In order to understand what UTM tags are and how to create them, you first need to find out why they are needed. Do you know where and from which sites or ads the maximum traffic comes to your site? Of course, you can follow different link sources in your Google Analytics reports. But it's always good to have an advanced tracking option.
If UTM tags are added, it allows you to measure where your traffic is coming from and get statistics with lots of detail. If you are not using UTM, you will still see the source of the traffic, but this is usually not very structured data that does not allow you to know exactly which particular post, tweet, page or link was chosen by the user to go to your site. This leaves marketers scratching their heads over which traffic sources work and which don't.
How to put UTM tags? This is what UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) parameters are needed for. But first you have to set up Google Analytics or another similarservice.
Using UTM tags
So, let's take a closer look at what UTM tags are. These are tags that look like snippets of text after URLs that stay attached to your links even when you switch to different networks and environments. These parameters appear at the end of the site address. If a visitor clicked on your UTM-tagged link from one site to share it on another site, they will still count as a share of the first site's audience.
Today, UTM is best known as the tracking format that Google uses for URLs along with ads. It looks like this: www.site.com/?utm_source=parameter. The text after the question mark is a UTM parameter.
Setting up UTM tags for ads
When a user clicks on an ad with certain UTM parameters, they are taken to a page with them added to the URL. Google Analytics and other trackers see these added parameters and store them for later use.
By tagging your URLs with UTM tags, you can get a complete picture of how your visitors interact with your website. There is a systematic way to add them to your URLs - this is the URL customization form you can fill out in the Google Analytics help center:
- When creating UTM tags for your ad, look for "Add UTM Parameters".
- Then click on the green button and add your parameters in a new window.
But for tag layoutyou can use other tools to create a target URL for different campaigns. Simple services usually contain only one window for entering parameters. But most often experienced marketers use Google URL builder.
How to create custom URLs with Google URL builder
In order to understand what UTM tags are, you need to try creating them. Let's start by creating custom URLs for your campaign and then move on to using UTM tags.
Each of them has its own parameters. UTM parameters are simply tags that you add to the URL. When someone clicks on a URL with specified UTM parameters, these tags are sent to Google Analytics for tracking. The Google URL builder UTM tag is a great way to create URLs that are most effective in driving visitors to your content.
Fill in the lines:
- campaign name (campaign name);
- utm_source (campaign source, e.g. utm_source=google);
- utm_medium (traffic channel, e.g. utm_medium=email);
- campaign term (campaign term);
- campaign content
Each one has a very specific purpose.
UTM tag parameters: what are they and what are they for
Several options can be used with ads: utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign. The name in this case works as an identifier for a particular campaign, product or offer. Itneeded for the UTM tag generator. The campaign source is the traffic referrer for your page, such as Google or Facebook. In many cases, this is the platform or tool you used to place the ad or link. A traffic channel is a marketing medium that is used to carry traffic. So, unlike the source, it tracks the type of traffic, such as a banner ad, an email, or a Facebook post.
Optional parameters
Campaign duration is an optional parameter, but when creating a campaign, it allows you to track the paid keywords of the ad or site linked to the blog. The content is another optional part of the UTM tag generator. The parameter makes it easy to distinguish between ads on different channels, such as Reddit. This is useful when doing A/B testing with different images or ad copy.
When you fill in the required fields, click the "Finish" button. Now you know how to add a UTM tag to a website address.
There are a few more details about setting it up. When you submit an ad, the UTM parameters will be included in the click URL. You can track these keywords in Google Analytics and use the tracking code no matter which platform you use. UTM will give you a better understanding of where the traffic is coming from, coming from a standard URL.
UTM parameter design guidelines
There is no wrong way to create UTM tags in a metric and its parameters,but there are a few things to keep in mind:
- Create a standardized naming convention. This will help track them within the campaign.
- Be specific with your options.
- Write all your parameters in lower case.
- Be unique and don't repeat the same keyword over and over again. This can make reports difficult to read.
Searching for UTM parameters in Google Analytics
After receiving clicks on ads, you can track them in Google Analytics:
- On the left side of the menu, find traffic sources.
- Click on them, then click on the campaigns button.
- Find the column with the required one in the appeared table.
All the keywords that are extracted from the utm_campaign parameter, you can track by its type. Now you can see in which campaign your ads were shown and in which media, and so on. This is a great way to get clear ad stats in Google Analytics.
UTM tags in Mixpanel and Kissmetrics
There are other tools like Mixpanel and Kissmetrics that make it easy to work with UTM tags.
What is Mixpanel? This is a tool for automatically tracking UTM tags. If you have used tagged links, Mixpanel will automatically save them as first touch properties, i.e. “first touch properties”, and also record user actions on the site. This is very helpful when trying to understand where your customers are coming from, as well as gettinginformation about their behavior and track all actions.
If you want to get advanced, add a special Javsacript code to your site that will allow you to store last touch UTM tags, that is, the last touch, giving you the opportunity to see the full picture of user interactions with the site. Like most analytics tools, Kissmetrics tracks UTM including first and last touch without any additional configuration.
Cons of using tags
A major technology company conducted a study on user-to-user sharing and found that 82% of online sharing is done by copying and pasting a URL. This means that you can set up UTM tags, but they will give incorrect information about the exchange on social networks. A potential solution is to clean up the URL and replace the UTM after the exchange between platforms. But if that clean URL is then shared with private social networks like WhatsApp, it will show up as direct traffic in analytics. Again, this is a misrepresentation of information. All this leads to the understanding that if you want to make a UTM tag, then not all content solutions will be effective. But they certainly make your marketing campaign less chaotic.
Common errors in UTM tags
Links tagged with UTM tags should make it easier to analyze marketing metrics and channels and help you better understand your visitor and their buying behavior. But what if you already track your campaigns andeveryone having difficulty interpreting the results?
It happens that the data that was collected does not make sense or matches what was expected. If it only became more difficult to find a specific campaign, it is possible that mistakes were made when working with UTM tags. Let's take a look at some of the most common.
Working with e-mail
Email and software may double tags in links. Some of them generate their own default UTM parameters like "utm_medium=email address" and add them to the end of the link, which can affect your tags. Given that the last setting will override the first in the event of duplicates, any visits to the duplicated link will be tracked by email provider tags.
If you search for a specific campaign in your analytics software, you may find that the traffic is not showing up as you expected. In order to prevent this from happening, make sure you are aware of all the specific settings in your email software before you start and build your links with them in mind. Be especially careful if you're running a campaign with another brand or service provider. Even if your email can't add its own UTM tags, your partner might be doing it themselves.
Confusion in parameters
The traffic source and channel parameters can easily get mixed up because when creating URLs with UTM-labels are often neglected. Some retail chains use UTM tags to distinguish between types of traffic within a given channel. But this is a misuse of labels. It will cause analytics reports to be misleading or not useful.
The traffic source and channel parameters are intended to provide different types of useful information. Using the standard Google Analytics model will help you avoid this error.
Another situation is when retail chains label a source as a channel and a channel as a source. In this case, you need to fill in the lines correctly. Another variant of the error is duplication of the channel and source in the same URL. In this case, if you're going to use email as the channel, don't use email as the source and specify the email type instead.
Using special characters in UTM tags
Incorrect use of "&", "=", "?" and “” in the parameters of UTM tags, you are making the most common mistake that prevents the correct analysis of the campaign:
- Because URLs or UTM tags must not use spaces, other characters are required to separate two or more words. However, the ampersand already has a defined meaning (when it comes to link tracking, this character separates UTM parameters), so it shouldn't be used for anything else in that link.
- Use “+”, “-”, or “_” if you want to separate two or more words to ensure accurate tracking andanalysis of your marketing activities.
- Please note that sometimes "+" can be converted to a space in some analytic programs.
- Alternatively, you can also use "%26" to separate words in any UTM tag.
- The first UTM tag must be preceded by a question mark and other tags must be preceded by an ampersand. So if the question mark is already present in the URL, you don't need to add it again before the UTM parameters.
- The “=” and “” signs also cannot be used inside a UTM tag value.
Mixing lowercase and uppercase in one tag
Google Analytics UTM tags are case sensitive, so for example "Sleep" and "Spy" will be spelled differently. Decide on a clear naming structure for campaign names, sources, etc., and then stick to it every time you create a new tagged link.
It is recommended to use lowercase for traffic source and channel as auto-labeling tools currently do this.
Following these simple rules will help you create the best UTM tags for any marketing campaign.
