Track Your Results and Optimize Performance: Best Practices for Creating UTM Tracking Codes

When it comes to tracking the performance of your digital marketing campaigns, UTM codes are essential. To get the most out of your efforts, a smart UTM strategy and best practices for UTM creation and standardization must be in place. Here’s what we at The Asman Group recommend:

 

Each fully structured UTM query string should have the following components:

  1. utm_source – the originator of the traffic; for example, it could be ‘facebook’ or ‘google’.
  2. utm_medium – denotes the medium via which the source sends traffic; for example, it could be ‘social media’ or ‘paid search’. However, if you only run social and paid search through Facebook and Google respectively, this may also be ‘facebook’ or ‘google’ or derivatives such as ‘facebook_ad’ or ‘google_branded’.
  3. utm_campaign – used to identify a specific product promotion or strategic campaign; for example, it could be ‘spring_sale’ or ‘black_friday’.
  4. utm_term – denotes the keywords associated with an ad.
  5. utm_content – distinguishes between two similar campaigns, for example, if you are running annual Black Friday campaigns, you might use a utm_campaign = ‘black_friday’ for all of them, but use utm_content to designate the specific campaign; for example ‘2022_cyber_monday’.

Our Recommendations and best practices.

Creating a standardized naming convention for your UTM tracking codes is also recommended. This will help ensure that all UTMs have the same format and are easily identifiable when reviewing reports. We recommend always placing the UTMs in the same position in the query string for consistency. Additional recommendations:

 

  1. Creating a standardized naming convention for your UTM tracking codes.
  2. Only use lowercase letters and numbers. No other symbols except underscores.
  3. Use consistent UTM parameters across different channels.
  4. Keep the UTMs values as short and descriptive as possible.
  5. Avoid using vague terms such as ‘marketing’ or ‘promo’. Instead, include words that describe the purpose of the campaign such as product campaign names.
  6. Document all UTMs regularly to make sure everyone is aware of new values.
  7. Establish a process to request additions to the allowed UTM values and only allow 1-2 people to have access to updating it. Keep logs of all updates.
  8. Establish a checklist to update Channel Groupings within your analytics tool to recognize new values.
  9. Remember, “garbage in, garbage out”. The quality of your UTM parameters will directly impact the data you can pull from analytics.
  10. If UTMs are not properly set up, you won’t have visibility into performance until they are. There is no retroactivity, either.

Martech basics to help with UTM generation.

  1. A generator tool that automatically builds your URLs. You can create this in a tool such as Airtable, SmartSheets, Google Sheets, etc. or use a paid service such as utm.io or a tool such as utmbuilder.com to help create UTMs quickly and easily.
  2. Maintain a UTM spreadsheet with all existing UTMs, potential values, and a process to add each.
  3. Conduct regular data governance meetings and UTM audits to ensure the accuracy of the data.

 

 

In conclusion, proper UTM creation is the key to effective measurement of your digital marketing campaigns. Taking the time to create a strategy and utilizing best practices will help ensure success in your performance-tracking efforts. Implementing UTM standards, creating UTMs with specific values, and having UTM templates readily available are all important steps for understanding your digital campaign data.