What is UTM Tracking? 2024 Guide (+ examples)

What is a UTM?

UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module. It’s a snippet of code added to the end of a URL to help track the performance of marketing campaigns in Google Analytics. By using UTM parameters, you can gain insights into where your website traffic is coming from and how users interact with your content.

what is a utm example

Key Takeaways

UTM parameters: track marketing campaigns by identifying traffic sources and user behavior.
Create UTM codes: with tools like Google’s URL Builder using source, medium, and campaign.
Use best practices: like consistent naming, testing URLs, and reviewing UTM data in Analytics.

Why Use UTM Parameters?

UTM parameters are essential for campaign tracking. They allow you to categorize website traffic into specific segments, providing detailed insights into the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. For example, you can track which social media platform is driving the most traffic to your site or which email campaign is generating the highest engagement.

How to Create UTM Codes

Creating UTM codes is simple with tools like Google’s URL Builder. Here’s a step-by-step guide:

Visit the Google URL Builder.
Enter the URL of the page you want to track.
Fill in the required UTM parameters: Source, Medium, and Campaign.
Optionally, add Term and Content for more detailed tracking.
Generate the URL and use it in your marketing campaigns.

Google URL builder

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Not Testing URLs: Always test your URLs to ensure they work correctly and track the intended data.
Inconsistent Naming: Use consistent naming conventions for UTM parameters to avoid data discrepancies.
Ignoring Updates: Stay updated with any changes in UTM formats to ensure accurate tracking.

Best Practices for UTMs

To maximize the effectiveness of UTM tracking, follow these best practices:

Regularly review your UTM traffic in Google Analytics to identify trends and optimize campaigns.
Communicate with your analytics team to ensure consistent UTM usage across departments.
Consider using auto-tagging for Google Ads to streamline the process.

How to View UTM Data in GA4?

To find UTM data in Google Analytics GA4, follow these steps:

Log in to Google Analytics and select the GA4 property.
Go to Reports: Click the “Reports” tab.
Open Traffic Acquisition: Under “Acquisition”, click “Traffic acquisition”.
View UTM Parameters: Look at dimensions like “Session source/medium” or “Session campaign” for UTM data.
Add Comparisons or Filters: Use “Add comparison” or “Add filter” to refine the data by UTM parameters.
Analyze or Export Data: Review or export the report as needed.

what is a utm?

UTM Cheat Sheet

Source:

Source is the site or platform that traffic is coming from (e.g. Facebook, Menshealth.com, Newsletter).

You will want to use a UTM parameter within your campaigns to ensure that all traffic coming from one source will populate under the same label. Facebook, for example, will populate in Google Analytics as different versions of the platform depending on which version the user came from (e.g. facebook, m.facebook.com, l.facebook.com). By using UTMs and changing the source to “facebook” for all facebook posts and campaigns, the UTM will overwrite whatever name Google Analytics would have labelled this traffic.

Recommendation: Decide on how you want sources to be displayed to avoid creating several versions of the same source. For example, we recommend using sources such as ‘facebook’ or ‘instagram’ instead of labelling sources like ‘instagram-facebook’ or ‘facebook,instagram.’

Warning: Different marketers may label sources differently. Make sure that you are labelling your sources in a way that allows you to analyze traffic coming from different sources, platforms or partners. For example, if ‘dcm’ is labelled as the source for campaigns being run through DoubleClick Campaign Manager, then you will not know if that campaign was being run through Criteo or GQ.

Medium:

Medium is the channel that the traffic is coming from (e.g. Email, Social, Display). This is a required field that you can use to group organic social traffic and paid social traffic into different buckets.

Recommendation: When using UTMs to create custom mediums, try to make sure they are related to the mediums that Google already pre-populates or are a branch off of Google’s versions. This ensures that the mediums that campaign traffic comes in from are not placed in a different category other than where Google would automatically place non-UTM containing traffic. For example, Google already has an ‘email’ medium, so we recommend labelling your email newsletters/campaigns as ‘email’ instead of ‘E-mail.’

Warning: Some marketers will use ‘cpc’ as a medium for any paid media campaigns, however, since Google recognizes ‘cpc’ as paid search, Google will automatically place ‘cpc’ medium traffic into a Paid Search Channel Group. So, if source/medium is labelled as facebook/cpc, Google will automatically place that traffic into a Paid Search Default Channel Group even though it is social traffic.

Campaign:

Campaign is the campaign that users click-through to get to the site (e.g. sweater promo, new product email, holiday special).

Recommendation: Once you have decided on a campaign name, make sure the campaign label is referencing the same throughout all the UTMs being created for that campaign. For example, if a social campaign is labelled ‘BrandCampaign’ then make sure that display campaigns are not labelled differently like ‘Brand_Campaign.’

Term:

Term is an optional campaign related field that can be used for keyword content, target audience, customer list or another field that is determined in your UTM structure (e.g. jacket keyword, email list, retargeting).

Recommendation: When using term, make sure there is a consistency between whatever field is being used. For example, if the term field is being use for target audiences, you do not want some audiences being labelled as ‘retargeting+audience’ while other audiences are using another symbol or being labelled as ‘retargeting_audience,’ ‘retarg’ or ‘retargeting.’

Content:

Content is an optional campaign related field that can be used for creative, ad type or another field that is determined in your UTM structure (e.g. black belt image, carousel unit).

Recommendation: When using the content field, try and predict the level of granularity you might need. For example, Q1 campaigns may contain ‘belt’ as their content field while in Q2, ‘black-belt’ is being used as the new content field.