How to work with UTM Tracking

What is a UTM link?

UTM-Parameters (Urchin Tracker Module) are snippets of text that you add to your links so you can track where your traffic is coming from. You can even track who is visiting if you're very explicit with your parameters. UTM-links answers questions like:

Where was this URL clicked?
How was the URL displayed?
What was the name of the campaign where this URL was used?

UTM-links can be used in any medium, in every URL you use to link to your webpage.

How to create a UTM link

As you can see in the picture below, UTM-parameters are attached at the end of your URL:

There are several UTM-parameters that can be used, here's a list of them and their purpose. Source, Medium, and Campaign are the most common ones and the ones you should always include.

Parameter	Description
utm_source	Identifies where the URL was clicked. Newsletter, google, facebook, blog, etc.
utm_medium	Identifies how the URL was displayed. Email, social, referral, display, etc.
utm_campaign	Identifies the name of the campaign, for instance, spring-sale-2023.
utm_term	Identifies keywords, usually for paid search ads.
utm_content	Identifies a specific ad, for instance in A/B-testing or for tracking specific products.

Note: Dash signs are the preferred character used to bind words together in your parameters. Don’t use underscores, percentage signs or plus signs unless you have a specific reason to do so.

Recommended: campaign-name-123

Not recommended: campaign_name_123, campaign+name+123, campaign%name%123

Custom parameters

For Triggerbee-users specifically, there are three more parameters you can use, which allows you to track specific users. This is useful when identifying visitors coming from your newsletter in other email software than the ones we have an integration with. Read more about email-tracking here.

Parameter	Description
utm_custom[email]	Identifies the visitor by email
utm_custom[name]	Identifies the visitor by email

Creating your link

Start by typing the domain and the page you want to send the clicks to
https://triggerbee.com/blog/article
Initiate the UTM-link by typing a question mark after your domain, and add your first UTM-parameter:
https://triggerbee.com/blog/article?utm_source=newsletter
To add another UTM-parameter, simply add an ampersand sign and type your next parameter.
https://triggerbee.com/blog/article?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
When you are satisfied with your link, copy it and use it in the intended campaign - then sit back and enjoy your tagged tracking starting to roll in.

TL;DR: You can use our Link Builder Tool to generate a link that identifies the visitor by email.

How to use UTM links in Triggerbee

Okay, so now you know what UTM-links are, their purpose and how you create one - what about how to use them?

First of all, make sure to tag every single URL leading to your webpage, whether it's linking from social media campaigns, your newsletter, banners or partnerships. You can even track the traffic coming from your email signature or messages on LinkedIn. This is the key to being successful with UTM tracking.

Once you have all your links tagged, then the fun stuff begins. In Triggerbee, you will be able to follow all your visitors' actions and evaluate each source or campaign. How many of the visitors from the summer-sale-campaign did actually complete a purchase, and did they stay as loyal customers? That's only one example of the many benefits of using UTM-links. Here are some more examples of use cases in Triggerbee:

Create visitor segments based on which source, campaign or medium your visitors came from. Read more about segmentation here.
Target campaigns towards specific visitors based on the utm-parameters.

What if I’m using auto-tagging for Google AdWords/Analytics?

Google Analytics has a method of tagging your URLs called “Destination URL Auto-tagging”. If your links have ?gclid= at the end of your URL (ie. www.mysite.com/?gclid=123xyz), your ads are auto-tagged. When visitors click on this link, we’ll know that the click came from a "paid" source and "google", but we cannot log any additional information about the campaign source, medium, terms, etc.

Triggerbee relies on the information provided in the URL for tracking the source. If you want Triggerbee to be able to track your Google Ads, you will have to switch to manual tagging, so that your URLs will have the tagging in plain text instead of hashed (gclid=).