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 –

1. 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

2. 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

4. 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:

https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/

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!