Guide to UTM Tags Definition and How-to
blog, searchlightUTM tags, Implement UTM Code with ease
Using UTM Codes To Measure Your Marketing Efforts with Opentracker.
In this how-to you will learn what UTM tags are and the industry standards on how to use them. The most successful marketers are able to specifically measure how they’re hitting their goals; for example they know that tweets from their company account are what’s driving traffic and leads to their website. In other words, these marketeers are aware that they are not just getting traffic from Twitter, but how traffic from that specific source performs.
Effective marketers are able to answer questions about their audience by using UTM codes. In this guide we are going to teach you exactly what UTM codes are, also called UTM tags, and how you can use them effectively in your marketing efforts. You’ll start noticing UTM tags everywhere online.

UTM refers to an Urchin Tracking Module. Google Analytics used to be called Urchin before Google bought the technology. UTM tags pass on specific click info; source, medium, campaign. As a marketer you can use UTM tags in a wide range of online marketing products, so its an important skill to master.
UTM codes are little pieces of codes that you add to the end of your website’s URL when you share them on another (advertising) platform or network. In other words, when someone clicks on that URL – you have added a UTM code and can figure out how people are getting to your site.
To create a UTM code you need four main tags –
- First you need a UTM campaign – in this example a blogpost – this groups together all of the content from one campaign:
https://www.opentracker.net?utm_campaign=blogpost&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=headerlink
- Next you need a UTM medium this tells you the type of marketing mediums that the link is featured on, here we use the word social, to signify our efforts are using social media:
https://www.opentracker.net?utm_campaign=blogpost&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=headerlink
3. Then you need the UTM source this tells you which specific website is sending you traffic:
https://www.opentracker.net?utm_campaign=blogpost&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=headerlink
- Finally, you need the UTM content if you have two or more URLs on the same page leading to the same URL (landing page):
https://www.opentracker.net?utm_campaign=blogpost&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=headerlink
For paid search, you can add utm_term. You can use Google’s URL builder to build your own UTM tag:
Utm tags – our take home message
UTM content tells you which campaigns people are actually clicking on, so that you know what is driving your traffic. You can name these tags whatever you want, but be sure to use the same terminology across your entire campaign.
Thats it, so get publishing; your analytics will keep track of these UTMs!
Making an Amazon EC2 ami
blogMaking an Amazon EC2 ami
Welcome to our blog
I wanted to share some of my thoughts regarding our goal to move Opentracker to Amazon Webservices.
I started with creating my own EC2 ami’s based on a clean install of centos 5.3, and installed java and our default webserver wich is Apache Tomcat 6
the commands to make your own ami are pretty simple:
copy your keys to the instance:
scp -i id_rsa-your-key /path/to/keys/pk.pem /path/to/certificates/cert.pem root@public-ami-dns-name:/mnt
go to /tmp dir
cd /tmp
create a volume for bundeling
ec2-bundle-vol -d /mnt –prefix centos-5.3_tomcat-6.0.18_jdk1.6.0.13 -k /mnt/pk.pem -c /mnt/cert.pem -u your-account-number
upload bundle volume to S3
ec2-upload-bundle -b s3-directory -m centos-5.3_tomcat-6.0.18_jdk1.6.0.13.manifest.xml -a keycode -s keycode
register via AWS console, add following in popup
http://s3.amazonaws.com:80/s3-directory/centos-5.3_tomcat-6.0.18_jdk1.6….
and you are ready to use your own ami image within EC2
Why is Opentracker so darn good?
blogWhy is Opentracker so darn good?
New features, improvements
and state-of-the-art technology
If we were still writing press releases, we’d be putting them out a few times a week.
Q: Why is Opentracker moving so fast and releasing new features every two weeks at the moment?
A: Highlights: we rebuilt our core technologies, implemented an API and changed our development methodology. We moved from MySQL to Cassandra, improved search features, and implemented Agile throughout our organization.
Q: What does this actually mean?
A: This makes feature development much easier for us and our customers. Opentracker is better at change than ever; fast, state-of-the-art, flexible, responsive, and industry-standard (Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc).
Q: What does this mean in practice?
A: We have a greatly increased flexibility, through the means of a web analytics api;
which we use ourselves, for example to provide:
- An OT Dashboard
Click for illustration and description of traffic engagement dashboard. - Universal search: a real-time “google search” through all your traffic/ visitor data, a search bar located on the top of the Recent & Online visits report page.
Read about and see visuals of “google search” through all your visitor traffic data. - The ability to search for any activity on any page, in the form of a search bar at the top of Most Popular Pages report.
Read about universal search through top pages feature. - The ability to add any event to your reports (a payment, a download, a scroll down, sign-up, etc) and easily search for any of these events.
Read about searching for any visit activity.
Read a feature description about how to search for any visit event. - User-tagging: you can add names, email addresses, login IDs, etc, to the visitor profiles, using manual or automated functions.
Read about user-tagging: a how-to and see a video demonstration.
Read a description of our user-tagging feature.
Read technical documentation about user-tagging. - CRM advantage: user-tagging can be used to create CRM records in your data (client name, company name, size, client login, user-name, visit history, etc).
Read about using Opentracker as a CRM system here.
Read a feature description about user-tagging for CRM. - Add Facebook user-data to visitor profiles using the api.
Conclusion: there is a lot of positive change happening at the moment.
The API is also available for you to use, you have complete access to all its extensive functionality.
Extensive (technical) documentation is located in our Docs overview
If you can tell us anything about your needs, we will provide feedback.
Opentracker: don’t get left behind.
Lead Generation Reporting
blogLead Generation Reporting
Qualified Lead Identification.
“Mail me a list of all companies who visited my website every week.”
Do you have a Sales Team or a person who follows leads? Now you can give them a list of Companies and Visitors who came to your website looking for something.
- Opentracker is uniquely positioned to provide qualified lead generation reports by using the actual traffic data from any website.
- Our Lead Generation service generates custom reports, a weekly list, as a .CSV or Excel, delivered to you via an email address of your choice.
- The report contains a list of all known companies who have visited your website – by visitor and pages visited.
- The leads are qualified because the leads identified have expressed an interest in a product or service by visiting a website. Using clickstream reporting it is possible to see what pages the lead is interested in.
- Information is organized by geo-location. This means you can see the location of the company, for example a large company has offices in different cities, states, and countries. Use location to identify where to call or email.
Interested? Click below for more information:
Lead Generation Report – customized for your business website.
There are various customizations that we will engineer for you, for example the pages viewed by your leads, their country, etc,
Specifically, these additional parameters can be configured for you by Opentracker engineers:
- exclude specific companies, for example your own, or competitors
- exclude specific url’s or paths, for example job applicants
- specify countries from which you want to see leads
- set maximum total event count, exclude recurring visitors by page count
- specify which columns will be displayed in the downloads
List of example variables – metrics which can be included in your Lead Generation report:
As you can see from the list below, if you can think of it, we can measure it and organize it for you.
lastEvent filtered_company duration status flag country visits_pageviews currentPage area area_code browser browser_version city company_org connection country_code country_name currentTitle currentVisitDuration dma_code duration_seconds entryPage entry_query entry_root_url entry_title event_id exit_title firstMeasurement first_session_unix_timestamp ip_number isp isp_org latitude longitude machine_id number_of_pages_viewed number_visits pages_viewed platform postal_code provider referrer referrersLogo region region_code resolution search session_id session_referrer session_search session_start_unix_timestamp site timezone total_duration total_number_visits total_pages_viewed type use_id user_status visit_id zipCode
Opentracker – Treat your website business like a business.
Startup Accelerator Diary #1
blogstartup-accelerator-diary-1
The Rockstart Accelerator
In Amsterdam is one of several world-class technology accelerators in The Netherlands. We entered ourselves into the competition earlier a few months ago, and came in the top percentile out of more than 500 companies, securing a place in the 100-day program.
LeadBoxer is a spin off from the Rockstart program, which utilizes the Lean framework methodology.
LeadBoxer is utilizing big data technology in order to make anonymous website traffic less anonymous, and function as an essential pre-sales tool. Currently being designed, tested & validated for the B2B market, the product works to create value from under-utilised traffic engagement.
If you are interested in being an early adopter for LeadBoxer, click here & sign-up for advance notification.
We jumped at the opportunity to participate because we’re eager to learn from the vast experience of the mentor community. As an additional bonus we are very energized by the cohort of our fellow start-ups from around the world (Portugal, Italy, Colombia, Argentina, Netherlands, UK). We will list those startups in a blog post to follow.
The program is divided into three parts;
- orientation and exposure to methodologies, mentors, and validation interviews
- construction and deployment (launch) of MVP – minimum viable product
- scripting and rehearsal, build up to pitch to entrepreneurial and investor community
We’ve finished the first part and are now entering Phase 2.
So far, we can report that the opportunity to participate in the program has been extremely rewarding. We’ve been exposed to numerous entrepreneurial, technical, business, and sales gurus.
The fifteen hour days can be tiring 😉 but they remind us of launching Opentracker, back in 2003, and how rewarding that felt.
Stay tuned for more.
Postal code reporting improved
blogPostal code reporting improved
We’ve upgraded postal code databases for several EU countries and added Canada.
The list of fully implemented postal code data now includes the following countries:
- US
- Canada
- Germany
- France
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Finland
- The Netherlands
- UK
In this example, you can see data from USA, UK, Canada, France, Netherlands, and Germany, specifically visitors from these cities; Seattle, London, Toronto, Amsterdam, Paris, Montreal, Munich, and Berlin.
Other databases can be engineered and implemented upon request.
Star Wars and the Art of Business – Lessons from The Force Awakens
blogStar Wars and the Art of Business – Lessons from The Force Awakens
Star Wars and the Art of Life; Lessons from The Force Awakens. Devise good strategies. Measure. Improve and repeat what works.
I went to see Star Wars 7 last week. Afterwards, I had the same “Yeah, that was a pretty good movie,” reaction as I had read on the front page of the nytimes.com
In my post-game analysis, I realised the what, why, & how J.J. Abrams accomplished this.
In one sentence; they did this by drawing on successful elements of the original films, which they improved and repeated, while throwing out the rest. In the same way, all of us who work on the internet can draw on basic knowledge and things-that-work from previous success. Identify a winning formula, refine on its success, discard strategies that don’t work. Repeat.
What does this mean in terms of Website Management?
Identify potential traffic sources, make an effort to contact them, refine your message, measure audience response, keep what works, throw out the rest. Bring back your best characters (Best Practices).
***SPOILER ALERT***
As far as I can tell, what the latest Star Wars movie does is; take 5 or more of the original elements (Luke, Leia, Han Solo, R2-D2, Darth Vader, Stormtroopers, the Death Star) and replace them (the replacements are: Finn, Rey, Kylo Ren, BB-8, Starkiller Base). First, the new elements are inserted into the identical plot from the original movie. The new elements are then joined by the original elements (Han Solo, Chewbacca, Millenium Falcon, R2-D2, C-3PO) and together they proceed through the new story.
A few examples of successful elements from previous Star Wars films found in The Force Awakens;
– an undercurrent of slightly goofy humor – the perfect balance of laughing at oneself
– an irreverent, likeable, Han Solo-type character with the same mannerisms and gags, who also leaves the heroine behind at one point
– a hero toiling alone with robot salvage on a small desert planet, destined for greatness
– an important data file hidden from the bad guys on a cute and likeable droid in the opening sequence while being shot at by stormtroopers
– an insurmountable obstacle defiantly overcome under identical conditions as in previous films
– an even bigger death star
– an identical cantina scene, complete with live band
– light-sabre duels in cavernous high-tech space stations
– C-3PO and R2-D2 making fun of each other
– the Rebels have an ability overcome obstacles of ludicrous (technical) complexity after a 5 minute morning stand-up
– and one incremental improvement – the hero is a pretty girl (at the moment there is a lot of call in the media for female action figure heroes)
Following up, we will publish a list of the comparisons which can be drawn between Star Wars The Force Awakens and Websites and Business Management. In other words, we will publish a list of successful Tips and best Practices which you should repeat.
In Conclusion, the new film is a fun, easy-to-watch shoot-‘em-up flick in which no one really gets hurt, with an important message: things (life) doesn’t have to be complicated to be fun. Of course, this is also the art of making things which are hard look easy. I may have missed some of the details as I had my young son sitting my my lap squeezing my hands out of sheer unadulterated joy most of the time, but I think I caught most of the movie.
Do you pass the test?
blogDo you pass the test?
What does good custom reporting look like?
Take the Opentracker Custom Reporting Pop Quiz and find out – does your analytics system pass the test?
Question:
What do good analytics and custom reporting look like in practice?
- Can you get the data you need, when you need
it?
- Can you get the reports you need, when you need them?
Above all, are the reports compact and relevant, or do they give you so much data that you experience ‘information overload’?
Answer these questions yourself, with the Opentracker Reporting Challenge:
Can you generate a report that shows you;
- which of your visitors, by login name, email address, or anonymously;
- signed in,
- from which country, state or region, and
- which visitors or users committed any specified action
- for any given date range?
Are you able to generate a list of your users or visitors, ranked by activity, and search this list?
Can you EASILY generate a report showing you the most popular events or actions in your site by country, and segment it by browser, operating system, platform, or device in a couple of clicks?
If you need a “new” metric, can you arrange for this to happen in a day or two?
The answer to all these questions should be YES.
It will be if you are using Opentracker.
That is what Custom Reporting really means.
But wait, there’s more! – Custom variables
Can you insert custom variables, like an industry sector or product category?
This is what (big) data is all about. These are some of the things that we can do for you.
And specifically, these things can be accomplished in several different ways.
For example:
- You can do it yourself, by using the javascript implementation docs to add the events/ properties/ variables, and using our the Analytics API (Application Programming Interface)to create the reports, OR
- You can get us to do it for you.
What does that mean? That means that we will build a button for you – this button will be placed in your reporting system and deliver the report(s) that you need.
Contact us if you are interested in custom-built reports.
Opentracker – don’t get left behind.
Company Identification – Dramatic Improvement – 44%
blogCompany Identification – Dramatic Improvement – 44%
We are EXTREMELY pleased to announce a Forty-Four 44% percent improvement in our company identification capability.
Last week, we were able to identify just over 900 companies visiting opentracker.net. This week, we were able to identify over 1300 companies, over the same period of time.
For years, we’ve been working to develop and improve our report Location >> Company which shows you which companies are visiting your website. This is an incredibly valuable tool, in terms of lead generation. This report allows you to turn anonymous visitors into potential clients.
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