UTM parameters were introduced by Google and are the industry standard for tracking online advertising.

These are simply additional parameters added to the end of your existing URLs that are used to transfer info from your traffic source to your website or tracking system, like which ad a visitor clicked on for example.

Technically there are no “rules” when using UTM parameters, but one thing is certain – if you don’t use an efficient and standardized approach with UTMs, things can get messy really quickly.

If you follow these rules you’ll be set up for success and we’ll be able to easily help you when you need it.

If you don’t follow these rules, you’re likely to run into tracking, organizational, or reporting issues down the line and it’ll be harder for us to help you when that time comes …


Rule #1 – Use a consistent naming convention for your UTM values

When “tagging” your URLs you can add up to 5 different UTM values as necessary, to send ClickMagick things like the name of your traffic source, ad set, or the individual ad or link a visitor clicked on.

You can also use dynamic “tokens” provided by your ad networks as placeholder values for these UTM values, which get replaced at the time of the click with actual values.

Tokens also allow you to use a “Tracking Template” at the campaign or ad set level, which means you can easily track 100s or even 1,000s of ads without having to manually tag each one.

Each of the 5 UTMs has a recommended use case, and these are detailed below. Starting out we suggest you stick with our recommendations, and then you can experiment as necessary if your setup or business requires it.

Just remember – consistency is key. If there are multiple people on your team who will be creating UTM-powered links, make sure you’re all on the same page in terms of the naming conventions you’ll be using.

 
Rule #2 – Use only lower-case letters, numbers and hyphens in your UTM values

Some systems treat optin and Optin as separate values, which will mess up all your stats. And other systems may restrict the acceptable characters you can use in UTM values.

So to keep things simple, and to ensure consistency across all of the different platforms you use, just commit right now to using only lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens e.g. opt-in in your UTM values and you can thank us later.
 
 

 

Rule #3 – Use UTM values that are as short as possible

You’ll often be working with up to five different UTM values at a time, and you’ll probably want to be able to see them all on the same screen at the same time for reporting purposes.

There’s only so much that we and other apps can do from a user interface standpoint, so keeping your UTMs as short as possible will go a long way towards making things easier and more efficient for you.

For example, rather than a long UTM value like monday-webinar-registration use something shorter like mon-web-reg.

ClickMagick supports a maximum length of 100 characters – but you should never use UTMs anywhere near that long.
 

Rule #4 – Always use utm_source=internal for any internal links

This is absolutely crucial, and if you mess this up your stats will essentially become worthless.

You may have heard that you should never use UTMs for tracking internal promotions or links, but there’s no need to be that restrictive and it’s perfectly doable if you follow this simple rule:

For all of your internal promos and links just be sure to use utm_source=internal and you’ll be just fine.

For example, if you wanted to track how many people clicked a link in an email you could use a URL like this:

https://www.yoursite.com?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=summer-sale&utm_content=email4
 

Rule #5 – Never mix different types of values in a single UTM parameter

Each UTM parameter should only be used with one “type” of value. This is also super important, and if you break this rule your stats will be difficult if not impossible to interpret.

For example, if you wanted to store the values for Google’s {keyword} token as well as the {network} token, you might be tempted to set utm_term={keyword}-{network} or something similar.

But doing this would be a mistake and it would mess up your stats.

Instead what you might to do is set utm_term={keyword} and then set utm_content={network}
 

Rule #6 – Don’t use unique values, like “Click IDs”, in UTMs

The values for a particular UTM parameter should not be unique – UTM values should identify a group of something.

For example, if you’re using utm_content to track your individual ads, you might use values like red-ad, blue-ad, and green-ad. In each case, the ad name e.g. red-ad will be associated with all of the people who saw that particular ad.

But you should never use UTM parameters to store any type of unique values, like Click IDs, because if all the values for a particular UTM parameter are unique they are completely useless from a stats standpoint.

And in the case of something like a Click ID, you will quickly end up with 1,000s of unique UTM values which will make your account difficult if not impossible to use.
 

What are the 5 UTM Parameters and what are they for?

Now that you know the rules of the game, here’s an overview of the five UTM parameters and how to use them.

Please note that when using ClickMagick Campaigns the utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign are required parameters when tracking clicks, and the other two are optional …

 

utm_source		This is the source of your traffic e.g. facebook, google, bing, influencer, nytimes, solo-ads, or internal
utm_medium		This is the marketing medium or how the traffic was generated e.g. cpc, display, social, email or video
utm_campaign		The name of your ad campaign e.g. free-trial-us-desktop or free-trial-us-mobile
utm_term		This was created to track keywords for Google (and Microsoft Ads) via the {keyword} token. Otherwise you can use this to identify the audience or ad set for example.
utm_content		The name of the specific ad or link e.g. ad2, blue-image, free-trial-offer, etc.

Article 605 Last updated: 03/27/2024 8:42:43 AM
https://www.clickmagick.com/kb/?article=605