UTM Tracking Parameters

Has someone asked you to provide data on the performance of a print, digital advertising, email newsletter, or social media campaign? To track traffic and other performance metrics, you can accomplish this request by adding a string of code (UTM tracking parameters) at the end of your destination URL. 

If after reviewing the details below you have additional questions or would like a UTM tracking parameter consultation, please submit a project using the UCM Project Request.

View Best Practices

  • UTM Parameters Explained

    UTM is an acronym for Urchin Traffic Monitor.

    These parameters allow you to accurately track user engagement from outside sources within your analytics platform of choice. A UTM parameter is a string of code placed on a URL to define the source, medium, campaign, and/or content of the piece that sent the user your website.

    That string would look something like:

    utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=newsfeed&utm_campaign=homecoming-2023&utm_content=calendar-of-events-2023

    A question mark [?] will separate your URL from your UTM parameter.

    In the above example, the user saw a Facebook post in their “newsfeed” (utm_medium) and clicked on that link that contained “homecoming-2023” (utm_campaign) viewing the “calendar-of-events-2023" (utm_content) content.

    As you can already guess, this information can be extremely valuable in tracking the success of a specific campaign or piece of creative content.

  • How They Work

    When you create a piece of content that contains a link, whether it’s a guest post, an ad, an email, a social post, etc., you should add the UTM to the end of your URL. 

    This creates a new, unique URL to be tracked. 

    For instance, ohio.edu/ and ohio.edu/?utm_source=facebook are recognized as two different pages. 

    When Google Analytics brings that information into their platform, they strip the UTM from the URL and put the information from that snippet into the proper dimensions (source, medium, campaign, content). 

  • Why We Use Them 

    Our goal is generally to track the return on investment (ROI) of our campaign's efforts and measure user behavior journeys from our audiences. 

    If you are creating unique pages for each piece of content you put out, tracking their effectiveness gets extremely easy.

    So instead of just seeing a source/medium as Facebook/referral for any traffic coming from Facebook, you could see facebook/newsfeed.

    Adding utm_campaign like “UGA_health-recruitment_fall-2023"  allows you to see the difference in performance from your Facebook efforts and your specific Facebook campaign efforts.

    Similarly, if you have a “UGA_health-recruitment_fall-2023" campaign running on multiple platforms, you can designate the platform using unique UTMs for each platform.

What Can We Track

As we’ve touched on a few times, you are able to define four parameters with UTMs: source, medium, campaign, and content.

The reality is that you are able to put whatever you want in each of these locations, but this is a general guide to what to put where.

Source

This is the digital location where the user came from. You want to put something in this parameter to tell you where the person was before coming to your site. 

Examples:  

  • newsletter 
  • google 
  • facebook 
  • twitter 
  • tiktok 
  • name-of-referral-source 

Medium 

This is the medium in which you captured users’ attention. This could be a video, email, CPC ad, graphic, organic tweet, or more. This should tell you what kind of content got the click. 

Examples:  

  • email 
  • display 
  • search 
  • ppc 
  • video 
  • QR-code 

Campaign 

If you are running a specific campaign for the content that is going out, you can specify that campaign in this parameter. 

Use a code name, the slogan, the campaign name, or whatever you feel is easiest. If it is a seasonal campaign, be consistent. You always want to include the date or month/year or year. 

Content

You can track which piece of content led to a click to your site or if you’re sending the same content to different audiences, you can leverage the utm_content parameter for that. 

This is great for situations in which you are testing pieces of content running during a campaign and want to know which one is getting the best result.  

For example, if you have created a paid social media post, utm_content could be testing different audience targeting:  

  • nursing-leads 
  • current-followers 

  • Where You View Your Results

    Google Analytics (GA4) provides these insights. You can leverage in your LookerStudio Analytics Dashboard by following the below instructions: 

    On Page One of your dashboard report, Traffic Acquisition Report, under Page Filters, under Session Source/Medium, you can select or type in the exact source or medium of your campaign effort. Select your campaign and choose “enter” on your keyboard.

    If you’re having trouble accessing or don’t have access to your college/department/unit’s analytics dashboard, please submit a UCM request form.

    For more information on how to use your Analytics Dashboard, please visit https://www.ohio.edu/ucm/web/help/analytics.

  • How To Make Your UTM Parameter URL

    Use Google’s Campaign URL Builder to get started.

    This UTM generator is easy to use; you simply fill out your information and it creates your URL with the UTMs for you.

UTM Best Practices

UTMs can be really helpful for gathering data, but they can also make pulling data really hard if you don’t create them correctly. In alignment with OHIO’s Analytics User Agreement, employees and partners must adhere to the documented Best Practices.

Create Naming Convention Guide

Before you start making dozens of UTMs or asking your team members to use them, you will want to create a guide for naming conventions.

Build Shared Database

Create a database using Microsoft Excel – OneDrive – to store and document all of your UTM parameters and associated URLs. This will be immensely helpful when reviewing month-over-month or even year-over-year campaign results. Make it sharable across your team.

Assign Responsible Editor

It’s helpful to assign a single person to create the UTM parameters. If that is not feasible for your team, have clearly spelled out naming conventions for each parameter. This makes it easy to find your efforts. Adhere to the required UTM tracking parameters guidelines set by UCM.

Follow Naming Conventions

  • UTM’s are case sensitive.
    • If you put “facebook” as a source for one and “Facebook” as a source for another, those will count as two separate sources. This can become a nightmare when diving into source insights.
    • Use lowercase for everything, except for uppercase when indicating the department name (UGA or CHSP or UCM).
    • If you want to add separate fields under the same, separate the three fields (name of email, date, and unit name) with underscores (_).
    • Use hyphens for spaces “-”.  Do not use an actual space as it looks like %20 in the URL string when previewing the URL and causes tracking problems.
  • Always include a year in the campaign name.
  • If there are other elements that are needed to track or differentiate each campaign or segmentation, please consult UCM for best practice solutions.

Example

Here is an example that aligns with the above naming conventions parameters:

  • utm_campaign=UGA_health-recruitment_fall-2023 

When Not to Add

Drupal web editors are not permitted to add UTM tracking parameters to any internal pages that link to other internal pages. 

  • For example: using a hyperlink with link using UTM parameters from ohio.edu/chsp to ohio.edu/chsp/nursing. This is not permitted.  
    • It is permitted to use a ohio.edu/chsp link with UTM parameters and post that link in an email directing traffic to ohio.edu/chsp.
  • Adding UTM parameters to internal facing links skews our data and presents challenges when viewing full scope user journeys through the attribution lens for our various goals/conversions. 
  • In other words, you should only add UTM tracking parameters to URLs that are being shared outside of OHIO owned webpages. 

Working with Vendors

Paid marketing vendors or partners may use their internal UTM tracking parameters naming convention structures.

List of OHIO Owned Domains

If you are unsure if you are collecting data on a subdomain managed or partnered with another vendor, please reach out and submit a UCM Project Request for an analytics domain audit.