How to Track Campaign Links

You post a link in an email, a social post and a newsletter. A week later you have sales, but you cannot tell which one brought them in. Campaign links solve that. They carry small tags at the end of the web address that your analytics tool reads, so each visit is labeled with where it came from.

This guide explains how to track campaign links, what each tag means, how to keep your names tidy and how to read the results.

What a campaign link is

A campaign link is a normal link with extra information added after a question mark. The extra information is called UTM parameters. When someone clicks, your analytics tool reads the tags and files the visit under the source, medium and campaign you chose.

A tagged link looks like this:

yoursite.com/offer?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=spring-sale

The visitor still lands on the same page. Nothing changes for them.

The five tags

utm_source: where the link was posted, such as newsletter, instagram or a partner's site. utm_medium: the type of channel, such as email, social, referral or cpc for paid clicks. utm_campaign: the name of the push, such as spring-sale. utm_content: which version of the link, useful if you test two buttons or two images. utm_term: the keyword, used mostly for paid search.

Source, medium and campaign are the ones to use every time. Content and term are optional.

Step 1: Pick naming rules before you tag anything

Most tracking problems come from inconsistent names. "Instagram", "instagram" and "IG" show up as three separate sources. Decide your rules first:

Use lowercase only. Use hyphens instead of spaces. Pick one name per source and keep it. Pick a small list of mediums, such as email, social, referral and paid. Write the rules down where everyone who posts links can find them.

Step 2: Tag every link you control

Tag links in emails, social bios and posts, partner mentions and ads. Do not tag links that point from one page of your own site to another. Tagging internal links resets where the visit came from and hides the real source.

Step 3: Keep a simple list

Keep a spreadsheet with the date, the channel, the full link and what it was for. In three months you will not remember what "promo2" meant. A list also stops you from reusing a campaign name by accident.

Step 4: Watch for existing parameters

If a link already has a question mark, add your tags with an ampersand instead of a second question mark. This is the easiest thing to get wrong by hand, and a broken link sends visitors to an error page. Some pages also already have their own parameters that must be kept.

Step 5: Shorten long links where it makes sense

Tagged links get long. In a social post or a printed piece, a short link that redirects to the tagged address looks cleaner. Make sure the redirect keeps the tags.

Step 6: Read the results

In your analytics tool, open the acquisition or traffic report and look at visits by source, medium and campaign. Compare for each one:

How many visits came in. How many took the action you care about, such as a purchase or a sign-up. How long they stayed and whether they came back.

Do more of what brings buyers, not only visitors. A channel with fewer visits that converts well may be worth more than a busy one that does not.

Common mistakes

Using different spellings for the same source. Tagging links inside your own site. Forgetting to test the link before you send it. Using tags on links to other people's sites, where you cannot see the results anyway. Putting personal information such as an email address into a tag. Never do this.

A simple example

Say you send a newsletter, post on social media and ask a partner to mention you. You would make three links to the same offer page:

newsletter: utm_source=newsletter, utm_medium=email, utm_campaign=spring-sale social post: utm_source=instagram, utm_medium=social, utm_campaign=spring-sale partner mention: utm_source=partnername, utm_medium=referral, utm_campaign=spring-sale

After a week you can compare all three in one report, side by side.

Related reading: if visits are low to begin with, see Why Isn't Your Website Getting Traffic? What to Check First, and if you promote an app, Where to Post a New App So People Actually See It shows where tagged links are worth using.

STUDIO has a free Campaign Link Builder that adds the tags for you and keeps any parameters already on the link. Open the Campaign Link Builder