In order to understand what UTM tags are and how to create them, first you 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 the various link sources in your Google Analytics reports. But it’s always useful to have an advanced tracking option.
If UTM tags are added, this allows you to measure where your traffic is coming from and get statistics with many details. If you do not use 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 specific post, tweet, page or link the user has chosen to go to your site. This makes marketers puzzle over which traffic sources work and which don't.
How to put UTM tags? For this, UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) parameters are required. But first you’ll have to configure Google Analytics or another similar service.
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 remain attached to your links, even when you switch to other networks and environments. These options appear at the end of the site address. If a visitor clicks on your UTM-labeled link from one site to share it on another, it will still be considered a fraction of the audience of the first site.
Today, UTM is best known as the tracking format that Google uses for URLs along with ads. It looks like this: www.site.com/?parameter utm_source =. The text after the question mark is a UTM parameter.
Set UTM tags for ads
When a user clicks on an ad with certain UTM parameters, he gets to a page with them added to the URL. Google Analytics and other tracking programs 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 the website. There is a systematic way to add them to your URLs - this is a URL configuration form that you can fill out in the Google Analytics Help Center:
- When creating UTM tags for an ad, find the “Add UTM options” item.
- Then click on the green button and add your parameters in a new window.
But you can use other tools to build tags to create a destination URL for various campaigns. Simple services usually contain only one window for entering parameters. But most often, experienced marketers use the Google URL builder.
How to create custom URLs using Google URL builder
In order to understand what UTM tags are, you need to try to create 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 the given UTM parameters, these tags are sent to Google Analytics for tracking. The Google UTM tag builder URL builder is a great way to create the URLs that are most effective in attracting visitors to your content.
Fill in the lines:
- campaign name
- utm_source (campaign source, for example, utm_source = google);
- utm_medium (traffic channel, for example, utm_medium = email);
- campaign term
- campaign content
Each of them has a very specific purpose.
UTM tag parameters: what is it and what is it for
You can use several parameters with advertising: utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign. The name in this case works as an identifier for a specific campaign, product or offer. It is necessary for the UTM tag generator. The source of the campaign is the traffic referrer for your page, such as Google or Facebook. In many cases, this is the platform or tool that you used to place your ad or link. A traffic channel is a marketing medium that is used to transmit traffic. Thus, unlike the source, it tracks the type of traffic, for example, banner advertising, email, or a message on Facebook.
Optional parameters
Campaign term is an optional parameter, but when creating a campaign, it allows you to track paid keywords for an ad or site using a blog link. Content is another optional part of the UTM tag generator. The option makes it easy to distinguish between ads on different channels, such as Reddit. This is convenient when conducting A / B testing with various images or promotional text.
When you fill in the necessary lines, click the "Finish" button. Now you know how to add a UTM tag to the site address.
There are a few more details of its settings. When you submit an ad, 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 allows you to better understand where the traffic comes from coming from a standard URL.
UTM design considerations
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 options in lower case.
- Be unique and do not repeat the same keyword again and again. This can make reports difficult to understand.
Finding UTM parameters in Google Analytics
After receiving clicks on ads, you can track them in Google Analytics:
- In the left part of the menu, find the traffic sources.
- Click on them, then click the campaign button.
- In the table that appears, find the column with the desired one.
All keywords that are extracted from the utm_campaign parameter, you can track by its type. Now you can see in which campaign the ads were displayed and on which medium and so on. This is a great way to get clear ad statistics in Google Analytics.
UTM tags in Mixpanel and Kissmetrics
There are other tools, such as Mixpanel and Kissmetrics, that make working with UTM tags easier.
What is Mixpanel? This is a tool for automatically tracking UTM tags. If you used links with tags, Mixpanel will automatically save them as first touch properties, that is, “first touch properties”, and also record user actions on the site. This is very useful when trying to understand where your customers came from, as well as get information about their behavior and track all the actions.
If you want to get an advanced level, add a special Javsacript code to the site, which allows you to store the last touch, i.e. last touch, UTM tags, 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
One of the major technology companies conducted a study in the field of information exchange between users and found that 82% of online exchange is carried out by copying and pasting the URL. This means that you can configure UTM tags, but they will give incorrect information about the exchange on social networks. There is a potential solution - cleaning the URL and replacing the UTM tag after the exchange between platforms. But, if this clean URL then gains access to private social networks, such as WhatsApp, it will appear in analytics as direct traffic. Again, this is an incorrect transmission 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, of course, make your marketing campaign less chaotic.
Common errors in UTM tags
Links marked with UTM tags should facilitate the analysis of marketing indicators and channels and help to better understand your visitor and his behavior as a buyer. But what if you are already tracking your campaigns and all have difficulty interpreting the results?
It happens that the data that was collected does not make sense or coincides with what was expected. If it’s only more difficult to find a specific campaign, it’s possible that mistakes were made when working with UTM tags. Let's look at a few of the most common.
Work with email
Email and software can double the tags in links. Some of them generate their own default UTM parameters, such as “utm_medium = email address”, and add them to the end of the link, which may affect your tags. Given that the last parameter will override the first in the event of duplication, any visits to the doubled link will be tracked by the tags of the email service provider.
If you search for a specific campaign in the analytic software, you may find that the traffic does not appear as you expected. In order to prevent this option, before starting work, make sure that you are informed about all the specific settings in the mail software and create your links, taking into account their features. Be especially careful if you are campaigning with another brand or service provider. Even if your email cannot add your own UTM tags, your partner may be doing it on their own.
Confusion in the options
The parameters of the source and the traffic channel can be easily confused, because when creating URLs with UTM tags they are often neglected. Some retailers use UTM tags to distinguish between types of traffic within a specific channel. But this is the misuse of labels. It will result in analytic reports being deceitful or of no use.
The source and traffic channel parameters are designed to provide various types of useful information. Avoiding this error will help using the standard Google Analytics model.
Another situation is when retailers mark the source as a channel and the channel as a source. In this case, you need to fill in the lines correctly. Another error option is to duplicate the channel and source in the same URL. In this case, if you intend to use e-mail as a channel, do not use it as a source and instead indicate the type of e-mail.
Using special characters in UTM tags
Incorrectly using the symbols “&”, “=”, “?” And “#” in the parameters of UTM tags, you make the most common mistake that interferes with the proper analysis of the campaign:
- Because URLs or UTM tags should not use spaces, different characters are needed to separate two or more words. However, the ampersand already has a certain meaning (when it comes to link tracking, this symbol separates the UTM parameters), so it should not be used for anything else in this link.
- Use “+”, “-” or “_” if you want to separate two or more words in order to accurately track and analyze your marketing activities.
- Please note that sometimes “+” can be converted to space in some analytical 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 an ampersand must precede other tags. Therefore, if a question mark is already present in the URL, you do not need to add it again before the UTM parameters.
- The signs “=” and “#” also cannot be used inside the value of the UTM tag.
Mix lowercase and uppercase in one tag
UTM tags in Google Analytics are case-sensitive, so, for example, Sleep and SPI will be written very 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 lower case for the source and channel of traffic, as currently automatic labeling does this.
Following these simple rules will help you create the best UTM tags for any marketing campaign.