UTM Tracking - what, why and how?

If you have a website, you'll no doubt be curious to know how people find it. And, if you're spending money on advertising or investing time in promoting your services across different channels and platforms, you'll want to know whether that investment is paying off. This is where our Google Analytics reports help to show us where our website traffic is coming from and what our visitors do when they're on our website.

Whilst Google Analytics is a fantastic (and free!) tool available to any website owner, it does have its limitations. Not all sources of traffic are tracked by default as Google can only track traffic that comes via other websites. So, for example, if you're advertising in a local publication with your website address on your advert, Google will have no idea that they found you via the advert and will instead track them as a 'direct' visitor. To solve this issue, we can use Google's UTM tracking to track 'offline' events.

What is UTM tracking?

UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Monitor and gets its name from the original Urchin tracking software upon which Google Analytics was based.

UTM is a code snippet added to the end of a URL which sends information to Google Analytics about the source of the visit. Whilst a URL with UTM tracking code looks a little odd in the address bar, it doesn't change anything on your website.

The link below would still send someone to our blog page, but would also tell Google Analytics that they came via an email campaign called 'january-newsletter' which was sent through MailChimp.

https://skitti.sh/blog?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=january-newsletter        

UTM code contains 5 parameters, 3 which you'll need and 2 which can be optional. You can put anything you want into each of these parameters, but it makes more sense to create a template you can use for every link and keep it consistent.

UTM parameters:

Source - where the traffic has come from (Facebook, MailChimp, Hello Magazine)

Medium - type of content (video, email, infographic, tweet)

Campaign - name of the campaign - something that distinguishes this from other clicks from the same source and medium. The name of the email campaign, for example, or the topic of the video.

Term (optional) - keyword from your Google Ads campaigns, for example.

Content (optional) - specific content within the campaign that the link is attached to. We sometimes use this to differentiate whether someone clicked on an image or a text link in an email campaign, for example.

Why you should use UTM tracking

As mentioned above, UTM code allows us to track our offline marketing activities as well as our online activities. This means we get a better picture of how our overall marketing strategy is working and whether we're investing our budget and resources into the right areas.

UTM code also allows us to track campaigns in more detail. For example, if you have an email newsletter going out in January as in the example above, you could track clicks on individual links within the email by adding another parameter to the end such as

&utm_keyword=product-launch&utm_content=read-more-button         

Here, we've used the keyword parameter to add what the link is about, but you could add this to the content or campaign parameter instead. You make the rules - just make it logical!

https://skitti.sh/blog?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=january-newsletter&utm_keyword=product-launch&utm_content=read-more-button         

How to use UTM links

Head on over to a free tool like utm.io.

Paste your link into the Website URL box at the top.

Fill in your Source, Medium and Campaign name fields.

Click 'Build URL'

Copy the URL from here and paste it wherever you need it!

Source: UTM.io

Summary

Get in the habit of adding UTM code to your URLs when you share them online or offline as part of your social media posts, email campaigns, advertising to name just a few.

Whilst there are a few ways of tracking your links, establish a template and use it consistently for better data in your reports.

Find a free tool like utm.io to help you build your URLs easily.