Add campaign tags (UTM parameters) to every link you share in newsletters, social posts and print, using one written naming convention, and Analytics will report those visits by source instead of guessing or calling them direct.

Three campaigns, one bucket

The newsletter went out on Tuesday. A Facebook post followed on Wednesday, and on Thursday a flyer with a QR code landed in mailboxes across town.

Visits to the site climbed all week. Analytics shows the climb clearly and says almost nothing about its causes.

Some visits sit under direct, some under a handful of Facebook addresses in the referrals, and the flyer is invisible, because its QR code led to the plain home page.

The question everybody wanted answered, which of the three was worth doing again, cannot be answered from the report.

What a campaign tag is

A campaign tag is a short addition to the end of a link that tells Analytics where the visit came from. The additions are usually called UTM parameters, because each name starts with utm.

The visitor lands on exactly the same page. Analytics reads the addition, files the visit under the source you named, and carries on.

The second is the one that decides where visits appear in the standard reports. Analytics sorts traffic into channels partly by medium, so a newsletter tagged with a made-up medium ends up filed under Other.

A naming convention, written down

Tags only work if everybody in the business writes them the same way, and that needs a page of rules rather than good intentions.

Use lowercase for everything. Analytics treats Facebook and facebook as different sources, so mixed capitals split one channel into several rows that have to be added up by hand.

Use hyphens instead of spaces, and agree a short list of sources and mediums that nobody improvises on: email for every newsletter, social for every social post, print for anything on paper.

Name campaigns so they sort sensibly, with the season or month and the year, such as spring-2019.

Keep a shared spreadsheet listing every tagged link created, with the date and what it was for. It becomes the key to the reports.

Building the links

Google offers a free Campaign URL Builder that assembles the link from the values you type in, which avoids mistakes with the question marks and ampersands.

A finished link looks something like yourbusiness.ca/spring?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=spring-2019, and the visitor never needs to read it.

Most newsletter services can add tags to every link automatically. Turn the setting on, then check that the values it uses match your convention.

Links in Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn posts take tags like any other. Instagram allows no clickable links in ordinary posts, so tag the one in your profile, with instagram as the source and social as the medium.

Printed material and QR codes

Print is where tagging matters most, because without it a flyer or a sign leaves no trace in the reports at all.

Point the QR code at a short address on your own domain, such as yourbusiness.ca/flyer, and have that address redirect to the full tagged link.

The code stays simple, since a shorter address makes a less dense pattern that scans more easily. The destination can also be changed after the flyers are printed.

Print the short address beside the code as well. Some people will type it rather than scan, and the redirect tags their visit just the same.

A worked example

A family-run garden centre on the edge of a small town sends a monthly newsletter, posts on Facebook most days in spring, and buys a quarter-page ad in the community paper each April.

Every spring the site got busier, and every spring the owners argued about which of the three deserved the credit.

Last spring they wrote a one-page convention: three sources, three mediums, campaigns named by month. The newsletter service tagged its links automatically, and the paper ad carried a short address and a QR code redirecting to the bedding plants page.

The newsletter's two main links were given different content tags, one on the opening photograph and one on the plant list, to see which people actually used.

For the first time, the three campaigns sat side by side in one report, by visits and by the pages people went on to read.

What not to tag

Never tag links from one page of your own site to another. A tagged internal link starts a new visit in Analytics and overwrites the real source with your own label.

Leave Google Ads clicks alone as well. When the account is linked to Analytics, automatic tagging labels every click, and manual tags can conflict with it.

Links on other people's websites rarely need tags at all, since Analytics already reports those visits as referrals under the site's name.

Where to read the results

In Analytics, the Campaigns report under Acquisition lists every campaign name you have used, with visits and any goals you have set up.

The Source/Medium report shows the same visits by source and medium, which is where a messy convention shows itself first.

Add Ad Content as a secondary dimension to see the content tags, which is how the garden centre told its two newsletter links apart.

Read the reports a week after each campaign, not the morning after. Newsletter clicks trickle in for days, and flyers stay on fridges for weeks.

The counter-case

Tags measure clicks, not everything a campaign does.

Somebody who reads the flyer and searches for your name arrives as a search visit, and somebody who sees a post and phones never reaches the site at all. Tags undercount campaigns that work through memory.

A business that sends one newsletter a quarter and posts occasionally may need only a handful of tagged links a year, and that is fine.

But anything you pay for or spend real time on deserves a tag, so that next year's decision rests on figures rather than impressions.

Setting it up this week

  1. Write the convention on one page.
  2. Keep every value in lowercase.
  3. Fix the list of sources and mediums.
  4. Record every tagged link in a shared spreadsheet.
  5. Turn on tagging in the newsletter service.
  6. Point printed codes at a short redirect.
  7. Never tag links within your own site.

Step one is the one the rest depends on. Without a written convention, three people tag three ways, and the report fills with rows describing the same newsletter differently.

Why untagged visits pile up in one unhelpful bucket is covered in the visitors Analytics calls direct.

Frequently asked questions

What is a campaign tag?

A short addition to the end of a link, such as utm_source and utm_medium, that tells Analytics where the visit came from. Visitors see the same page either way.

Which tags does every link need?

Source, medium and campaign: where the link appeared, what kind of channel it was, and which push it belonged to. Content helps tell two links in one message apart.

Why does lowercase matter in tags?

Analytics treats Facebook and facebook as different values, so mixed capitals split one source into several rows. Keeping every value lowercase avoids the problem entirely.

How should a QR code be tagged?

Point it at a short address on your own domain that redirects to the tagged link. The code stays simple to scan, and the destination can change after printing.

Which links should never be tagged?

Links from one page of your own site to another, which restart the visit and overwrite its real source, and Google Ads clicks, which are tagged automatically.

Where do the results appear?

In the Campaigns and Source/Medium reports under Acquisition. Adding Ad Content as a secondary dimension shows which link inside a message people clicked.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Every campaign showing up as direct?

We will write a naming convention for your business and tag the links you share next month.

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