What are UTM codes and their purpose?  Guide

Maybe you haven’t noticed, but every day, there are more URL incorporating UTM codes. Their function is to help keep track of and analyze the users. With these codes, you’ll be able to know all there is about the traffic that reaches your website, from any link. Doesn’t matter if these links are from Facebook, Twitter, a social media message or an email, Google Analytics will pick up all the data, and it will show it to you in a very concise way.

The UTM codes are small text fragments, that are added at the end of an URL. Their main objective is to help keep track of the success of your website and all the visitors it has.

The UTM code can be seen as a supplement for the URL. So you might find long URLs with one or more UTMs. Each UTM identifies a type of information, that is later read and identified. The are many types of UTM codes, each one with a purpose and a concrete objective.

Profile your users with UTM codes

UTM means Urchin Traffic Monitor, it is an analytics tool that Google acquired, to build their own Google Analytics. It’s a way to measure and calculate, where the traffic comes from, which is quite complex to do by other means. These parameters, allows us to analyze the effectiveness of marketing campaigns in a transversal way, to the sources or medium where they are accessed.

By adding UTM codes to the URL, the web analytics will report which are the domains and the campaigns providing most of your website’s the traffic. When a person clicks an URL with a UTM code, the analytics software interprets where the visitor came from. Then, everything that happens during that visit is attributed to the user.

In this way, the visitor will have a normal web access. You’ll get to know which site they come from, the device they used to get there or other types of information, information that will help you to better profile your visitors. Each code will provide a type of concrete information, that you’ll be able to use to know more about your public and to keep track of them.

Types of UTM codes

There are many types of UTM codes. You’ll be able to find 5 different types of UTM codes. Each one provides a different type of information, they are used to measure and track the user. Is the way to get all the information related to the user. The 5 types of UTM codes are:

1.-utm_source

What’s the source of the traffic? Use this type of UTM to identify a search engine, the name of an info bulletin or another type of source.

An example of this type of UTM code is the: utm_source=Facebook. With this UTM code, you’ll be able to identify that the user came from Facebook.

2.- utm_medium

What’s the campaign medium? It’s important, if not required, the use of these types of UTM codes. It’s a code that measures the campaign’s medium. The code can identify mediums, such as emails or cpc campaigns.

For example, the utm_medium=cpc code, refers to the traffic that a pay-per-click campaign provides.

3.- utm_term

What was the term used during the search? It’s important to know the words the client used to reach your site. The keywords used in the search engines are important for many reasons, but mainly, to know with which word you are ranked for and avoid all the words that aren’t useful for this purpose.

Use a code, like utm_term=honeymoons to identify that the traffic comes from a campaign using the keyword, honeymoons.

4.-utm_content

What type of content was the one used to send the client to your website? This type of UTM will help you get interesting A/B test results. Learning the exact type of element used to send the client to your website is crucial.  With this information, you’ll know that from now on, a certain type of content will be required, because it will be the one that attracts the more visitors. The A/B tests, are also necessary to know what types of content to add to your websites and elements.

For example, a utm_content=product+4pictures code, identifies that the link from a 4-picture product, works to attract visitors.

5.-utm_campaign

Which promotion was used to send clients to your website? With the source and media UTM codes, it’s necessary to measure the marketing campaigns. This tag identifies the type of campaign that managed to attract this traffic to your website.

To know which campaign, you are investing in and to learn if it’s providing the desired results, it’s fundamental to identify it with codes, like utm_campaign=summerlaunch. That way, you’ll know that what worked, was the summer launch of a new product.

15 features of the UTM codes

Each UTM code has a particular feature. Their global objective is to measure an aspect of the upcoming traffic to your website. These are some of the features that the UTM codes provide:

1. Tracks all your visits.
2. Know where all these visits came from and what did they do to arrive at your website or landing page.
3. Optimize marketing campaign investing.
4. Optimize the list of keywords used in your marketing campaigns.
5. Find out what type of content is the one your audience like the most.
6. Get useful information to later be used in the audience segmentation and to create content.
7. Identify the promo that led all the traffic to your website.
8. If you have many types of campaigns, with different media, it’ll let you know from which campaign the clients came from.
9. Optimize the actions in the digital marketing to get more conversions.
10. Improve the results given by the analytics systems.
11. Analyze the functioning of the content shared or created in social media.
12. Learn how much the social media have been helping you rank and promote content.
13. Learn how each element, created in the different and available communication channels, works.
14. Analyze the functioning and effectiveness of the inner links.

How to create UTM codes in Google

Google has created a simple tool, to help you generate UTM codes, having in mind all the different parameters. Google’s URL creator, allows the integration of UTM codes in the URLs, to use them in personalized email campaigns or based on a web.

It’s considered a personalized campaign, the one which doesn’t use the automatic tag function from Adwords, meaning, the one you created. By clicking on the personalized parameter, the specific data from the clients, are sent to your Analytics account, where you’ll be able to keep track of them. Analytics identifies the URLs that provided the best results in relation to user conversion.

To add these codes to the URLs and start the tracking of your visitors, using Google’s URL creator, you’ll need to follow the next process:

Step 1. Introduce the URL

The first step is to introduce the URL. It’s important to use a full URL. There are URLs that include numeric codes and many sections. You need to indicate them in the URL field.

having a defined URL is very important. Independently of adding UTM codes, an easy to read URL is an effective URL, an URL that will rank better and will reach more people. Google appreciates simple URLs. So, if you can, before taking this step, optimize your URL to better rank your content.

Step 2: Define the UTM parameters

In this step, is time to fill the fields that identify the UTM. There are 5 fields, that help identify each UTM code. How to fill them?

1. The source of the campaign: You need to introduce the reference URL where the campaign is located. Is not so much about your website’s URL but your campaign’s URL. It refers to the utm_source.
2. Campaign’s medium: From which marketing medium your campaign came from? Specify in which way you managed to share your campaign with the users. If it was through email, you’ll have to introduce “email”. If it was through a banner, the answer is “banner. It refers to the utm_medium.
3. Ending of the campaign: Is the moment to introduce the keywords that are going to be used to rank your campaign. The keywords are important, in this field you’ll learn all the keywords that the users used to reach your website. It refers to the utm_term
4. The content of your campaign: Unlike the adds, with the use of words you create that define one from another. It refers to the utm_content.
5. The name of the campaign: It’s time for you to find out the difference between the types of promotions that led the users to your site. It refers to the utm_campaign.

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