Do You Use These Tips for UTM Coding?

Are you aware of UTM coding and its need in your digital marketing efforts? If not, it might be time to add this to your list.

Adding this will allow you to track and understand how effective your marketing is.  UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module and these codes can be added to the end of a regular URL to inform the Google Analytics tools more about the link and the content associated with it.

How Do Most Companies Use UTM Coding?

You have multiple online marketing campaigns, but do you have all aspects and links identified for each one of them? Using UTM coding at the end of your URL allows you to affiliate the link to your marketing campaign to impact the reporting you use to track your marketing. Each time you see utm_ at the end of a URL, you’re seeing a company that is using this coding.

Four Elements to Using UTM for Your Links

When you build a URL and want to use UTM coding, you need to include four required elements and can add one or two optional items as well.

These four required elements are:

• The URL Itself

• The Campaign Source

• The Campaign Medium

• The Campaign Name

Optional Items are the Campaign Term or Content, but the four listed above are required elements in order to make use of UTM in your URLs.

Use Google Analytics to Make Better Use of UTM

When you use UTM parameters in all of your URLs, you can add the goals for your marketing to your Google Analytics account and see how these codes track for you.

All you need to do is sign in and click on the Admin tab then the Goals tab to set up a goal for your marketing. Once you do this, you’ll track the progress and success of your marketing using UTM coding and Google Analytics together.

Here Are Some Great Ways to Use UTM Coding to Track Conversions

You want to make sure your campaign is working for you and track the path from the time a user enters your site until they commit to a sale. Here are some of the best ways to add UTM to your URLs and track your progress.

Add Coding to Your Banners

For banners and other images, you can add a specified URL to your page that will provide the links you want. If your banner ad is at the top of your blog post, you will want to create a URL that uses theutm_content code added to the link.

This can be followed by header-image and specify that a user can click on the image at the top of the page and you’ll receive a report to indicate this action.

Do You Send Out Newsletters? Use UTM Coding

If you’re sending out newsletters to your email list, you’ll want to see how many people open the newsletter to read it. Using the utm_source=newsletter in your URL, you’ll have an easy way to track this activity.

You can add the month to the code to identify which month it is for or add a bit of the subject matter to see if it drives more traffic for you or if there is a particular subject that tends to be ignored.

Social Medial Tracking Made Easier with a UTM in Every Link

Do you know which social media channel receives the most traffic? Are there some links that give you more engagement than others?

Adding UTM coding to your URLs, you’ll figure out which of the social media pages and links drives the most traffic. This can give you the insight you need to make the most impactful posts for your social media pages.

Track Your Promotions and Contests With UTM

Adding UTM parameters to your marketing links that are specifically related to your promotions and contests will help you track their progress and then see how engaged your audience is.

This makes it easy to see how many people see your promotion or enter your contest. Take your most successful contests and find great ways to do them again and again to engage your audience.

Use UTMCoding to Track Your QR Codes

How many people are using your QR codes to take advantage of the content you’ve created? You can find out with the use of the right UTM parameters set up in your URL associate with the QR Code.

Use this feature and understand how impactful your code is and how many people are seeing it and scanning it to make use of your content.