5 Tips for Getting the Most Out of UTM Tagging

A look at how to use UTM tagging to better understand the return on digital marketing strategies.

Last time I wrote about how underappreciated UTM tagging is, and why all digital marketers should be using it to enhance their digital marketing strategy.

Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, UTM tagging is useful on a number of levels.

If you’ve only recently started UTM tagging, you’ll know even at its most basic implementation, it can still generate strong insights. But for those of you who are a little more advanced, or looking for a deeper level of data, UTM tagging can be pushed further to better understand your digital marketing efforts.

If you’re one of the latter, here are five pieces of advice I’ve picked up along the way on how to get the most out of your UTM tags.

1. Be Consistent

The single most important tip is to be consistent over time. This allows you to measure beyond a single campaign, looking for trends and insight over a longer period. At the end of the year there is incredible power in understanding the performance of various attributes over time, irrespective of the campaign.

To be consistent, you need to develop naming conventions. These are internal rules to ensure you keep consistent from campaign to campaign (or person to person).

For example, do you call a medium rectangle banner ad an “mrec” or a “300×250”? Or the publisher “huffpo” or “huffingtonpost”?

The answer is: it doesn’t matter as long as you are consistent.

Keeping a record of all tags, as well as a written list of these conventions, will help with this consistency.

We use an Excel template that quickly generates the URLs and stores them for later reference.

Bonus Tip: Google Analytics is caps sensitive, so always use lowercase to avoid inconsistencies. 

2. Tag All URLs

It’s not just display and email activity you should be tagging. Conduct an audit of all possible touch points a user could access your site through.

Some commonly overlooked ones include:

  • email signatures
  • links in mobile apps or games
  • social posts
  • links in social share buttons
  • QR codes

Also be sure to review all existing links in activity that is always-on, like retargeting campaigns or the header and footer links of your newsletter template.

There are two exceptions to this rule.

The first is for any activity running through Google AdWords (such as paid search, display on the Google Display Network, or YouTube prerolls). If your account is linked to Google Analytics, this activity will automatically be tagged for you.

The second is organic links from other sites. These will appear under Referrals and there is no need to track these manually, even when they are on press releases or part of an SEO outreach campaign.

Bonus Tip: Don’t fall into the trap of tagging links on your site (for example, on your homepage clicking through to your product page). This will interfere with Google Analytics’ attribution of traffic. (If you do want data on internal links and user behavior, use a technique called Event Tracking.)

3. Use the Full Capacity

I hate the idea of collecting data for the sake of collecting data, but ensure you are using the functionality of UTM tagging to its full capacity. While you don’t have to do it for every link, using the fourth and fifth non-compulsory variables is an excellent opportunity for testing.

Every variable is a means of trialing and discovering something new. Maybe a certain message drives users to spend more time on site, or a certain click-destination has a higher conversion rate. Using extra variables can help track these tests and discover these insights.

4. Use Google’s Default Channel Name Suggestions

The medium variable is most commonly used to identify the type of channel a user has come from. While you can label these as you please, Google Analytics does have a feature called the Default Channel Groupings, which categorizes your traffic into an easy-to-read summary.

Your life will be a little easier if you follow Google’s Default Channel Definitions. Most of them are common sense, the only main one to take note of is to label your email activity “email” and not “edm.”

Bonus Tip: If required, you can change these defaults, both their definition and the categories in the Google Analytics settings.

5. Get Creative

I recently attended a conference where one of the presenters had an internal tool for tagging company links employees shared on social media (for example, a blog post or white paper). Each staff member has a unique label, which allows the company to measure which of their employees have social influence. They encourage sharing by rewarding the person who generates the most leads at the end of each quarter with an iPad.

Another creative use of UTM tagging is to include them on shortened links that appear on traditional media. Rather than a link to your homepage on your brochure, you might use www.brand.com/brochure instead, which would redirect to your homepage with UTM tags identifying it as brochure traffic. It’s not foolproof but it’s better than nothing.

There are plenty of creative uses for UTM tags, what problem could it help you solve? Have your own advice for implementing UTM tagging? Let me know in the comments!

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