UTMs are small pieces of information added to the end of a website link so you can tell where the person clicking it came from.
You might also hear them called UTM codes, UTM tracking codes or UTM parameters. They all generally refer to the same method of adding tracking information to a URL.
For example, instead of sharing:
https://yourwebsite.co.uk/offer/
you might use:
https://yourwebsite.co.uk/offer/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=autumn_offer
Both links take someone to the same page.
The difference is that the second gives your analytics platform additional information about how that person reached you.
That means instead of simply seeing another visitor arrive on your website, you can start to understand which piece of marketing brought them there.
What Does UTM Stand For in Marketing?
UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module.
The name comes from Urchin, the analytics software Google acquired before developing Google Analytics.
Thankfully, you don’t need to know anything about Urchin to use UTMs.
For most businesses, the important thing to understand is simply that UTM parameters help label your marketing links so you can identify where your website traffic came from.
What Do the Different UTM Codes Mean?
There are several UTM parameters available, but the three you’ll use most often are:
utm_source tells you where the visitor came from.
For example:
utm_source=facebook
or
utm_source=newsletter
utm_medium describes the type of marketing activity.
For example:
utm_medium=social
or
utm_medium=email
utm_campaign identifies the particular campaign or promotion.
For example:
utm_campaign=autumn_offer
Put them together and you can distinguish traffic from different pieces of marketing, even when they’re all sending people to the same page.
There are additional UTM parameters you can use, but I wouldn’t make tracking more complicated than it needs to be. Consistently using source, medium and campaign is already a big improvement if you’re currently not tracking campaign links at all.
A Simple UTM Example
Imagine you’re promoting the same offer in an email newsletter and on Facebook.
Both links send people to:
https://yourwebsite.co.uk/offer
Without additional tracking, it can be harder to separate the performance of those individual promotions.
Instead, your Facebook link could be:
https://yourwebsite.co.uk/offer/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=autumn_offer
And the newsletter link could be:
https://yourwebsite.co.uk/offer/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=autumn_offer
Now you’ve given your analytics much more useful information.
You’re not just asking:
“Did anyone visit the offer page?”
You can start asking:
“Which marketing activity sent them there?”
UTMs Tell You Where Someone Came From, Not the Whole Story
UTM tracking is useful, but don’t mistake having more data for automatically having better marketing.
Knowing that 100 people clicked a link in an email and 20 clicked one on Facebook is useful. But you still need to understand what those people did afterwards.
Did they enquire? Did they buy? Were the enquiries any good? What did it cost you to generate them?
That’s where tracking starts becoming useful for decision-making rather than simply reporting.
It’s also why I look at measurement as part of the wider marketing strategy. The aim isn’t to collect as many numbers as possible. It’s to have enough useful information to decide where your time and budget are actually worth putting.
If you’re not sure what your marketing data is telling you, you can also book a free Seed Session and we can look at it together.
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