In this article we’re going to learn about UTM Parameters and how to track your Marketing campaigns in Google Analytics. UTM params are the best way to track all your marketing efforts.
What are Campaign UTM params?
UTM parameters are pieces of text added at the end of links which tell Google Analytics (as well as other tools, including MARA) more information about the visit.
When users visit one of those tracked links, the unique parameters are read by Google Analytics and MARA system, to identify source it a more effective way.
A typical URL with UTM parameters added looks like this:
In this case the following information is based sent via the parameters:
- Source: facebook
- Medium: ppc
- Campaign Name: monthly_promo
MARA also captures UTM parameters from visits to web pages automatically and displays them in the Activity Feed:
How to track Campaign Params in Google Analytics?
Once added, Google Analytics (other analytics software as well), will read those params automatically from the page URL, when a user visits a page.
You can use these params to create custom segments and see how your marketing campaigns perform.
How to add UTM tracking params to a URL?
There are a few ways to add tracking params to incoming URL to your website. Most marketing solutions automatically deal with UTM params for all their links, but you can do it manually or using a Google URL Builder.
If you link is too long for twitter (limited at 140 characters) you can use a url shortner yourself, or let twitter shorten it for you.
Add UTM parameters manually
For example if you have the following link:
and you add to add utm params to it, you do the following:
- add “?” at the end end then each group of param/value glued by “&”
- for example: “?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=august_promo&utm_medium=banner“
- in the end the url will look like:
https://getmara.com/static/home.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=august_promo&utm_medium=banner
Use a marketing solution
If you use a marketing solution like MARA, Mailchimp, Aweber, ConstantContact, OneSignal, they have built a campaign tracking builder inside their solution. For example here’s how MARA allows to custom track every campaign created:
Use a Campaign URL Builder
We’ve built a free Google URL builder with some examples you can use to track one or more links. Simply enter your links, add your params (or use examples) and copy the result.
Important!
You should never add those links on your website and use them as internal links to track clicks.
The issue is that all analytics solutions will consider it a new source of traffic and will lose the last one that really brought you that visitor. Also, when using a personalization system, make sure you ask them to remove UTM params of interactions or html added to your website.