What are the UTM designations in the links?

Marketing activities taken on the Internet bring various results. In order to take full advantage of the potential of promotional campaigns, it is worth tracking their effectiveness. The UTM tags in links give us the most help. Why is it profitable to use them? How to study traffic on the website with them? Read about it in the text below!

UTM tags – what are they?

UTM, or Urchin Tracking Module, is a traffic identification system developed by Urchin Software Corporation. The project taken over in 2005 gave rise to Google Analytics – the most powerful analytical tool today. Sticking UTM tags to the URL enables precise analysing of the traffic coming from different sources on the website.

Why tag links with UTM tags?

UTM tags are an extremely useful tool in studying website traffic. Tracking links through the use of appropriate parameters allows you to check which source, which type of traffic and whether a particular campaign brings the desired results. Based on the collected data, we can optimise advertising campaigns – both in terms of their effectiveness and budget.

How do UTM tags work?

A correctly tagged link consists of several elements necessary to track selected parameters. Standard UTM tags recognised by most analytical tools include:

• utm_source (source) – defining the source of incoming traffic, for example, a social network, newsletter or RSS channel;
• utm_medium – defining the type of traffic, that is the message carrier, which can be, for example, banner, display, CPC or CPM advertising;

Apart from obligatory tags, we can distinguish two auxiliary parameters:

• utm_campaign – an individual name for a given campaign, effective when several different activities are carried out simultaneously.
• utm_term – used to mark keywords in paid advertising campaigns;
• utm_content – allowing to mark a specific advertisement, useful for extended campaigns with several creations, used in A/B tests.

More tips on how to properly create UTM tags can be found HERE.