your ranking for that keyword will prove unfruitful. For the record, UTM tags do not lower your page’s search rankings either.

Creating Too Many Campaign Names

In an effort to keep the campaign names specific, some business owners may create a different campaign name for every source or medium. If your campaign spans multiple sources and mediums, you may still want to use the same campaign name to track how that campaign performs across platforms.

8. Build and Track UTM Parameters

If you are not sure which UTM parameter builder or tracker would be right for you, you are not alone. As a marketer or business owner, you must first consider the available options, your level of skill, and what your budget allows. Here is a brief overview of some available options:

Manual Tagging

This method is one of the most cost-effective because it is free, however, what it saves you in dollars and cents, it may steal back in time and accuracy. Manual tagging often lead to errors in the URL due to typos or just difficulty keeping track of what goes where. It is virtually impossible to maintain consistency as your business and its marketing campaigns expand.

URL Builder Spreadsheets

Whether it’s Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, spreadsheets can help to improve some of the problems noted with manual tagging. It is still cost-effective, allows you to keep track of naming conventions, and may provide some consistency. However, there is still the risk of creating broken links when piecing everything together. There are special builder sheets, but these have their own drawbacks as well. For example, you can’t tag URLs in bulk so it’s still a slow process. You may also create invalid URLs when trying to encode arbitrary UTM values.

Google URL Builder Tool

This is Google’s free tool to add campaign parameters so you can track Custom Campaigns in Google Analytics. It’s a simple but free solution for one-off creations and guarantees better accuracy over manual tagging. However, it does not store any of your campaigns or naming conventions, so you may still have issues with consistency. It also does not automatically shorten URLs.

https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder

Terminus

Terminus works similarly to the builder spreadsheets, but with greater accuracy and more capabilities. Like the builder spreadsheets, it makes it easier to build and manage the tracking URLs. When using this app, you can also add tags in bulk by using preset UTM codes which stores all the information you need. This allows other members on your team to use UTM parameters without losing consistency. In addition to this, it automatically shortens URLs and keeps track of them. Other features include redirect codes, audits and click reports. Try it free for 21 days with no contracts required.

https://www.terminusapp.com

9. UTM Parameters Cheat Sheet

Learn more about UTM Parameters in these articles here:

How to Define and Enforce UTM Naming Conventions?

Terminus is utilized by companies of all types, from small one-person marketing agencies to several billion-dollar corporations with a team of hundreds of users.

I have worked closely with many of these companies to understand their requirements for building UTM tracking URLs. Several of these companies have thousands of products spread across many business units, divisions, product lines, etc. They have numerous active campaigns that target global audiences who speak different languages. Teams responsible for looking at analytics reports and CRM systems (where this information may also be captured) can be completely different from the ones building these UTM parameters.

With hundreds of people involved, the risk of confusion is high. Millions of dollars are involved when making decisions based on this information. Making sure all of this is reliably tracked using UTM and other custom parameters are no small feat.

This article will discuss the most successful UTM convention strategies that have worked for these companies.

Why Use Such System To Build Your UTM Parameters?

Some of the best systems have a surprisingly lot of commonalities. Many of these methods and techniques have been developed over the course of many years and experienced people spread these good practices to help companies and such.

Benefits:

High-quality information in UTM or custom tracking parameters
Least effort for the value compared to other methods
Portable information that works with the majority of systems (analytics tools, CRMs, form captures, databases, email service providers, etc.)
Ability to generate high-quality analytics reports (using only basic filtering capability available in most tools)
Does not rely on documents or memory

Drawbacks:

Requires upfront thinking and design for your specific company. No whatever-you-feel-like value allowed to be used in UTM parameters.
Initial setup can be complex and requires a system to be built to enforce the conventions.

If you are not familiar with UTM parameters, I suggest reading UTM Parameters Best Practices Course before you proceed. It covers many basic concepts and simple conventions. If you are already familiar with UTM parameters and would like to have a systematic, airtight approach to building UTM conventions, this article is for you.

Automate and Enforce Consistency in Your UTMs

Here’s what we will cover in this article:

What Information Should Be Tracked?
How Do You Track All This Information?
Basic Concepts
How to Define a Convention?
How to Enforce your Conventions?
How to See This Information In Google Analytics?
How to Collect This Information in Leads, CRM, etc?

The examples I give are entirely hypothetical but are inspired from real implementation of successful tracking systems.

Let’s get started with a basic question

What Information Should Be Tracked?

It all depends on the business and its marketing needs.

As an example, these might be some of the data points (Dimensions) worth capturing:

Business Unit
Department
Division
Product Category
Product Type
Product
Service
Event
Plan/Tier
Pricing
Coupon
Channel/Medium
Source
Goal/Objective
Target Market
Target Customer
Topic
Web Property
Client
Partner
Agency
Locale
Region
Country
State
Campaign name
Date
Call to Action (CTA) copy
CTA location
Ad size
Keyword
Version

This list is just an example. You’ll have your own set of data points that are relevant to your own business and campaigns.

Let’s take an example of a small eCommerce store, Acme Inc. that sells various kinds of clothing items for men and women. Here is some information we have about them:

Items that they sell include shirts, jeans, shorts, sweaters and socks for both men and women.
They also have a blog that covers latest fashion trends.
They collect email addresses in various forms to send blog updates, coupons, loyalty programs, etc.
They sell their items in the US and Canada and might have country-specific campaigns.

1. Data Points To Capture

A good way to come up with data points is to look at all existing marketing copy (website, emails, tweets, ads, etc.). Are there campaigns for specific products, regions, types, etc.? Are there promotions for particular segments of users (e.g. men, women, etc.)? Are there campaigns promoting specific products (e.g. shirts, jeans, etc.)?

The following data points may be captured for Acme Inc.

Gender (all, women, men)
Product (all, shirts, jeans, shorts, sweaters, socks)
Goal (sale, lead, education)
Country (all, us, canada)
Date (When the campaign will go live)
Campaign name – Something specific about this campaign, e.g. winter_promotion
Channel/Medium
Source
Call to Action copy

Once you start seeing this data in analytics, you might also get some ideas about new campaigns. e.g. Do most of your campaigns promote all products? Maybe it’s worth running a few campaigns for some specific products, say jeans.

2. Goal

Of all the data points mentioned earlier, Goal is the most underrated one that people don’t capture. It should be part of all campaigns irrespective of what type of business.

Goal not only provides clarity and purpose, but it also greatly helps what metrics to look for in any campaign. For example,

If the goal is to get leads, then email captures is an important metric
If the goal is to make a sale, then purchases is what you need to look at

Making it part of the campaign allows it to be absolutely clear to everyone even if the person building the UTM tracking is not the same as the one looking at analytics reports.

How Do You Track All This Information?

All the data points that are important for your business needs to be sent to your analytics system. In order to extract useful information from the reports, you will have to drill down on each data point.

For example, you should be able to answer the question: How many emails did I get for lead campaigns promoting shirts in the US?

1. UTM Parameters (Recommended)

There are only 5 UTM parameters available. If used carefully, they can be used to organize all this information. For example,

utm_medium for Channel/Medium
utm_source for Source
utm_content for Call to Action copy and other CTA data
utm_term for Keywords in paid ads
utm_campaign (everything else)

2. Custom Dimensions

It’s possible to define Custom Dimensions in Google Analytics (or something similar in other analytics tools) for each data point. For example, you can define a Custom Dimension Goal. But this approach has several disadvantages,

You have to capture and send this data to Google Analytics yourself. GA script won’t do it automatically for you. This can be highly error-prone and needs to be implemented carefully considering many scenarios (is it per hit, per session, per user, etc.)
If you use multiple analytics tools, you’ll need to configure all of them to support these custom dimensions (if they even support it)
Sending this data to CRM or other tools is also complicated (they might not even support it). You need to define all these dimensions in those tools and keep them up-to-date with any changes.
If you want to capture this information when a lead fills a form, those forms need a new input for each dimension.

3. Combination of UTM and Custom Parameters

It’s quite common to use UTM parameters for some data points and use Custom Dimensions for the rest. But since you need to configure these Custom Dimensions, their disadvantages still apply.

Basic Concepts

So how do we capture so many data points in a handful of UTM parameters?

Let’s introduce some concepts that will help us build a structure that will help with this. It will allow us to define the exact specifications for any convention including enforcement mechanisms.

1. Field

A Field is any piece of information (data point) you want to track. For example, Goal is a field.

So why not use Dimension instead?

Dimension has a specific meaning in the context of analytics tools. For example, utm_campaign is one dimension. You can also define your own Custom Dimension in GA.

To avoid such confusion we will use Field which is a better term in the context of conventions. Also, when the data generated from these conventions is seen in analytics tools, one dimension may be composed of multiple fields.

a. Field Types

Four (4) basic types of fields can support most needs:

Option: A dropdown field to select one of several values
Text: A free form text field
Date: For specifying dates in a specified format, say YYYY_MM_DD
Constant: A fixed value that cannot be changed

These field types help control how the values are entered and play a critical role in enforcing conventions.

b. Dependent Fields

In some cases, the value of one field will control the values in subsequent fields. Let’s say we have two fields

Country
State

Selecting Country = us should show State with option values

california
new_york
texas

Selecting Country = canada should show State with option values

ontario
alberta
british_columbia

Similarly, each Business Unit may have a completely different set of Products. It’s best to show only the applicable values to minimize mistakes.

Though not necessary in many cases, it is helpful to understand the concepts behind dependent fields.

2. Parameter

A Parameter is either a UTM parameter (e.g. UTM campaign) or a Custom Parameter (e.g. affiliate).

A Custom Dimension is nothing but a Custom Parameter defined in Google Analytics.

3. Parameter Format

A Parameter Format is a collection of fields organized in a certain order to build the final value. For example,

field1-field2-field3-field4-field5-field6-...

For our example company, Acme Inc, a Parameter Format can be defined as,

<gender>-<product>-<goal>-<country>-<date>-<name>

When we use the exact values for each of these fields, it may look like,

all-jeans-lead-us-2018_08_25-fall_promotion

IMPORTANT!!: Once you define this format, any final value MUST have all the fields. If you need a value that doesn’t fit in this format, then you need to redesign the Parameter Format to accommodate that value.

There should be enforcement mechanisms in place to make sure none of the values are skipped. For example, it should not be possible to use a value that does not have goal specified. We’ll see in later sections how to create these enforcement systems.

Expert Tip – Separators

A separator is a character that is present between two fields in a parameter format.

It’s recommended to use a dash (-) as the separator. Some people also use underscores (_) as a separator, but it’s more fitting to join multiple words within a field, e.g. summer_sale.

This separator character is very useful for filtering. It can also help split the final value back into individual fields using spreadsheets or other programmatic tools. This can enable in-depth, custom analysis when needed.

IMPORTANT: Don’t use your separator character inside any field value because that completely negates its purpose.

4. Convention

A Convention is a collection of Parameter Formats as mapped to a Parameter (UTM or Custom Parameter).

If you are confused, the following sections will help clarify this definition.

How to Define a Convention?

Let’s define an Email Convention and Social Convention for Acme Inc.

1. Email Convention

For our Email Convention, we’ll define the UTM parameters as follows:

a. UTM Campaign Format (UTM Campaign)

This is nothing but a Parameter Format defined for UTM Campaign.

We will track these data points (fields) in our UTM Campaign

Gender
Product
Goal
Country
Date (When the campaign will go live)
Campaign name – Something specific about this campaign, e.g. winter_promotion

The above fields can have the following field types

Gender : Option (Dropdown values: all, women, men)
Product : Option (Dropdown values: all, shirts, jeans, shorts, sweaters, socks)
Goal : Option (Dropdown values: lead, education, sale, awareness)
Country : Option (Dropdown values: all, us, canada)
Date : Date with format YYYY_MM_DD
Campaign name : Text (Any free form text)

The format with a dash (-) as Separator will be

<gender>-<product>-<goal>-<country>-<date>-<name>

Even though we are building Email Convention, this campaign format may be reused in other conventions, say Social Convention.

b. Email UTM Medium Format (UTM Medium)

In this case, the format consists of one field of type Constant. The value of this field is email and will never change.

c. Email UTM Source Format (UTM Source)

Let’s say Acme Inc has three email lists: newsletter, rewards, loyalty

This format consists of one field of type Option with dropdown values of newsletter, rewards, loyalty.

2. Social Convention

We can define UTM parameter for Social Convention as:

a. UTM Campaign Format (UTM Campaign)

In our case, UTM Campaign Format is the same as Email Convention. So we’ll just reuse what we defined earlier.

b. Social UTM Medium Format (UTM Medium)

In this case, the format consists of one field of type Constant. The value of this field is social and will never change.

c. Social UTM Source Format (UTM Source)

This format consists of one field of type Option with dropdown values of facebook, google, twitter, linkedin

3. Other Conventions

You can define as many conventions as you like. They need not be differentiated based on medium (as we did for email and social), but could be based on anything that makes sense for your business.

How To Enforce Your Conventions?

Once you have defined your conventions, it’s important to have appropriate tools to generate these values. Using a simple URL builder will make this approach highly error-prone.

1. Tools

Enforcing your convention requires using a custom URL builder. It can be done using one of the following methods:

Spreadsheets: For a highly skilled user, it’s possible to create these conventions in a spreadsheet. However, it can be quite complicated and difficult to maintain, especially for a team.
Custom-built forms: You can use one of the many online form builders to build your UTM URL builder. It’s also possible to build something in-house using available open-source software, scripts, etc. It may require significant coding work and ongoing maintenance.
Terminus: It allows you to define Fields, Parameter Formats and Conventions which can be used to configure your own custom UTM builder.

I’m going to use Terminus to show how a convention can be configured. If you don’t intend to use Terminus, you can use this section as a reference for implementing your conventions in other tools.

2. Create UTM Campaign Format

Create UTM Campaign Format using dash (-) as the separator.

Add fields to the parameter format. For example, Gender, an Option (dropdown) field, can be configured as:

Gender field might look something like this in the UTM URL builder

Similarly, other fields (Product, Goal, Country, Date, and Name) can be configured. Once these fields are configured, UTM Campaign Format will look something like this,

Make sure your custom UTM builder generates the final value men-shirts-sale-us-2018_10_28-promotion automatically. It SHOULD NOT be manually typed in.

3. Create Email UTM Medium Format

Since there is only one field in this format, there is no need for any separator.

Create Email field of Constant type with value email.

There’s not much else needed for Email UTM Medium Format.

4. Create Email UTM Source Format

For emails, UTM Source has only one field.

Source is a dropdown with some predefined values. Here’s how it might look like:

Once this is saved, we have Email UTM Source Format.

5. Create Email Convention with Parameter Formats

Once all the parameter formats are created, we can now define a convention by connecting them to the appropriate UTM parameters.

Similarly, it’s possible to to create Social Convention. We can reuse UTM Campaign Format without having to recreate it.

6. Using Convention in URL Builder

After creating the conventions, they should now be available to use in our custom UTM URL builder. When Email Convention is selected, this is how the URL builder looks like in Terminus.

This customized UTM URL builder only allows entering valid field values. The final UTM values are automatically generated as per the conventions as shown above.

How to See This Information in Google Analytics?

Let’s assume we have been running various campaigns using this UTM Campaign Format, e.g.

all-jeans-lead-us-2018_08_25-fall_promotion

```
men-shirts-lead-us-2018_11_11-events
```
```
women-jeans-sale-us-2018_09_25-sale
```
```
all-shirts-sale-us-2018_10_12-promotion
```

women-shirts-lead-canada-2018_10_12-rewards

If we need to find out all the campaigns in Google Analytics that were targeted to generate leads, we can do it as follows:

Go to Acquisitions > Campaigns > All Campaigns from the left sidebar
Click on advanced filters
Select Containing and enter lead in the text box
Click Apply

We’ll see these campaigns in the generated report.

all-jeans-lead-us-2018_08_25-fall_promotion

```
men-shirts-lead-us-2018_11_11-events
```

women-shirts-lead-canada-2018_10_12-rewards

How about if we want to see the campaigns promoting shirts in the US?

Go to Acquisitions > Campaigns > All Campaigns from the left sidebar
Click on advanced filters
Select Matching RegExp and enter shirt.*us in the text box
Click Apply

Now we’ll see all the campaigns that have shirts AND us in their values.

```
men-shirts-lead-us-2018_11_11-events
```
```
all-shirts-sale-us-2018_10_12-promotion
```

Did you notice how easy it is to create reports cutting across various data points by utilizing Google Analytics?

NOTE: By carefully defining conventions and enforcing them, it’s possible to get highly informative information with just a simple analytics setup.

How to Collect This Information in Leads, CRM, etc?

Besides analytics tools, it’s also possible to capture this information for each lead and send it to an email service or CRM system. Saving UTM parameters when someone fills a form can give you deep insights about where your most valuable leads/customers are coming from. The article, How to Add UTM and Referrer Information to Lead Forms goes through this setup in detail.

Conclusion

If you managed to read all the sections, I hope you have some basic ideas about how to think about tracking your marketing campaigns. As I mentioned in the beginning, this system is used by many enterprises across hundreds of users with great success. It’s proven to give results and is probably the most efficient compared to others.

If you need to track all this information at all, it’s not possible to completely get rid of the complexity. This system moves the complexity from the analytics/CRM tools to the URL builder and is much easier to manage.

Build and manage all UTM URLs in one place

How to Integrate UTM Conventions Into Your URL Builder

You decided to tag all your URLs with UTM parameters. Great!

You also defined your UTM naming conventions. Awesome!

But now you’ve realized there are still a few problems:

You don’t always follow your own conventions
Your team doesn’t follow them consistently as well
You forget your conventions. They are in some documents, but it’s too much work to open it every time you need to build a URL.

Let’s say, for email newsletters, you use a convention like this:

utm_campaign=weekly-2017_06_18

All the UTM builders out there, including spreadsheets, force users to type out the whole thing.

This is how it looks like in Google URL Builder.

There are multiple ways to make mistakes here:

Is it weekly or wkly?
Is the date format correct? Does the year come before or after?
Is there a dash (-) or underscore (_) between weekly and date?
Can I use monthly?
I hope I didn’t make any typing mistakes.
Did I use the correct utm_medium and utm_source?

It’s already a bit confusing and this is just a simple case.

Introducing Conventions

What if your URL builder looked something like this?

All you have to do is:

Select weekly/monthly for Interval and select a Date (for utm_campaign)
Select newsletter1 (for utm_source)

That’s all there is to it.

Your utm_medium value is already set to email and cannot be changed.

Won’t that make your life so much easier?

You can do this with Terminus.

Define UTM Conventions for Any Scenario

What if you could define UTM conventions for different product lines, channels, languages, etc.?

You could have a convention for Social, or even just specifically for Facebook.

For example, you could define a Facebook Naming Convention as

Do you see how simple it becomes to follow your UTM conventions now? We used Facebook as an example because UTM parameters are actually very effective in helping you track any Facebook ADs that you published.

Just select the values or type in free-text. The URL builder will automatically create the correct UTM values for you.

Switch UTM Conventions on The Fly

Not only do you have one convention. You have several based off of various factors, including channels, products, etc.

But switching between them should be easy. Here’s an example using Terminus:

Awesome, right? Try Terminus free for 21 days and define your own UTM conventions.

Managing UTM Conventions Becomes Easy

No need to maintain any documents for your UTM conventions
No complicated spreadsheets
No mistakes in using your UTM conventions
No need to remember any conventions
Quickly get new team members up to speed

To make your life even easier, we’ve created a beneficial guide for UTM codes which you can refer to when confused!

Now you and your entire team can build UTM URLs with confidence and move on to the next steps of tracking your marketing efforts with UTMs through Google Analytics.

One Extremely Beneficial Side Effect

Some Terminus customers have mentioned that this feature has compelled them to think more thoroughly about their UTM tagging strategy. Since these conventions are built into the URL builder, it forced them to be very specific about which values are acceptable and which are not.

No more wishy-washy conventions that can be broken anytime by anyone.

It has helped them add an extra layer of discipline and a greater understanding of UTM conventions.

And with this discipline, your analytics reports will be squeaky clean.

Seriously, if you haven’t already, try Terminus for free. There are zero risks. Cancel anytime.

If You Would Like to Learn More About UTM Parameters, Check Out These Articles:

UTM Parameters Best Practices: A Course for Beginners and Experts

Let me guess.

1. You are just starting out with UTM parameters. You want to learn about them and avoid common mistakes in UTM tagging, or

2. You have been using UTM parameters for a while, but they have become messy. You want to cleanup your analytic reports and have a well-defined UTM tagging strategy.

In that case, this course is for you. I promise you are going to get something out of it.

Here’s what we will cover:

Chapter 1: Know the Two Pillars of Tracking
Chapter 2: Find the Best UTM Tagging Opportunities
Chapter 3: What UTM Parameters to use in Social Campaigns?
Chapter 4: What UTM Parameters to use in Email Campaigns?
Chapter 5: Manage your UTM Parameters to Keep Your Sanity

Important things to remember when going through this course:

This will cover some of the basics, but please don’t skip them. These basics will help you understand the core concepts and how Google Analytics sees all the UTM and referral data.
This course does not have many pretty pictures. Don’t let that stop you from actually reading the chapters.

Let’s get started.

Chapter 1: Know the Two Pillars of Tracking

I’m going to assume you are familiar with Google Analytics. You either have it installed on your own website, or manage it for other people, say, your clients.

Here’s a question for you:

What is the most important piece of information in your Google Analytics reports?

(Hint: It’s also the most common)

It’s where your website visitors come from.

It could be in the form of a referrer, source/medium, campaign name or a combination of these. It’s how a visitor got to your site. Without it, most of your reports are meaningless.

For example, your conversion report, along with the source of your traffic tells you where your most valuable customers are coming from. You can then focus your marketing efforts on driving traffic from high converting sources.

If all the visits were direct, where would you focus your marketing efforts?

So even a conversion report, which is mostly onsite, is not very useful if you cannot tie it back to the traffic source.

Therefore, you must help Google Analytics get this information. And we will soon see how you can do that.

Two Pillars of Tracking

To make sure that the source of your traffic is captured correctly, you need to know where Google Analytics gets these values from. It’s mainly two places:

1. Referrer

Whenever a visitor comes to your website, their browser sets Referrer URL which tells GA (Google Analytics) what page they came from. GA saves this information for every visit. You can see all such referring sites in All Referrals report.

But Referrer is not always set due to several reasons:

A visitor coming from a bookmarked URL
Manually typing URL in the browser
HTTPS to HTTP links
Mobile apps
Email clients
Instant messengers
Twitter clients
Links in documents like PDF, MS Word, Powerpoint, etc.
and many other reasons

In each of these cases, Google Analytics has no information about how the visitor found your website. You can see such visits on the Direct channel.

So how can you make sure that the source of traffic is reliably captured by Google Analytics? That’s where UTM parameters come into the picture.

2. UTM Parameters

UTM parameters are a set of five parameters that you can append to a URL. These parameters contain information about your marketing campaigns.

utm_campaign: The name of the marketing effort, e.g. launch, 50percent_sale, etc.
utm_source: Identify the source of the traffic. It could be a website, advertiser, etc. e.g. twitter, facebook, google
utm_medium: Identify the medium used by a visitor to come to your site, e.g. email, social, cpc.
utm_content: Identify content or call to action, e.g. buy now, learn more, etc.
utm_term: Used for paid search keywords.

If your destination URL is http://www.example.com, then the final URL with UTM parameters might look like:

http://www.example.com/?utm_campaign=launch&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

You don’t have to build such URLs manually. We’ll later see how you can use certain tools that help you not only build such URLs, but also manage your UTM parameters.

So should you use UTM parameters all the time? Of course not. We’ll cover the exact cases in the next chapter.

Automate and Enforce consistency in your UTM Parameters

Chapter 2: Find the Best UTM Tagging Opportunities

Let’s start by asking a simple question.

Why should you use UTM parameters?

There are two major reasons:

Referrer is not always reliable (as we saw in the first email lesson)
You want detailed information about a marketing campaign than a Referrer can provide, e.g. campaign name, medium, source, etc. and compare these values.

The above two reasons will help us guide when we should use UTM parameters.

When You Should NOT Use UTM Parameters

You should not add UTM parameters to all your links. In some cases, it’s better to leave them alone.

1. Internal Links

You should never use UTM parameters for internal links on your website. Let me tell you an example of why it’s such a bad idea. Let’s say you published a new blog post,

An Awesome Way to do Something Awesome.

You shared it on Twitter. One of your followers clicks on the link and arrives at

www.example.com/blog/awesome-post.

When they are done reading, they want to go to your home page. They click on a link that takes them to

http://www.example.com/?utm_source=blog.

You just lost the information that the user came from Twitter. Your analytics report will say that the visitor to your home page came from blog and not from Twitter.

If you want to know what visitors are doing on your website, use the capabilities of your analytics tool. It most likely has event tracking that lets you capture this information.

2. Organic (unpaid) Search

Google Analytics (and other analytics tools) capture some useful information when a visitor comes to your website from organic search. It could tell you what keywords were used to find your website (even though Google itself does not send the keywords anymore). UTM parameters override this information. So it’s better not to try to tag your SEO campaigns.

But to be honest, there’s not much you need to do here. Google automatically ignores any UTM tracking information when crawling the web. Other search engines, like Bing, also do the same.

3. Natural Referrers

As your brand awareness increases, there will be several websites writing about you. They might link to your website as part of a blog post. It’s fine to let these links not have UTM tracking. The Referrer information is actually quite useful in this case. It contains the URL of the page that brought you the traffic. Such visits will be part of the referral medium. It’s a measure of the overall awareness of your website.

Major caveat: For the Referrer information to remain intact during such visits, make sure your website has SSL, i.e. has https URLs. If the website linking to you is on https and yours is not, then the browsers will remove any Referrer information. Sorry, this is just how all major browsers work due to security reasons. This will help you reduce a lot of direct visits.

When You Should Tag

Let’s look at the types of campaigns where you should use UTM parameters for tracking.

1. Email Campaigns

Most people read their email using an email client (mobile or desktop). Any link they click on these clients will not have Referrer information set. It, therefore, makes sense to use UTM parameters in your email campaigns. Also, UTM parameters allow you to measure them in much greater detail.

Don’t worry, we will learn what exact UTM parameters you should use for email campaigns in the later chapters.

2. Social Campaigns

There are thousands of social sharing apps out there, which means needing UTM parameters in social media marketing. A link likely clicked in one of these apps will not have Referrer set. Adding UTM parameters to your URLs will help you in various ways such as tracking clicks and traffic for your ads on Facebook or your online store.

3. Paid Campaigns

You should always track your paid campaigns with UTM parameters. You should do this even if your ad vendor provides you a dashboard. There are at least two reasons for this:

You cannot see the conversions on their dashboard. Even if they have a way, you will have to integrate their code on your website to see the conversion data.
By using UTM Parameters in Google Analytics, you will be able to effectively identify the performance of your paid campaigns. You can then compare it with other paid campaigns, and even with other types like email and social campaigns.

The only exception to this is Google Adwords, which allows you to link your account to Google Analytics. The performance data is automatically transferred from your Adwords account to your Analytics account.

4. Affiliate Campaigns

If you have other people promoting your product/service, giving them well-defined UTM tracked URLs is important. You can even shorten them using a shortener service to avoid any issues in sharing these URLs.

5. Offline Campaigns

Any URLs you share in brochures, direct mail, etc. should also have UTM tracking information. These should be shortened since the space is limited in print media. Additionally, make the short URLs memorable to make typing easy. e.g. ter.li/sale

Chapter 3: What UTM Parameters to use in Social Campaigns?

In this chapter, we’ll see exactly how to set each UTM parameters for social campaigns.

UTM Medium (utm_medium)

If you are familiar with Google Analytics, you have probably seen the Social report. It’s available at Acquisition > Social. So how does Google Analytics know which visits are coming from a social network?

Google maintains a list of websites that it considers are social networks. If the Referrer is for a domain that matches one on that list, the visit is marked as Social.

You can also guide Google Analytics to attribute a visit to Social report with UTM parameters. If the value of utm_medium is one of social, social-network, social-media, sm, social network, or social media, then the visit is attributed to social traffic.

I would suggest using social for utm_medium. It’s short and clear.

Rule: utm_medium=social

UTM Source (utm_source)

Let’s start by looking at a sample Overview report in the Social section. You can access it at Acquisition > Social > Overview.

You can see several social networks identified by Google. Let’s click on one of them, say, StumbleUpon, and see how the visits look like. Here’s how the shared URLs look for StumbleUpon along with their Source/Medium values.

Of all the shared URLs, two (1 and 4) have stumbleupon.com/referral (auto-detected) as Source/Medium pair. The other two URLs (2 and 3) have stumbleupon/social (UTM parameters).

Do you notice something interesting?

The UTM tracking URLs (2 and 3) were not only correctly identified in the Social report, but also were categorized correctly for StumbleUpon. We helped Google Analytics put all the URLs in the right report even though some were referrals and some were UTM tagged. We did not need to create any custom reports or manage crazy filters.

You can do the same with any other social network. For some of the popular social networks, use the following values for utm_source:

Delicious : delicious
Digg : digg
Facebook : facebook
Foursquare : foursquare
LinkedIn : linkedin
Pinterest : pinterest
Quora : quora
Reddit : reddit
StumbleUpon : stumbleupon
Tumblr : tumblr
Twitter : twitter

You can also just use the domain name, i.e. facebook.com or twitter.com and it will work just the same.

Rule: utm_source=(just the name/domain of the social network in lowercase)

UTM Campaign Name (utm_campaign)

This should describe your overall marketing effort, e.g. summer_sale, beta_launch, etc. A good way to come with a campaign name is to write down why you are trying to get the word out. What are you trying to accomplish by this specific promotion?

You should definitely avoid duplicating the information in utm_medium and utm_source. So twitter_promotion, social_outreach are not good names.

Unlike utm_medium and utm_source, there are no strict rules for campaign names. They should be concise, yet intuitive and readable.

UTM Content (utm_content)

This parameter can be very useful to test your calls-to-action texts. Use it as your A/B testing tool on social networks.

Let’s say you came up with two headlines for a blog article and you are not sure which one is better.

7 ways to save money this summer
How to find great deals this summer

You can build two UTM tracking URLs to your blog article with each of these values for utm_content:

utm_content=7_ways_to_save_money_this_summer
utm_content=how_to_find_great_deals_this_summer

(You need to set the other UTM parameters as discussed earlier.)

Now you can easily compare the number of clicks for each URL. It will tell you which headline is resonating with people.

Note: I generally recommend using lowercase words separated by “_” for all the UTM parameters. However, this rule can be relaxed for UTM Content. You can just use “7 ways to save money this summer” since that’s the exact copy you used.

UTM Term (utm_term)

Short and simple. It should not be used for social campaigns. It’s reserved for paid search campaigns.

Rule: Don’t use this.

This should help you come up with your own UTM tagging naming conventions for your social campaigns.

Chapter 4: What UTM Parameters to use in Email Campaigns?

Towards the end of this chapter, we’ll also do a case study where we look at UTM parameters used by a popular company in their email campaigns. I promise it will give you some good ideas.

Let’s get started.

UTM Medium (utm_medium)

Google Analytics recognizes email as one of the major channels. It’s included in the default channels report as Email. To make sure that your visits are categorized correctly, just use utm_medium=email in your tracking URLs. Don’t use any variations like email-newsletter or email-weekly.

Rule: utm_medium=email

UTM Source (utm_source)

One of the most common mistakes people make in tagging their email campaigns is in utm_source. Some people use email which is not a source, but a medium. Others use the name of their email service provider, e.g. mailchimp or sendgrid. These, too, are incorrect.

Unlike other kinds of campaigns, it’s not obvious what’s actually the source for emails. But we can figure it out by asking a simple question.

How did someone join this mailing list?

If someone joined your newsletter, utm_source is newsletter. If someone joined your email course, utm_source is course. If someone opted for emails through their account settings, utm_source could be settings or myaccount. Someone signing up for launch email has utm_source as launch.

Why is this important?

When you look at the conversion data and if someone converts several months later, you will know exactly where that person came from. Maybe it was some specific pdf download that’s getting you highly converting users.

Rule: utm_source=(how someone joined your mailing list)

UTM Campaign Name (utm_campaign)

Similar to social campaigns, utm_campaign in emails should also describe the overall marketing effort. Avoid duplicating any information from utm_source or utm_medium. It’s a very common mistake. Traffic can originate from many places on the internet but understanding campaign tracking will allow you to identify the effectiveness of your ads in relation to customers and viewers.

Let’s look at a couple of scenarios.

a. Weekly Newsletter

The simplest campaign name would be weekly. If you would like to know the performance for a particular week, you could use weekly–2014_06_24. It’s better to use yyyy_mm_dd format to allow meaningful sorting.

b. Drip email campaigns

If your drip email course is about How to get more leads, the campaign names would be

get_more_leads–1 for the first email
get_more_leads–2 for the second email
.. and so on

c. Monthly automated report

If your users get a report each month about their account, utm_campaign could be monthly_report.

You got the idea.

Quick Tip: Create a document with all your conventions. It’s very easy to deviate from what you agreed upon. A great way is to make it part of your UTM URL Builder. For example, you can configure such UTM naming conventions in Terminus.

When you select Email Newsletter Convention, your UTM URL Builder is automatically customized to accept only your configured format for UTM Campaign, UTM Medium and UTM Source. This makes it super easy to follow your UTM naming convention. You don’t have to remember a thing.

UTM Content (utm_content)

Like your social campaigns, utm_content can also be a great A/B testing tool for email campaigns.

Let’s say you want to ask people to buy your ebook towards the end of an email. You want to know what call-to-action works better, “Buy Now” or “Learn More”. You can create two URLs, both pointing to the same landing page. So the two URLs will have,

utm_content=buy_now
utm_content=learn_more

With this in place, you can now see the number of visits for each link in the Keyword dimension of the Google Analytics report.

There are some fancy email service providers out there that offer built-in A/B testing capabilities. But with UTM parameters, you have all the data in Google Analytics and you can compare it with your other campaigns.

UTM Term (utm_term)

This should not be used for email campaigns. It’s reserved for paid search campaigns.

Rule: Don’t use this.

Redfin Case study

You might be aware of Redfin, a popular real estate website. If you signup, Redfin can send you an email whenever homes matching your search criteria are found. Let’s look at their “Instant Updates” email. This is an older version, but still is a very good example.

All the links in this email share these UTM parameters,

utm_campaign : instant_listings_update

utm_medium : email

utm_source : myredfin

utm_content for each link is different and the exact values are shown in the snapshot of the email. e.g utm_content for the image of the house is home_image.

What can we learn from it:

utm_campaign tells us exactly what this email is about.
utm_medium is email.
utm_source is also very precise. These emails are sent when someone opts for listing updates in their Redfin account. So myredfin is exactly the source of the emails.
utm_content is different for each type of link and is based on the content. This tells Redfin exactly what links people are clicking even when they go to the same page.

Redfin has the most rich and clean set of UTM parameters I have ever seen (especially in their instant updates emails). Hopefully, it will serve as a good reference point for you as well.

You can look at the detailed case study about how 10 popular companies use UTM parameters in their email campaigns.

Chapter 5: Manage your UTM Parameters to Keep Your Sanity

In the previous chapters, we talked about what parameters you should use for each of your campaigns. But how do you make sure you and your team always uses the parameters you decided to use? If you are not consistent, then your whole strategy falls apart and you risk muddying your analytics reports.

But don’t worry. There are ways to avoid this mess. They will not only help you build, but also manage your UTM tracking URLs on an ongoing basis.

Some options include:

Google URL Builder: This is the most commonly used for building UTM URLs. It doesn’t save any data.
Spreadsheets: These help you save all the past URLs and UTM parameters. However, they are limited in what spreadsheets can do and what you can do with them.
Terminus: It has a lot of features for building UTM URLs and managing them for all team sizes. It’s a very comprehensive solution.

If you would like to look at the pros and cons of each of the above, I would highly recommend reading Find the Best UTM Builder article.

Since choosing the right UTM Builder is crucial for your UTM tagging efforts, it’s important that you go through these options and see what works best for you.

Final words:

I hope this article inspires you to come up with your own UTM best practices and naming conventions for your unique case.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed, but thinking about your UTM tagging strategy carefully and choosing the right tools will greatly help you fix your analytics reports. To ease any anxiety, we’ve organized a guide to UTM parameters that effectively sums up everything you need to know about UTMs!

Free PDF download: UTM Parameters Best Practices Course

Advanced Topic: Learn how to come up with UTM naming conventions and enforce them. This method is used successfully by several billion-dollar corporations.

6 UTM Parameter Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Make

Adding UTM tracking codes to your website links are a great way to bolster the capabilities of Google Analytics, shore up data gaps, and better understand your visitors.

The potential challenge lies in the execution.

The Dangers of Using UTM Codes Improperly

Plenty of well-meaning marketers rush to implement UTM tracking codes, only to end up complicate their data by accident. Simple mistakes, many of which are made time and time again, lead to:

Lots of frustration
Wasted time and money
A poor understanding of potential customers

Marketers who make these mistakes would be better off not utilizing UTM codes at all. Why? Because poorly-executed tracking codes lead to inaccurate and cumbersome data.

This becomes a problem when you rely on them to make business decisions. With a distorted view of the situation, you may find yourself investing in certain marketing channels under the false assumption that they’re performing much better than they really are. Or abandoning efforts that were paying off.

Spotting – and Avoiding – the Most Common UTM Pitfalls

Proper UTM tagging makes up for Google Analytics’ shortcomings by offering a more complete picture of the situation – one that you can use to make better business decisions.

Achieving this means avoiding the pitfalls that so many marketers fall into. Once you identify the most common mistakes, it’s easier to avoid them yourself.

Here are six of the most common UTM parameter mistakes:

1. Using UTM Tracking When You Shouldn’t

UTM codes help Google Analytics fill in the gaps when their referral feature doesn’t track where a visitor comes from. It’s a great way to get a more complete picture of the data… but only in certain situations.

One of the most dangerous situations is when a marketer decides to add UTM codes to an internal link on their website. This is counterproductive because:

1) Google Analytics already tracks visitor activity as they navigate your site
2) It erases the information regarding the original traffic source which brought the visitor to your site.

Say a visitor follows a link you posted on Twitter to your new blog article. While reading it, they click on an internal link to a product landing page. If the landing page link contains UTM codes, you’ll lose the information about where the visitor initially came from: Twitter.

The ideal situation to use UTM tracking codes is when you share website links elsewhere, including:

Email clients
Links in documents (PDF, MS Word, Powerpoint, etc.)
Mobile apps
Social media platforms

Adding UTM codes there offers you more information than you would have otherwise. But there’s absolutely no need to add tracking codes to internal links on your website!

Build and manage all UTM URLs in one place

2. Failing to Shorten Long, Messy URLs

I built an example URL to give you an idea of what a typical URL with tracking codes might look like:

https://www.terminusapp.com/features/?utm_source=webinar_opt_in
&utm_campaign=weekly_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=logolink

Not very neat, right?

It’s important to include all of those parameters to get the most comprehensive view of your visitor data possible. But stringing them all together into a long URL is problematic for a few reasons:

Aesthetics. Long, messy URLs aren’t nearly as pleasing to the eye in comparison to short and clean URLs.
Creates suspicion and distrust. Consider how a visitor might feel when they hover over a link, on the verge of clicking it, only to find what looks like a never-ending string of strange characters. To the untrained eye, it may look more like malware than a legitimate website.

One of the best ways to beat this is to use a link shortener to clean up unwieldy UTM tracking codes. You can use programs like:

Terminus built-in link shortener
Bitly
Wistia’s Fresh URL

Short, clean links look nicer; they don’t require a leap of faith for a visitor to click on them. Even better: the Terminus link shortener allows you to create branded short URLs, so your visitors can instantly recognize that the link is legitimate and belongs to you.

3. Confusing Medium and Source Parameters

Of all the UTM parameters, medium and source are some of the most confusing. Some marketers think they’re interchangeable. Others have the meaning completely reversed in their minds.

The easiest way to think about it is this:

Medium. How the visitor came to your website.
Source. Where the visitor came from to get your website.

That might not sound like an important distinction, but it’s crucial. Google Analytics supports a variety of options for the medium (email, social, cpc, etc.) On the other hand, Source is open-ended, leaving it up to you to define as you see fit. Our free UTM best practices email course goes into more detail about these issues, so be sure to check it out if you haven’t already.

Let’s say someone ended up on your landing page after following a link you posted on Twitter. It’s easy to assume that the medium and source would be the same thing: “twitter.” But Twitter doesn’t fall under one of the acceptable UTM medium parameters; the best choice there would be “social.”

Because you have more flexibility with source, you could get more specific by labeling it as “twitter.”

Avoid redundancies here. Just remember that medium describes how the visitor came, and source gives you the opportunity to get more specific about exactly where they came from.

4. Failing to Use the Campaign Parameter Effectively

The campaign parameter gives you complete flexibility to analyze your marketing efforts by the specific business objective you’re trying to achieve.

Unfortunately, many marketers aren’t using this parameter effectively. By sticking with generic labels, we make it impossible to:

1) Recall which campaign we were dealing with when we assessing the data later on
2) Compare it with other campaigns.

At first, utm_campaign=email_29 might make all the sense in the world when you create the link but it becomes hard to remember what you meant months – or years – down the road. And something like utm_campaign=email is way too general to be of any use.

Take a moment with every link and determine what business objectives you are trying to accomplish. Trying to get someone to buy your new product a few weeks after launch? You could name your campaign utm_campaign=spring_2017_launch. Sending out this week’s email newsletter? Why not call it utm_campaign=weekly-2017_02_12 so it’s easy to reference and compare with other weeks.

5. A Lack of Consistency Regarding Spelling, Capitalization, and Naming Conventions

UTM tracking codes are extremely useful, but they are picky. The slightest variation in spelling or capitalization can completely ruin your data.

“Email” and “email” might be the same to you. But Google Analytics doesn’t interpret them that way. If you mix up your parameters and use “email” and “Email” interchangeably, you’ll end up with multiple segments of data instead of a single figure.

These minor errors make it much harder to interpret and compare data. Instead of having a single figure to analyze, you’re forced to check multiple locations and add up the information in order to accurately interpret your data..

The issue can get even worse if you’re working with a marketing team. You might end up with numerous variations for every parameter, diluting your data and making it worthless.

Consistency is paramount. Decide on naming conventions upfront, and make sure everyone involved has access to the same document. Better yet: try the Terminus URL building tools to create multiple URLs, use presets to populate common settings, and collaborate with your team.

6. Creating New Campaign Names for Every Different Medium and Source

In addition to naming campaigns improperly, many marketers miss the larger picture.

Most of us use multiple marketing channels – blog posts, email, social media, etc. – to accomplish our various business objectives. But when it’s time to define UTM parameters, we treat each link as if they’re a discrete entity without connection to any other.

Let’s say you’re trying to convince customers to buy a new product shortly after launch. You’re using social media and email marketing in a joint effort. A common mistake is to define new campaigns for every new source and medium (Twitter launch, Facebook launch, Email launch, etc.)

The solution: create a single campaign and use that parameter consistently across all the marketing channels involved. This gives you a true perspective on how each piece of the campaign works together – instead of just piecemeal insights into how different efforts perform in isolation. You can still use UTM medium and UTM source to identify which specific channel visitors are coming from.

More and more of our marketing today is a multi-channeled integrated effort and so in order to establish an effective marketing campaign, it is important to understand how these UTM parameters can be utilized in a variety of media platforms such as Facebook.

Your Turn

Using UTM tracking codes might seem intimidating at first glance, but it doesn’t have to be.

An awareness of the most common mistakes will help make it that much easier to navigate the learning curve and make the most of precious visitor data. There’s no better time to start than now.

What do you think is the most dangerous UTM tracking code mistake people make? Why? Have you made it yourself? Leave a comment below and share your experience!

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How to Measure the Effectiveness of Your Tweets?

If you consider social media as a serious marketing channel, it’s important that you measure your efforts and see what’s working. It’s useful to think of it as a paid channel where you pay with your time.

Let’s say I want to promote one of the Terminus blog post UTM Tracking: Find the Best Analytics URL Builder for Your Needs on Twitter. I can be lazy and just click the Tweet button next to the article and be done with it. But I don’t really learn anything from it.

I want to find out what makes people click on the links I share.

There are at least two things I can test:

What call-to-action (CTA) text gets me the most clicks?
What’s the best time to tweet?

Let’s look at each one.

1. Find the Best Call-to-Action (CTA)

We need at least two CTA texts that can be tested against each other. The headline of the blog post can be one of the CTA text. So I just need to come up with another one. Let’s see. How about “4 ways to build UTM Tracking URLs” ?

Now I have two CTAs:

UTM Tracking: Find the Best Analytics URL Builder for Your Needs
4 ways to build UTM Tracking URLs

So how can we separate the clicks for these two CTAs? A good option is to have two UTM tracking URLs, one for each CTA. Both the URLs will share some common UTM values.

utm_campaign = blog
utm_medium = social
utm_source = twitter

This helps us separate clicks from other channels, e.g. email. If you are promoting tweets about your blog with Twitter Ads, use the following UTM parameters:

utm_campaign = blog
utm_medium = cpc
utm_source = twitter

The only thing that would be different in the two URL is utm_content.

Create the First URL

For the first URL, we will have

utm_content = find the best analytics url builder for your needs

Note: I like to use lowercase for UTM tags to help with consistency

You can use any UTM URL builder tool for this, say, Google Analytics URL Builder. I’m going to use Terminus.

Let’s set the UTM values in our favorite URL builder and save.

Build first UTM tracking URL with Terminus

If you use Google Analytics URL Builder, you can shorten the tagged URL using Bitly or a similar shortening service. It’s important to get a shortened URL because of limitation of 140 characters in tweets.

Terminus automatically shortens the UTM tagged URL on save.

Create the Second URL

The second URL is very similar to the first URL. The only difference is the value of utm_content. In this case,

utm_content = 4 ways to build utm tracking urls

To make it quick, let’s just copy the first URL we created.

We can then set the correct utm_content value for the second URL.

Build second UTM tracking URL with Terminus

Similar to the first URL, you should shorten the tagged URL if you are using Google Analytics URL Builder.

We can now copy our shortened URLs and keep them ready to be tweeted.

Use the URLs in Tweets

Now that we have our two URLs, it’s time to compose our tweets.

Tweet 1:

UTM Tracking: Find the Best Analytics URL Builder for Your Needs. http://bit.ly/1tSrDUrl1

Tweet 2:

4 Ways to Build UTM Tracking URLs. http://bit.ly/1yOn7Url2

Now we can just tweet these away into the wild.

Measure the results

Since we used shortened URLs, we can easily see the number of clicks each one of them received. Your shortener service should provide you with these numbers. If you are using Terminus, you can see it right next to each UTM tagged URLs.

Also, Google Analytics will capture the UTM values on your landing pages. To see the utm_content values in your reports, you’ll need to enable the Ad Content dimension. You can do that by clicking Other -> Acquisition -> Ad Content.

Now you can see us which tweet performed better than the other. It’s that easy.

2. Find the Best Time to Tweet

If you tweet at random times, only crickets might be reading them. There are studies done that tell you what’s the best time to tweet to maximize visibility. You can either just follow what the studies recommend, or find out what’s the best time to tweet for your audience. We can very easily set an experiment to find that out.

All the steps that we did to setup the two tracking URLs will be the same as we discussed for call-to-action. The only difference is the value of utm_content in your UTM tracking URLs.

Let’s say we want to compare if tweets in the morning at 9 am have more clicks or tweets at 4 pm. We can create two URLs , one with

utm_content = time_09_00_am

and other with,

utm_content = time_04_00_pm

You can use your own convention to track time, but make it obvious. You and your team should be able to understand it easily in looking at traffic reports. Also, make sure that the tweets are identical in every other way except the tracking URLs.

Now you can schedule these tweets with Buffer and you are all done. Measure the results as before.

Conclusion

Just because you are not directly spending money on tweets, it doesn’t mean that it’s free. If you don’t measure what resonates with your audience, then you will be losing money. Tweets should be optimized for keywords, call-to-action, landing pages, just like paid ads.

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