UTM Naming Conventions are a crucial part of accurately tracking your analytics, but experts have never been able to agree on what’s best. Utilizing UTM Naming Conventions is how a company can track specific UTM parameters together, whether you want to know how many people are finding your business through an ad on Facebook or a certain phrase in your emails.
UTM Naming Conventions are unique to every business and there’s no “one size fits all” method, so we’ve brought in a team of experts to tell us what they think. They’ve weighed their pros and cons and given their unbiased opinions.
Himanshu Sharma
Himanshu helps business owners and marketing professionals in generating more sales and ROI by fixing their website tracking issues, helping them understand their true customers purchase journey and by helping them determine the most effective marketing channels for investment.
He has over 14 years experience in digital analytics and digital marketing. He is the author of four best-selling books on analytics and conversion optimization. He currently works for Optimize Smart.
He was nominated for ‘digital analytics association awards for excellence’. Digital Analytics Association‘ is a world-renowned not-for-profit association that helps organizations overcome the challenges of data acquisition and application.
Do you recommend specifying campaign goal in UTMs? If yes, where should this information go?
No, I don’t recommend mentioning campaign goals (like optin, sales etc) in UTMs.
How about business units, product categories, products, etc.? Should they be part of UTM? If yes, where should this information go in UTM?
You can add them as a part of the value of utm_campaign. Make your campaign name as descriptive as possible while keeping it as short as possible.
How do you recommend specifying display sizes in UTMs?
You can add display sizes as a part of the value of utm_campaign.
What other information do you recommend capturing in UTMs and how?
Only the information you really need. Don’t make the UTM parameters unnecessary long. I usually use utm_campaign to capture information.
Robert Petkovic
Robert teaches digital specialists about basic and advanced usage of Google Analytics on several courses. He is also a keynote speaker on various digital marketing conferences, as well as a Program Director of digital marketing conference “LINK”, based in Sarajevo.
Although he works in Zagreb, he actually lives by the sea and can’t imagine a week spent without taking a look at the beautiful Croatian coastline. You can find his new website here.
Do you recommend specifying campaign goal in UTMs? If yes, where should this information go?
I don’t see any practical usage of this, because I usually do performance marketing where every campaign has its goals and if I do create a report on specific conversions, that would usually contain all the campaigns that lead to the conversion.
However, the utm_campaign tag itself may contain a lot of additional information encoded in the campaign name. For example, the campaign that shows winter boots to ladies who are already engaged with our brand and whose goal is to make a preorder might have the name such as “winter-boots-2019_W_DO_Preorder”. “W” stands for women and “DO” stands for “DO” phase in See-Think-Do-Care framework.
How about business units, product categories, products, etc.? Should they be part of UTM? If yes, where should this information go in UTM?
Definitely, utm_term (Keyword) is the place for that type of information. And yes, I strongly suggest to use the product or author or category in the utm_term, if possible.
How do you recommend specifying display sizes in UTMs?
I usually use utm_content tag (Ad Content) for that type of information, as well as for the creative type (A vs B), the type of post, etc.
What other information do you recommend capturing in UTMs and how?
Well, this requires a whole new blog post and I encourage you to read the rather old but evergreen blog post on 5 cool examples of utm-tracking on Degordian educational hub. Any time I prepare an analytics measurement plan for some website, I think of “marketing measurement plan” where I discuss the current situation with the client and their needs so that we can find the best UTMcombination that fits their needs. Some other information I track is:
– which billboard info did someone used to type-in the URL (via bit.ly or via QR code, which is usually tracked as utm_medium, while the utm_source might be the exact location)
– content author (as utm_term)
– clicks to email signatures (utm_source=signature&utm_medium=email&utm_content=employee123)
– which version of the same newsletter link gets better results (utm_content)
…
The ultimate goals are to have 0 sessions from direct sources, because although that type of traffic is by definition “the best traffic”, in reality it’s just traffic we forgot to utm-track 😉
Jackie Vetrano
Jackie Vetrano is the assistant director of marketing and prospect management at UNC Kenan-Flagler School of Business, MBA programs. When she isn’t knee-deep in lead nurturing and strategic communications, Vetrano spends her free time running, trying new foods, ax-throwing, defending the Oxford Comma, and posting photos of her cat on Instagram.
You can find Jackie on Twitter.
Do you recommend specifying campaign goal in UTMs? If yes, where should this information go?
Because these are links, I would assume that most all campaign goals are “clicks,” which would mean using a UTM code for this matter would not be beneficial or provide any further insight. It is more important to clearly define each UTM variable within your team, and then reflect on the goals and if they were achieved based on the data provided. For example, if you want to know how many people completed a form after clicking a Facebook ad, you would have to combine UTM codes (“how many people clicked on this link from Facebook?”) and Google Analytics’ Goals (“how many people completed this form?”) to get the answer.
How about business units, product categories, products, etc.? Should they be part of UTM? If yes, where should this information go in UTM?
This goes back to the interest of the team. It is likely that the webpage URL contains the name of the product or service (www.company.com/televisions), so adding “television” to the UTM code does not provide any further insight.
Puru Choudhary
Puru is the Founder & CEO of Terminus. Terminus is a feature-rich UTM Builder that replaces your spreadsheets. It helps you and your team standardize and consistently follow UTM naming conventions.
Do you recommend specifying campaign goal in UTMs? If yes, where should this information go?
Adding a goal to UTMs can help define what a specific campaign is trying to do. It can provide clarity and purpose to the entire team. It can also help what metrics to look at. If the goal was to make a sale, then the metric is to look at purchases/revenue generated. This can also help when people building UTMs are not the same as those looking at analytics reports. utm_campaign is a good place to add this information.
How about business units, product categories, products, etc.? Should they be part of UTM? If yes, where should this information go in UTM?
It depends on the business. If you need to look at metrics for each business unit, product, etc. then these values can help you quickly filter the reports and get that data. This can save a lot of time if done correctly and consistently. These can also be part of utm_campaign.
How do you recommend specifying display sizes in UTMs?
Yes, if possible, add the display sizes. They can provide information about which ones are performing better than others. They can be specified in utm_content. In fact, utm_content is a good place to add any useful information about the copy, image, video, etc. of the things a visitor sees before clicking on your UTM link.
What other information do you recommend capturing in UTMs and how?
It’s best to capture only the information you absolutely need and nothing else. A good way to do that is to imagine what kind of reports would be helpful. That can help you realize what information you need and then add that information in the utm_campaign or utm_content based on its type.
Recap
As you can see, there are lots of opinions when it comes to UTN naming. Now that you’ve reviewed these expert’s insights, you can get implementing.
For more information and assistance with naming your UTM conventions, check out TerminusApp’s Naming Convention Product.
If you would like to read a more in-depth review of UTM Naming Conventions this is the article for you: How to come up with UTM Naming Conventions and Enforce Them?
