Are you looking for further granularity in your attribution report? Like which specific ad of the latest campaign got the highest revenue? Is the banner on the Ad display attracting your customers? Which keyword got you the highest number of clicks?
UTM is the answer to the above.
What is UTM ?
UTM or Urchin Tracking Module are codes appended to your website URL which sends information to Google Analytics about the traffic that is coming to the website when clicked. A snippet of one such UTM appended URL can be seen below:
https://www.abctoys.com/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=summer_sale
While the text in black is the original site URL, the remaining red text are the UTM parameters which get you the next level information.
How does UTM work?
In the image given above, you can see there are parameters after the "?" in the UTM code which gives specific information about the visitor like the ad campaign which drew the visitor, the source of the traffic, the type of medium etc. Let’s go through each of these parameters in detail:
Campaign Source: Campaign source is the code to identify the first touch-point i.e. where the traffic originates like Google Search Engine or a social media like Facebook or Twitter.
Campaign Medium: This is to track a broader category of the traffic origin i.e. the type of channel like social, email, Direct, Referral etc.
Campaign Term: This is to identify the keywords or phrases used in a paid AdWords campaign like for a baby toy seller it could be baby_milestones, motor_skills etc
Campaign Content: This code just identifies different ads within one campaign.
Campaign Name: This enables you to track just the Campaign name like SpringSale as given in the example image above.
How to create UTMs?
1. Manual code creation: Writing UTM codes is not very technical but they are highly susceptible to manual errors given they could get very lengthy. However, the codes can be present in combinations or only one of them.
2. Using Google Analytic URL builder: Google provides UTM generator to create UTM codes and they can be pasted on your social media posts. However, it is not a very efficient way of creation when dealing with huge data.
3. Sensei's free UTM builder sheet: We provide an user-friendly UTM generator sheet which can be used for multiple code creation and keeps it error free. All that is required is to put your details and generate UTM appended URLs. Below is the snippet of one such spreadsheet:
Rules to Remember
1. Keep easy to recall codes: Writing lengthy and complicated codes can get confusing over a period of time and during actual data analysis. Its important that you are easily able to draw the reference when looking at it.
2. Avoid spaces: Presence of spaces can lead to skewed data and show incorrect results.
3.Use lower-case: Use only lowercase when writing these codes since UTMs are case sensitive. Variation in case can again lead to either incorrect or incomplete result.
4. Be consistent: Consistency can help avoid any confusion in case more than one person is creating these codes at work. Its important to document the code creation rules or guidelines to be on the same page as the other team members.
Limitation:
The UTM codes when appended to an URL will give the same “source” information even if the source is changed in the process. For example, if you share your URL on your Instagram page and a viewer copies it and publishes it on Facebook, Google analytics will still show views or conversions coming from Instagram and not Facebook. So the performance of these UTM could not be established as 100 percent accurate but still a lot of useful insights can be derived.
A fine UTM framework helps you dive deep into your data and gives you detailed information of the traffic driving to your site.