The Ultimate Guide to Using UTM Parameters

De ultieme gids voor het gebruik van UTM-parameters

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Een tijdje geleden schreef ik een bericht over hoe je het meest winstgevende platform voor sociale media voor je bedrijf kunt vinden.

Vandaag wil ik dat gesprek uitbreiden naar de populairste verwijzingsbronnen voor uw bedrijf:

Kent u de online marketingcampagne die het maximale verkeer en verkeer naar uw website genereert?

Natuurlijk bewaart u mogelijk verschillende verwijzingsbronnen in uw Google Analytics (GA) -rapporten. Maar zou het niet nuttig zijn om een geavanceerde trackingoptie te hebben die u op de hoogte houdt van de marketingcampagne die maximaal verkeer voor u genereert?

Dat is waar dit belangrijke aspect in beeld komt ...

UTM-parameters (Urchin Tracking Module).

Door uw URL's te taggen met UTM's, kunt u een goed inzicht krijgen in hoe uw bezoekers omgaan met uw website. Hier ziet u hoe deze parameters aan het einde van uw URL verschijnen .

Wat kunnen deze tekstfragmenten u nu vertellen nadat ze uw URL's hebben toegevoegd?

Ik zal je de verkeersaspecten vertellen die je in de volgende sectie kunt volgen. Laat me je eerst een vangst vertellen die met hen te maken heeft ....

UTM-parameters zijn koppige entiteiten die zich aan uw links houden, zelfs wanneer u overschakelt naar verschillende netwerken en media.

That means if a visitor picked your link (tagged with a UTM) from Twitter to share on Facebook, it would still count as a share from Twitter.

And, as per research conducted by BuzzFeed last year, content actually spreads across the social web in a branching tree pattern.

Research by 33across found that 82% of online sharing is done by copy-pasting URLs. This means that UTMs will stick around and give misleading data for cross-platform social media sharing.

There’s a potential solution – cleaning the URLs by stripping UTM codes at the end, once sharing on one social platform has occurred.

But, if this clean URL then gets shared on private social media (think Email, WhatsApp and Messenger), it appears as direct traffic in your analytics. Again, this is misleading information – which becomes a part of your dark social traffic.

With this limitation, I just wanted you to understand that UTMs aren’t the end-all solution to understanding the performance of your content. But, they sure make your marketing campaign picture less chaotic.

Download this quick guide to using UTM parameters.

So, let’s start with generating custom URLs for your campaign and some UTM best practices. Then, we’ll move on to live UTM use cases.

But before we dig in deep, let me clearer on the basics.

As in: What are UTM parameters?

Here’s a succinct and super helpful definition from Kissmetrics:

“UTM parameters are simply tags that you add to a URL. When someone clicks on a URL with UTM parameters, those tags are sent back to your Google Analytics for tracking."

Are you ready to get going on your UTM campaign, learn more about UTM parameters and UTM tracking, and grasp how these insights might shape your marketing effort?

This blog post is for you.

Read on.

How to generate custom URLs for your campaign with Google’s URL builder? (and UTM best practices)

UTM parameters are a great way of finding the URLs that are most effective in attracting visitors to your content. So, is there a systematic way to append them to your URLs?

Fortunately, yes…

Say hello to Google’s URL builder.

It’s a form that you can complete inside the Google Analytics help center (looks like the screenshot below) for setting up your URLs.

Here are the 5 form fields that you need to complete:

Campaign Source – The platform (or vendor) where the traffic originates, like Facebook or your email newsletter.
Campaign Medium – You can use this to identify the medium like Cost Per Click (CPC), social media, affiliate or QR code.
Campaign Term – You’ll use this mainly for tracking your keywords during a paid AdWords campaign. You can also use it in your display ad campaigns to identify aspects of your audience.
Campaign Content – If you’re A/B testing ads, then this is a useful metric that passes details about your ad. You can also use it to differentiate links that point to the same URL.
Campaign Name – This is just to identify your campaign. Like your website or a specific product promotion. Here’s an example screenshot with the campaign names you might see when you navigate to Traffic Sources >> Sources >> Campaigns.

You can also use the Effin amazing UTM Builder Chrome extension to create UTMs. It auto-populates the URL and saves your most used terms as presets.

Here are three best practices that you must follow for tagging your URLs. It will help in easy identification of your traffic.

1. Create a naming convention for your UTMs

If you stay consistent, you can avoid a lot of confusion and ensure that your UTMs are reportable.

First, prefer dashes over underscores, percentage (representation for spaces inside GA) and plus signs in your URLs. Google algorithm doesn’t penalize you for using them and they work better – Matt Cutts explains why here.

Second, stay consistent with lowercase throughout all of your campaigns. For example,

utm_source=LinkedIn is different from utm_source=linkedin.

Changing to uppercase, camel case or any other capitalization gives you an additional responsibility of remembering this convention. So, it’s better to stick with lowercase and not let human error creep in.

Third, keep your URLs clean, descriptive, non-redundant and easy to read.

For example, you might mistakenly put the same values inside source and medium parameters.

Or, you can put the specific originating aspect under medium (like the example below), but still manage to confuse yourself with the double use of ‘facebook.’

The best way is to simply make the UTMs flow like a normal sentence sans any redundancy. See how easy it is to decipher your campaign details in the URL below. The traffic source is Facebook with post as the medium and a part of the new admin dashboard 2014 April campaign.

Here is a visual summary of the points I just mentioned.

Note: Once you’ve taken sufficient time to create data-rich URLs, I recommended that you shorten them, using tools like bit.ly or Google Link Shortener. A long and bulky URL does not make for a good user experience and might even come across as spammy.

Also, the UTM parameters are visible to the users in their address bars. So, be transparent and don’t use values that you don’t want seen by the user.

2. Track your UTM links inside a spreadsheet

Keeping a record of the tagged links will ensure that your marketing team stays on the same page. You can use this free spreadsheet template by Sam Wiltshire or this free link tagging tool by Rafflecopter to get started.

Additionally, create a naming convention guide document that lays out clear instructions for tagging links. This can be an iterative and expanding guide – if you come across a new scenario, you can add the example to this document.

3. Do this after establishing an UTM system…

The most important aspect for a business isn’t the number of clicks and traffic generated by various sources; it’s revenue.

So, once you know your way around UTMs, it’s useful to connect your tracking data with your CRM. It shows you a clear picture of how various online marketing channels are affecting your bottom line.

Alternatively, you can also set up goals inside GA. For example, if you want to measure reader loyalty and engagement, I show you the process in this article. I recommend, though, that you track more concrete conversion-focused metrics, like leads generated and email signups.

Alright, now that you’re aware of these best practices…

Here are 3 UTM parameter use cases you can implement right away.

1. Insert UTM parameters in the URLs you share on your social media profiles

Suppose you want to find your highest ROI-yielding social media platform and which links on that platform perform the best, traffic-wise. Then, UTMs can help you analyze your social media referral traffic.

For example, on Twitter, you have 4 options to promote your links – a regular tweet, a promoted tweet, website field and profile/bio description.

Barring the profile link (since it displays the first part of the URL you enter), you can track all of these link clicks separately.

Here are example UTM parameter strings, based on Twitter with different medium values.

?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=profile&utm_campaign=email

?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=tweet&utm_campaign=email

?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=promoted&utm_campaign=email

Once you’ve generated a custom URL, you can shorten the link, using shorteners I mentioned earlier and save the precious 160 character real estate.

Similarly, on Facebook, you can create separate UTM links for promoted posts, profile contact info, posts in a group, organic posts from your page and more. Kristin Hines shares UTM parameters for major social media here.

Once you start getting data and if you create goals (as I mentioned in the best practice 3 above), then you’ll get an enriching GA report like the one below.

2. Test the clicks from your email newsletters

Want to understand the parameters inside your newsletter that contribute the majority of traffic to your website?

Then, appending UTMs to your URLs can help.

Let’s look at an example instant update email by Redfin.

All of the links inside the above email share these UTM parameters:

utm_campaign : instant_listings_update

utm_medium : email

utm_source : myredfin

But, Redfin has correctly set up different utm_content values for all of their links (the screenshot above displays the unique values for each link). So, even when the subscribers of the myredfin list go to the same page, redfin knows the link they have clicked.

Now, let’s look at a bad example of UTM.

Here’s an email from Pinterest, recommending certain boards to follow.

As you can see, every board has an author, 5 images and a follow board CTA.

All of the above links share the following UTM parameters:

utm_campaign : weekly_wkly_130722

utm_medium : email

utm_source : sendgrid.com

Note that the utm_camapign value at 13 07 22 represents the date it was sent on (22/07/2013). It’s a useful piece of information.

But, other than that, Pinterest fails to impress with its UTM implementation.

There’s no way to find out the specific images and CTA buttons inside the email where the audience clicks. So, Pinterest doesn’t even know which of their “Follow Boards" buttons work well. The utm_content can be employed to gain this insight.
The utm_campaign value adds a confusing overhead with double usage of ‘weekly’ and ‘wkly.’ And, sendgrid.com as utm_source does not add any value, from an analytics perspective. It’s the email service provider that Pinterest uses and they are already aware of that.

I recommend that check out the UTM analysis of 8 more companies, by Puru Choudhary, here.

You can further implement UTM parameters inside your email signature to track if it leads visitors to your website.

Gniewko Oblicki created a company-wide signature template, appending UTM parameters. Here’s how it looks in CodeTwo Exchange Rules HTML editor.

He ran 5 such footer campaigns in the company and found that users engaged incredibly well on their website. Here’s the GA report showing results of 1682 sessions initiated by the five campaigns.

3. Track the characteristics of the most effective banner advertisements for your brand

If you regularly perform paid marketing, then I am sure you would like to know the banner ads that perform the best.

With UTMs, you can not only find out the external website that brings the most traffic, but you can even find out the banner placement, design, size, color and banner types that are most effective.

For example, suppose you use two banner sizes, 300px and 600px, for advertising on a third-party website, Koozai.

Here’s how the UTM might look if it is 300 px wide.

And, here’s how it would look when it is 600 px wide.

Once you’ve tagged both sizes, you can easily find the one that’s more effective and double down on it.

Kristi uses 320px banner ads in her blog’s sidebar. And, here’s how they perform against other clicks on her eBook.

Once again, I want to emphasize that if you’ve set up goals inside GA, then you can find the most valuable piece of info that affects your business.

For example, Kristi navigated to ‘Goal Set 1’ to find out how her banner ad converts to sales. And, she can compare it with her eBook sales through other links.

Conclusion

UTM-parameters bieden buitengewoon waardevolle inzichten over uw verkeer. U kunt met hen een goudmijn van uw gedragsgegevens uitgraven, uw verkoop stimuleren en uw algehele marketinginspanningen verfijnen.

Om hier kort samen te vatten, gebruik je de URL-builder van Google om UTM-parameters voor je links te maken. Hiermee kunt u het bijhouden van campagnes starten. En vergeet niet om de beste praktijken in gedachten te houden terwijl u dit doet.

Heeft u ooit UTM-parameters gebruikt voor het bijhouden van campagnes? Heeft dit geleid tot inzichten over het maken van een aangepaste campagne? Heb ik in deze blog post andere tips over het gebruik van UTM-parameters gemist? Laat me je gedachten weten in de comments hieronder

Wilt u meer verkeer ?

Hallo, ik ben Neil Patel. Ik ben vastbesloten om een bedrijf te laten groeien. Mijn enige vraag is, zal het van jou zijn?

Over Neil Patel

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Comments (77)

Hamza Lali

Neil, I’m struggling to remove duplicate pages with pagination type website.
Can I get rid of this duplicate issue when using Parameters

Reply
1. Derric Haynie
  
  UTM parameters do not create duplicate pages. They are simply “tags" added to existing pages. Anything after the “?" is considered a parameter and ignored when directing you to a destination URL.
  
  The issue you are having needs to be resolved by deleting duplicate pages using your CMS or web host.
  
  Reply
Vadym Tatarenko

Thank you Neil! Do you know how to track app installs from facebook ads in google analytics? As far as I know facebook strips UTM parameters 🙁

Reply
1. luan
  
  Actually they don’t! You have a special box to use it on facebook ads. Check in your power editor, just before ending the ad creation
  
  Reply
  1. Neil Patel
    
    Thanks for letting us know. 🙂
    
    Reply
  2. Neil Patel
    
    Thanks!
    
    Reply
2. Neil Patel
  
  I do not. I will look into though.
  
  Reply
ali

Thanks! I was having trouble writing all these out manually. You’re a life saver.
🙂

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  I know what you mean Ali, it gets tedious and annoying
  
  Reply
James

Hey Neil,
Thanks for explaining how to use UTM parameters for effective tracking. I never really understood much about it, but now I have a better idea.

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  Glad this was helpful James. Now you’ll be able to make a lot more sense of the data you’re collecting
  
  Reply
kunal

Hey neil

Awesome artical bro keep it up

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  Thanks Kunal, I will 🙂
  
  Reply
Rashed Reza Chowdhury Arif

Thank you for your informative post

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  🙂
  
  Reply
Lisa

Great article. I’ve never heard of UTM’s before, but I’ve seen those types of links in the past. I’ve bookmarked this in Feedly for future reference.

How are tUTM parameters different than tracking pixels?

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  Pixel tracking is generally used for measuring impressions and clicks are measured by the request of the target page.
  
  You can use UTM parameters in both the cases. A pixel can have UTM parameters attached to it.
  
  Reply
Ryan Burton

Thanks Neil. This one may take a few reads 🙂 Thanks for the tip on the Google URL Builder, I can see how that can help in producing more pure data!

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  You’ll begin to receive a ton of new insight and data to help you make more effective decisions
  
  Reply
Puru Choudhary

Thanks for mentioning Terminus article, Neil. Really appreciate it. I’m glad you found the analysis of the UTM parameters in emails from popular companies useful.

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  You’re welcome Puru, glad this was helpful
  
  Reply
Dora

Hi Neil,

Awesome article!

Do you have any advice on tracking offline marketing efforts? Is it better to set the source as “Offline" for all the different methods that can be used to drive traffic to the website, or is it better to set different Sources (for example to set sources as product_labels, flairs, stickers, product_packaging)? I know that it depends entirely on how would it be easier for you to analyse the data later, but I honestly am not entirely sure which way would make better sense. 🙂

Thanks in advance,
Dora

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  Yep, check this out Dora https://blog.kissmetrics.com/offline-marketing-tracking/
  
  Reply
Ivan Rojas

Hi Neil, I have been reading your post for a while, you are akways surprising me, how long will it take to create a post like this one? Looks like it is a full time job, great work, thanks

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  It can take a few hours Ivan, but I’ve been doing this for over a decade
  
  Reply
Priyadarshi

I was also looking forward to see how to use UTM parameters in the ads. UTM builder gives the direct link, if that works out then its good. Will try that from it. We have using Google Adwords since many months now but the clicks have declined now. Moreover the traffic seems to not move ahead on the website. We think we are selling an exciting product but doesn’t seem to work out somehow. It will be great, Mr. Patel if you can check us out once and share your imp. feedback. That may give us a ray of hope again.

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  What kind of product are you selling?
  
  Reply
  1. Priyadarshi
    
    Hey Neil, Thanks for your revert. We are selling Group Greeting cards where one can personalize the card along with its friends & family, upto 32 people can participate in the same. The multifold card is then physically delivered to the recipient anywhere in USA. All for just $1 per participant. We seriously believed that it will something personal and the pricing was kept small too. But then somehow its not picking up; may be the communication which is making it difficult for people to understand the concept as this thing is not available anywhere else too. Your feedback can be extremely important for us. If you also believe it to be cool and something where you can help it to grow, I will be happy to discuss it further too.
    
    Reply
    1. Neil Patel
      
      How many people have signed up for this so far?
      
      Reply
      1. Priyadarshi Singh
        
        421 people to be exact in last 7 months.
        
        Reply
        
        Neil Patel
        
        That’s awesome!
        
        Reply
        
        Priyadarshi
        
        We do not see much happening forward now unless we do something unique for the users to educate them the concept and they can start sending more.
        
        Reply
        
        Neil Patel
        
        🙂
        
        Reply
Parampreet Chanana

Thanks Neil Bro! You really great for me. Your Guides always helps..

This is another, which i needed to get started. BEcause i think, these are very helpful.

I will read it today and learn everything about it.

Thank you 🙂

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  That’s great Parampreet, happy I could help 🙂
  
  Reply
CR Salman

Thanks for such a beautiful information. Neil I would love to implementing these techniques.

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  You’re welcome, happy I could help 🙂
  
  Reply
The Crazy Thinkers

thanks for sharing UTM tips and it will be more beneficial to judge your audience and next plan for your sites.

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  Glad it was helpful! Let me know how it works out
  
  Reply
Aditi

Nice article neil. I will use this techique on my sites.

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  🙂
  
  Reply
Tony

Hi Neil
In Google Adwords – Is it somehow possible to pass the “search phrase" rather than the “paid keywords" to the destination URL?
Kind regards
Tony

Reply
enough living room

I think that is among the so much vital info for me. And i’m satisfied reading your article.
However should remark on some general issues, The website style is perfect, the articles is actually great :D.

Excellent job, cheers.

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  Thanks!
  
  Reply
Derric Haynie

As always, an epic post!

Google’s URL builder has been my go-to for a while, but now I use Rebrandly’s built in UTM builder which has the ability to save and load presets and then instantly create a branded short link with the UTM parameters built in.

Probably saves a good 30 seconds per link.

I’d recommend taking a look at a post I wrote about it: https://blog.rebrandly.com/utm-parameters-made-simple-guide-for-marketers/

Reply
Patrik

Great article!

But I do have one question. Are utm parameters useful to track in site links? I’ve read an article (but it was from a few years ago) that if you use parameters on your own site, everytime a user clicks on such a link, it is counted as a new session.

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  UTM is only supposed to be used for “external" links and not internal.
  
  Reply
James

Hi neil,
Do we have a different page to track the traffic source on Google Analytics which has the UTM parameter at the URL? If it is so how could we do it ? please help me out.

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  It is up to you if you want a different page… if you do and are driving traffic to it, use this builder https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en
  
  Reply
ModernTechnolab

Hii Nail, Excellent post with a lot to learn! it’s really helpful and more justified information provided in a simple term. Thanks

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  Thank you.
  
  Reply
Jeenfer Wilson

Hi Niel, I have created a free spreadsheet that can

-Create fully tagged campaign URLs
-Shorten the URLs using Bit.ly and TinyURL
-Keep track of all campaign and short URLs created
-Share your short links to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest with a single click!
-Track number of clicks on your short links

Here is the direct link to the spreadsheet. http://bit.ly/UTMSpreadsheet Hope this will be useful to many digital marketers and content marketers.

(Sorry! Forgot to insert the link in the previous comment)

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  Thanks, Jeenfer. 🙂
  
  Reply
catie

Hey Neil, can you add utm parameters to mailto: links?

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  Best approach is via a redirect address.
  
  Reply
Akshay Kumar

thanks neil for your great knowledge…your blog post is very easy & descriptive to learn

thanks…

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  Thanks for reading the site.
  
  Reply
Heidi

Hi Neil,

Thanks for writing this, very informative. I was wondering if you have any suggestions for how to test UTM parameters without skewing results in GA or using campaign money?

Cheers!

Reply
Nesh

I am running a Google Search Campaign. I have added the UTM parameters under the keywords URL using for example – ?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term={keyword}_{matchtype}&utm_content=Wealth_bmm&utm_campaign=Brand

Is it necessary to add the paramaters under the Adcopy URL as well?

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  No, because Google Analytics might confuse the source of the traffic.
  
  Reply
Adam

Neil – Thanks for the great overview. You always save me so much time!

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  Glad to help.
  
  Reply
Nicki Laycoax

Hey Neil!

Great article. I’ve been working on something and I’d love your feedback! I’ve got a waitlist right now, but have some beta users. The tool I’ve been having built lets marketers build, shorten, and manage their URLs and parameters in one place. There are more features coming, but I thought I’d throw this out there in case anyone had an interest in being among the first to know.

Here is the link to the waitlist: https://goo.gl/vVeUyD

Thanks for writing this great article. I’ll share it to help our readers too!

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  Thanks for sharing Nicki! I think your tool could be very useful. Keep me updated with its progress!
  
  Reply
Felix Valverde

Hi Neil !
Your guide is really Useful, thanks for that!
I have a question, for the UTM Term, if i want to track multiple keywords in an Ad, f.e. Keyword1, keyword2, keyword3 … keywordx, how do i have to configure it in order to know the statistics for each one?

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  Hey Felix! As far as I know, Google combines them all in an ad group.
  
  Reply
Anahit

Hi Neil!
what about using UTM parameters to track the traffic coming from my own blog (blog.example.com) to my website (example.com)? I am using different Google Analytics UA-IDs for the blog and the website.

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  That’s definitely one way to go. Let me know how it works out!
  
  Reply
Preetroop Gill

why do the UTM codes have to be added prior to shortening?

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  If you don’t, the UTM codes won’t be part of the URL.
  
  Reply
Sean Juan

This has been baffaling my mind…If I use UTM links for my GMB website link, that shows as the campaign source.medium I created, but will it ALSO count as a visit from google organic source?

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  Hey Sean, it shouldn’t count as both.
  
  Reply
jayshree chauhan

Hey, Can we use short link for doing offpage submissions, will that work?

Reply
1. Neil Patel
  
  Either way will work fine!
  
  Reply
  1. jayshree chauhan
    
    ok thank you!
    
    Reply
    1. Neil Patel
      
      You’re welcome!
      
      Reply
Bjorn

Hey Neil, thanks for another very informative post!
I was wondering:
Can you (or should you) use UTM parameters for tracking content promotion or backlinks? If not, why not?
Thanks!

Reply