Analytics
UTM parameters explained, with examples
What the five UTM tags mean, how to name them consistently, and how short links keep tagged addresses presentable.
By Lumara Links Team
4 min read
UTM parameters are small labels added to the end of a link. They do not change the page a visitor sees. They tell the analytics tool on the destination site where the visitor came from, which is something a tool often cannot work out on its own.
The five tags
- utm_source — where the visitor came from, such as newsletter, instagram or partner-site.
- utm_medium — the kind of channel, such as email, social, print or paid.
- utm_campaign — the campaign the link belongs to, such as autumn-launch.
- utm_content — optional. Tells two links in the same message apart, such as header-button and footer-link.
- utm_term — optional. Mostly used for paid search keywords.
The first three are the ones that matter. Most reports are built on source, medium and campaign.
An example
Suppose you are announcing a product in your October newsletter. The tagged link would be your page address followed by ?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=october-launch.
The same page linked from a printed flyer might use utm_source=flyer&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=october-launch. The campaign is the same, so the two can be compared side by side in your reports.
Agree on names first
Analytics tools treat Email, email and e-mail as three different things. The most useful thing you can do is write down a short naming convention and follow it.
- Use lowercase only.
- Use hyphens in place of spaces.
- Keep a shared list of the sources and mediums you use.
- Never put personal information, such as an email address, in a UTM tag.
Why tagged links and short links go together
A tagged address is long and unattractive, and on a flyer it is unusable. Shorten it, and the visitor sees a tidy link while the tags still arrive at the destination intact, because the short link redirects to the full tagged address.
You also get a second, independent number: the click count on the short link itself. When it roughly matches the visits your site reports, you can trust both.
Try it yourself
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