Why You Should Use UTM Parameters

UTM parameters provide granular data that helps marketers optimize their strategies, track success, and make data-driven decisions for improving overall marketing performance. By adding UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) parameters to URLs, marketers can more accurately track where their website traffic is coming from, identify which campaigns are driving results, and better understand how different channels perform.

For example, you could have a campaign to drive spring sales (e.g. utm_campaign=2024_spring_sale) with the intent of driving traffic to a specific landing page or product page.  

Sharing this page URL (link) without UTM parameters limits the analytical data you could gather to help you identify where traffic is coming from and limits your ability to report on ROI (return on investment) per channel and ad variation.  

With this example, let’s say you’re running multiple ads on the same platform or multiple platforms. Each variation of your ad, both on the same platform and other platforms (potentially with their own creative variations) would have UTM parameters specific to each.  

Let’s break this down: 

• Link one for the first ad variation on LinkedIn:
  https://example.com/2024_spring_sale?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=2024_spring_sale&utm_content=ad_one 
   
• Link two for the second ad variation on LinkedIn:
  https://example.com/2024_spring_sale?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=2024_spring_sale&utm_content=ad_two 
   
• Link three for a post on Facebook:
  https://example.com/2024_spring_sale?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=2024_spring_sale 

With the above example we have three links all pointing to the same landing page (https://example.com/2024_spring_sale).  

Two of the links are used for a LinkedIn banner/display ad (utm_source=linkedin and utm_medium=banner), each with a different ad variation denoted with utm_content.  

And our third link is a Facebook post (utm_source=facebook and utm_medium=social).  

All three links share a common utm_campaign parameter of “2024_spring_sale”. 

By using this setup, in our analytics platform of choice, we can drill down and see all traffic related to our 2024_spring_sale campaign.  

This allows us to know which platform is driving the most traffic and more importantly, which platform leads to more conversions (sales). 

Knowing this will allow you to perform better A/B tests by understanding which type of creative resonates with your audience, understand which platform performs well for your product/service and audience, and helps you understand where you should focus your time and ad budget for the next promotion. 

Why and When Marketers Should Use UTM Parameters

• Campaign Performance Tracking: UTM parameters help identify which specific campaigns, such as email newsletters, social media ads, or paid search, are driving the most traffic and conversions. 
• Source Attribution: By tracking the source of traffic (e.g., Google, Facebook, Twitter), marketers can understand which platforms are most effective in reaching their audience. 
• Content Effectiveness: UTM parameters allow marketers to see which content, like blog posts or specific ads, resonates most with users and leads to conversions. 
• Audience Segmentation: By tagging different campaigns with UTM parameters, marketers can segment traffic and analyze how different audiences engage based on their origin, helping with more targeted future campaigns. 
• ROI Measurement: Using UTM parameters helps in understanding the return on investment (ROI) for marketing spend by linking specific efforts to tangible results, like leads, sales, or engagement. 
• Cross-Channel Analytics: UTM parameters provide a unified way to measure performance across multiple channels, enabling marketers to compare effectiveness and allocate resources efficiently.