UTM Parameters: How to Use Them to Track Every Click

Last Updated on 26 November 2024 by Alex Souriau

Visitors land on your website from countless places — search engines, social media posts, email newsletters, even Display ads.

But do you, as a marketer or business owner, know exactly where those visitors are coming from and which efforts are driving the most results?

And do you know how to use that information to make smarter, data-driven decisions for your marketing strategy?

That’s where UTM parameters come in.

What are UTM Parameters?

UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) parameters are snippets of text added to the end of a URL that help you track where your website traffic originates.

Think of UTM parameters as luggage tags on a suitcase — just as tags show where a bag has travelled from, UTMs reveal exactly where each visitor came from and how they arrived at your site.

UTM parameters allow you to gather various types of “origin” information, breaking down the journey of each click:

• Source: Identifies which platform directed the visitor to your site. This could be a search engine (like Google, Bing, or Baidu), a specific social media platform (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn), or an email newsletter.
• Medium: Shows the type of content that brought users to your site, such as ‘organic‘ (free search traffic), ‘cpc‘ (cost per click, or paid ads), ‘social‘ (organic social media), ‘ referral ‘, or ‘affiliate.’ This insight helps distinguish between different traffic channels.
• Campaign: Tracks the specific campaign that drove the traffic. For example, you can use UTMs to differentiate between ‘winter-sale‘ and ‘spring-launch‘ to see which campaign resonates best with your audience.
• Term: Identifies paid keywords used in paid search campaigns that brought users to your site. This parameter is essential for PPC campaigns, helping you understand which keywords are performing best.
• Content: Distinguishes different versions of similar content to see what performs best. For example, if you have multiple calls to action (CTAs) in a single email or various ad creatives, ‘utm_content‘ can track each one individually.

Why are UTM Parameters so important?

UTMs go beyond basic traffic data, giving you the full picture of which strategies work, where to refine, and how to double down on what drives results.

Here’s why UTM parameters are a essential for marketers:

• 👍 It shows what works (and what doesn’t). UTM parameters help you see exactly where traffic comes from, down to the specific link, campaign, or CTA button. Without them, you’re left with general traffic reports, which won’t reveal which strategies are winning and which ones might need tweaking.
• 👍 It optimises every campaign. When you know your top-performing channels and content, UTM parameters make it easier to refine and optimise. Imagine your latest email campaign outperforms a recent social media push—UTMs let you see exactly what resonates, so you can double down on successful strategies. Meanwhile, underperforming links become opportunities to test new ideas and refine creative elements.
• 👍 It’s your direct line to ROI. UTMs allow you to map campaigns straight to revenue or lead growth, providing a clear picture of return on investment (ROI). When you understand the value of each click, you can make data-backed decisions, channelling resources into campaigns that bring measurable results.
• 👍 It supports team alignment. UTM data creates a common language across your marketing team, making it easier for content, social, and paid teams to work in sync. With everyone seeing the same performance data, strategy and reporting become smoother and more collaborative.
• 👍 It makes analytics easier. Consistent UTM usage builds a reliable dataset over time, making it easy to spot patterns, pull reports, and evaluate campaigns month after month. UTMs become an effortless part of your workflow, providing insights without the hassle of manual tracking or guesswork.

5 real world use cases for UTM parameters

Here’s a look at five real-world ways UTMs can boost marketing precision and performance:

1. Paid search (PPC) optimisation

With paid search, where every click is a line item on your budget, maximising ROI is non-negotiable.

UTMs let marketers tag individual ad elements — like ad copy variations, campaign names, and even target keyword and search terms – revealing detailed performance insights.

For example, with a Google Display ad, you can see if a ‘limited-time discount’ message resonated more in terms of click through rate (CTR), compared to messaging emphasising a specific price.

This UTM data helps marketers make smarter, data-driven calls on which creative assets to scale, which audience segments respond best, and how to optimise budgets for the highest returns.

2. Email campaign tracking

Emails are central to nurturing leads, re-engaging customers, and driving conversions.

With UTM tracking, marketers gain visibility into how each element of an email performs—down to which CTA (like ‘Buy Now’ vs. ‘Learn More’) attracts the most clicks.

By tagging each clickable link, marketers can pinpoint which specific emails, subject lines, sending times, or design choices consistently bring in traffic or conversions.

For example, if a monthly newsletter segment yields high conversions, it could become a key focus in future campaigns or even evolve into a dedicated series to drive more engagement.

3. Social media marketing analytics

Social media platforms offer a wide variety of content formats and audience segments.

With UTMs, marketers can UTM each social post, paid ad, or campaign to see if a carousel post on Instagram drives more traffic than a LinkedIn case study ad, or if a Facebook video outperforms a Twitter thread.

These insights allow marketers to tailor content to each platform’s strengths, prioritise high-performing formats, and allocate budgets more effectively—whether the goal is engagement, clicks, or conversions.

4. Affiliate and influencer marketing performance

For affiliate and influencer campaigns, UTMs offer a precise way to assess individual partners’ contributions.

By assigning unique UTM tags to each influencer or affiliate, brands can track which partner sends the most engaged traffic, converts best, or drives revenue growth.

Say for example a fashion influencer generates significantly more conversions from Instagram stories than from static posts, brands can allocate more budget to similar stories with that influencer.

This data helps build transparent, performance-based partnerships and guides compensation based on tangible results.

5. Content marketing effectiveness

UTMs allow content marketers to track where blog posts, guides, or whitepapers perform best across multiple distribution channels, such as social media, email, or paid ads.

By understanding which content formats and topics drive the most traffic and conversions, they can better tailor future content and promotional strategies to align with audience preferences.

How to add UTM parameters to your URL

Want to track exactly where your traffic is coming from—down to the ad, post, or email?

Here’s how to add UTM parameters to your links, step-by-step, using an example of tracking visitors to a landing page for a new product launch:

Step 1: Open the Google Campaign URL Builder

First, head over to the Google Campaign URL Builder.

It’s a free, simple form that lets you add your UTM parameters.

Step 2: Start with your website URL

Plug in the URL you want to track. If you’re sending people to your homepage, use that URL.

If it’s a landing page for a product, add that one. And don’t forget the ‘https://’ part, so everything runs smoothly.

For example, let’s say you’re driving traffic to a product launch page for your latest Eco-Friendly Backpack on your website. The URL might look like this:

yourwebsite.com/eco-friendly-backpack

Step 3: Campaign source

In the ‘Source‘ field, enter the platform where this link will be used. If you’re promoting the landing page on Facebook, enter ‘facebook‘ here. This source will help you see where your traffic originated and keep data organised.

Step 4: Campaign medium

Next, add the ‘Medium‘ to show how people are reaching your page. If it’s through an organic Facebook post (not a paid ad), you might enter ‘social‘ or ‘social-network‘. This way, you’ll know which channel or method brought the traffic to your landing page.

Step 5: Give it a name

Under ‘Campaign Name’ choose something memorable, like ‘EcoLaunch2024‘

This label will make it easy to find this data in your analytics dashboard later on.

Step 6: Optional fields

If you’re running multiple ads, you can add more details with the optional fields like ‘Campaign Content’ to differentiate ads within the same campaign.

For instance, if you’re testing two ads, you could add ‘backpack-discount‘ and ‘backpack-features‘ to see which varient performs best.

Step 7: Copy and go

Once you’ve filled out the form, Google Campaign URL Builder will create a full URL with all your UTM tags.

Copy the link — it’ll look something like this:

yourwebsite.com/eco-friendly-backpack?
utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&
utm_campaign=ecolaunch2024&utm_content=backpack-discount

How to track UTM Parameters in GA4

There are a couple of different ways we view UTM parameter data in GA4, either in the Traffic Acquisition report, or via a Explore report visualisation.

The Explore report route is the what we recommend, as they provide more granular control and segmentation over what dimensions and metrics you want to see.

How to see UTM data using the GA4 Exploration report:

1. Go to Explore:
   • In your GA4 account, navigate to Explore in the left main menu > Blank exploration.
2. Build a Freeform Table: Here you’ll need to add in certain Dimensions to see all the of the UTM details.
   • Drag Source/Medium into rows to see utm_source and utm_medium together.
   • Add Session Campaign for utm_campaign.
   • Add Manual ad content dimensions to capture utm_content.
   • Add Session manual term to capture utm_term.

In our example below, we’ve added Session default channel group as a column, and our UTM dimensions as rows.

Here we can see our UTM values:

• utm_source shows as google
• utm_medium shows cpc
• utm_campaign is using the Google Ads campaign name
• utm_content is showing our defined value we created
• utm_term shows our target keyword tat triggered the ad that got the click

In my opinion it’s worth taking the time to create this Exploration, rather than relying on the Traffic Acquisition report, as it’s way more detailed!

8 best practices for UTM parameters

Here are best practices to ensure your tracking stays consistent, accurate, and free from common pitfalls:

1. Standardise your naming conventions

Consistency is key to effective UTM tracking.

Establish rules for naming conventions, cases, and separators across your team.

For example:

• Case sensitivity: Stick to lowercase for all parameters (e.g., utm_source=linkedin, not utm_source=LinkedIn), as Google Analytics treats uppercase and lowercase as separate entries, which might make your data interpretation harder.
• Separators: Use dashes or underscores instead of spaces (e.g., utm_campaign=spring-sale-2024) to keep URLs clean and readable.

Avoid mixing conventions, as it can lead to inconsistent tracking and unclean data.

2. Use descriptive, clean parameters

Keep each parameter meaningful and straightforward.

Make sure parameters like utm_source and utm_medium are distinct from one another.

• A clean parameter might look like this: utm_campaign=winter-sale.
• Avoid overly detailed descriptions that make links long or unreadable (utm_campaign=winter_sale_for_latest_products).

💡 Tip: Think about using a URL shortener like Bitly once parameters are applied to make the links user-friendly.

3. Track parameters in a centralised document

Use a shared spreadsheet or tracking tool to keep a record of each UTM link and its details. This will prevent duplication, ensure consistency, and allow everyone on the team to stay aligned.

Include:

• UTM link
• Date of creation
• Team member responsible
• Campaign details

A regularly updated, shared document keeps your tracking organised and accessible for easy reference.

4. Avoid using UTMs for internal links

UTMs are designed to track external traffic sources.

Adding UTMs to internal links creates misleading results, affecting session counts, bounce rates, and conversion data.

Instead, use Google Analytics for internal tracking, which better monitors user journeys on your website.

5. Double-check before copying and pasting links

Copy-pasting links with UTMs can accidentally transfer incorrect tracking data to unrelated posts or emails, skewing your analytics.

Make it a habit to verify UTM parameters before sharing each link to ensure they match the specific campaign and context.

7. Monitor reports regularly

Set a routine to review UTM data in your analytics platform (bi-weekly or monthly) to catch any unusual or inconsistent entries.

Correcting errors early prevents them from compounding and keeps your tracking data accurate.

8. Consider using a UTM builder tool

To reduce errors and streamline the creation of UTM links, use UTM builder tools like Google’s Campaign URL Builder that we mentioned above.

These tools automatically apply your naming rules, saving time and ensuring accuracy across your campaigns.

Following these best practices will help you make the most of UTM parameters, providing your team with accurate, actionable data and keeping your analytics organised and reliable.

Can Ad Blockers Strip UTM parameters?

Ad blockers don’t ‘strip’ UTM parameters directly.

Ad blockers are designed to block specific scripts or elements on a webpage, rather than change or modify the URLs themselves.

Here are some points to consider:

• Ad blockers impact on analytics tracking: Ad blockers often prevent code from tool like Google Analytics from loading on the website. If the GA4 script is blocked, it wont ‘read’ the UTM parameters from the URL at all – meaning the data provided with the UTM parameters won’t be captured or recorded in your analytics platform.
• Use of Privacy-Focused Browsers or Extensions: Some privacy focused browsers, like Brave or extensions like Privacy Badger, may strip UTM parameters if they see them as ‘tracking’ related.
• Impact on Reporting: Without the analytics scripts firing, UTM data won’t appear in campaign reports, making it seem as though the visit wasn’t attributable to your campaign. Instead, traffic may show up as ‘direct’ in your analytics, or not at all.

Final thoughts

UTM parameters have become essential for marketers looking to gain a clear understanding of what drives traffic and conversions.

By capturing detailed data on traffic sources and user engagement, UTM tracking empowers you to make smarter, data-driven decisions that boost campaign performance.

The key to effective UTM tracking is simplicity—focus on the metrics that align with your goals to keep reports uncluttered and meaningful.

If you’re new to UTM tracking, start small: monitor key campaigns and build a habit of reviewing your results.

Mastering UTM tracking not only enhances your campaigns but also deepens your understanding of your audience’s journey.

Ready to gain sharper insights? Begin by tagging your first campaign and watch your data tell the story.

If you need help with tracking UTMs to optimise campaigns, schedule a call now and a growth expert from our team will get back to you ASAP.