In the world of digital marketing, it is very important to measure and analyze the performance of campaigns to see the results and make decisions accordingly. One of the most useful and most commonly used tools for this is UTM parameters.
These types of parameters allow us to see the origin of traffic on our updated diabetes mailing list website, as well as user behavior. In this article, we are going to explain what UTM parameters are, what they are used for, and how you can optimize them.
Meaning of UTM
UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module. Urchin was a company that Google bought in 2005 and renamed it Analytics. Sounds familiar, right?
In other words, UTMs are text fragments that are added to the end of a URL to track the effectiveness of the digital marketing campaigns we run. These parameters allow web analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, to identify which site visitors (users) come from and how they interact with your website.
Main components of a UTM parameter
A URL with UTM parameters can have several components:
utm_source : With this parameter we can identify the source from which the traffic comes, such as a visit from Google, Instagram or a newsletter.
utm_medium : in this case we define the medium through which the traffic arrives, such as paid traffic or CPC, social network or email.
utm_campaign – This parameter allows you to name the campaign you want to measure so you can analyze the data in a more organized way. You can put a word that identifies a summer promotion or Black Friday campaign.
These three UTM parameters are the most commonly used, although there are others as well:
utm_term – Used to identify keywords in pay-per-click campaigns.
utm_content : helps us differentiate between ads or links that point to the same URL. For example, in an email we can put a link at the beginning and another at the end, with different calls to action. This way we can see which area of our newsletter attracts the most traffic.
UTM example
Here is an example of a URL with UTMs :
https://www.nuestraweb.com/pagina?utm_s ... ion_verano
In this case we would be measuring how much of the traffic from our summer promotional campaign comes from the social network Instagram.
How to optimize these parameters?
To make the most of the benefits that UTMs give us, we recommend a series of tips and best practices:
Be clear with nomenclature . Use consistent names for sources, media, and campaigns so that you can easily identify all of your data. Don't use spaces or special characters: you can use underscores (_) or hyphens (-) instead of spaces.
Relevant parameters . Include only the parameters you need, those that will give you the information you require for data analysis, since using unnecessary parameters creates very long URLs.
Identify your UTMs . Use a spreadsheet or Excel to keep track of the UTMs you use, as this will prevent duplications and errors over time. For example, if you have a Black Friday campaign every year, you can use the number for each year to differentiate them.