UTM parameters, also known as Urchin Tracking Module codes, are snippets of text added to URLs to track visitor sources and campaign performance. They reveal which marketing channels, keywords, and creative assets lead users to a website, offering clear insight into what’s working. With this data, teams can make data-driven decisions, adjust tactics, and attribute conversions more accurately.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to create, apply, and analyze UTM parameters to better understand your audience and measure campaign success.
When someone clicks a link containing UTMs, analytics tools (like Madlitics) capture this information and record it as part of the visitor's session to see not just that a visitor arrived, but exactly which source (like Facebook or a newsletter), which medium (such as social or email), and which specific campaign or content led them to your site.
Without UTMs, analytics platforms can only make educated guesses about traffic sources, often lumping traffic into broad categories like “referral.” Using consistent UTM tags improves your reporting, informs smarter budget decisions, and ensures that conversions and traffic are correctly attributed to the right campaigns.
For example, everything after the “?” in a URL carries tracking context. In http://www.website.com/?utm_source=newssite.com&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=brand-retarget, analytics read utm_source as the origin (e.g., newsletter), utm_medium as the channel type (cpc), and utm_campaign as the specific campaign (brand‑retarget).
Add UTM parameters to all links you create across ads, emails, and partner placements. Untagged traffic forces attribution guesses and pushes different efforts into generic “referral” groups. Proper tagging keeps source, medium, campaign, and content information intact from click to conversion. True referral and direct traffic will remain—and that context is helpful.
Use a single, shared list of allowed values for utm_source, utm_medium, and common campaign prefixes. Decide on lowercase values and enforce them consistently across teams and platforms. Inconsistent casing creates duplicate rows and manual reconciliation later. Document the rules, store them centrally, and audit live campaigns weekly.
Keep campaign names short, scannable, and unique, while encoding only essential dimensions. Lead with the distinctive elements first, such as geography or funnel stage, because interfaces often truncate names. Prefer delimiters like underscores, not spaces, since URLs require encoding. Mirror this convention everywhere—ad platforms, UTMs, and internal reports.
utm_source to who sent the visitorUse the name of the ad platform, publisher, affiliate, email, etc service for the tag value. Examples include facebook, tiktok, google, mailchimp, partner_xyz, or your affiliate network’s identifier. Avoid mixing sites and networks under one label, because it obscures performance by sender. Keep sources lowercase and stable over time.
utm_medium for channel groupingChoose a small set of mediums that map cleanly to your reporting logic. Many teams use social, email, cpc, cpm, affiliate, and referral as the core list. Keeping mediums simple improves rollups and reduces edge-case handling. If you need ad-buy detail, add it in utm_content rather than proliferating new mediums.
utm_medium to cpcGoogle Ads auto-tagging writes utm_medium=cpc, which most analytics stacks recognize as paid clicks. Extending that convention across paid platforms keeps filtering consistent and simplifies channel grouping rules. If you buy on impressions, you may prefer cpm for display while keeping clicks as cpc. Pick one approach, document it, and apply it uniformly to avoid fragmented reporting.
utm_campaignSet utm_campaign to the campaign name used in the ads (or email) platform. Avoid spaces; use underscores or hyphens for readability in URLs.
utm_term and creative to utm_contentUse utm_term for targeting signals: search keywords, audience names, ad sets, or list names in email. Use utm_content for the creative variant: headline, format, or distinguishing element that differentiates otherwise similar ads. This split keeps analysis clean when the same creative runs to multiple audiences. Reuse values where appropriate to enable apples-to-apples comparisons.
Madlitics has a simple campaign name and URL builder to help you generate consistent, UTM-tagged links. It structures your campaign names, applies your preferred source/medium patterns, and outputs copy-paste-ready URLs so you can keep everything clean across teams and channels.
UTM parameters belong on any external link you control. Tag every click that drives traffic to your site from off-domain. Give each visit a clear source, medium, and campaign so reporting aggregates correctly. More visibility means better insights into channel and campaign performance.
UTM parameters help you identify which social media posts or ads actually drive visits and conversions on your website. You can measure engagement and conversion rate, and see which posts resonate most with your audience. Use this data to help fine-tune your social media strategy scale proven reels, stories, carousels, etc.
Let’s say you’re running a big summer sale, and you plan to post about it on Facebook, X, and Instagram. You’d use UTM parameters on each post, with different campaign sources to show which network the traffic came from. If you use the same “summer_sale” campaign term, you’ll see all your posts under the same campaign and be able to compare which social network did the best in terms of driving sales.
url: example.com/product
utm_source: facebook, x, instagram
utm_medium=social
utm_campaign=summer-sale
Adding UTM parameters to links in your email campaigns lets you see exactly how people interact with your emails. These tags show which emails get the most clicks, which links inside those emails are clicked the most, and whether those clicks lead to actions like purchases or sign-ups.
Using utm_content tags can help distinguish which buttons or links within an email are most effective, supporting A/B testing and fine-grained analysis of your email content’s impact. Overall, UTMs make your email marketing measurable, allowing you to refine strategies and maximize ROI based on real user behavior.
url: example.com/demo-request
utm_source=email
utm_medium=newsletter
utm_campaign=spring-sale
Adding UTM parameters to your PPC ads lets you track exactly which ads, keywords, and campaigns bring visitors to your site. PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaigns are online ads where you pay only when someone clicks your ad. These ads target specific keywords or audiences on platforms like Google Ads or Facebook.
This tracking helps you understand which ads perform best, allowing you to optimize your budget by focusing on ads and keywords that drive the most clicks and conversions. You can even track different ad placements (like sidebar vs. page content) to see which location yields better results. Overall, using UTM tags in PPC campaigns gives you detailed insights to improve ad targeting, reduce wasted spend, and boost campaign ROI.
url: example.com/saas-solution
utm_source=google
utm_medium=cpc
utm_campaign=software-promo
UTM parameters enable you to track how effective your content partnerships and syndication efforts are. This way, you can see which partners or content types drive the best results, allowing you to allocate resources strategically. For example, if you guest post on another website, adding UTM tags like helps you measure the traffic and conversions generated from that post.
url: example.com/guest-post
utm_source=partner-website
utm_medium=content-syndication
utm_campaign=industry-expertise
UTM parameters help with local SEO by allowing you to track the effectiveness of your efforts in specific local listings and campaigns helping you understand which local efforts are working best, so you can focus your resources on the most effective strategies. For example, if you add UTM tags to your Google Business Profile links, you can see how many visitors are coming from that local listing.
url: example.com/local-offers
utm_source=google-my-business,
utm_medium=organic
utm_campaign=local-listing
UTM parameters are essential for tracking influencer and affiliate campaigns because they let you see exactly which creators, platforms, and posts drive traffic and conversions. By adding unique UTM tags you can measure the effectiveness of each influencer or affiliate’s promotion helping you compare performance across different partners and content formats and identify the best ROI sources. Make smarter decisions about which partnerships to expand, helping maximize conversions and revenue from influencer and affiliate efforts.
url: example.com/course-enroll
utm_source=influencer
utm_medium=social
utm_campaign=creator-name-month
UTM codes help you compare identical content across platforms without guesswork. UTM tracking simplifies the process of comparing performance across different sources, enabling you to focusing on the channels that deliver the highest engagement.
url: example.com/demo-request
utm_source=facebook
utm_source=linkedin
utm_source=email
Madlitics of course! Madlitics is a form-first way to capture and standardize marketing channel attribution, through campaign segments (ie. UTM parameters), landing page data, and click IDs—right inside each form submission. First‑party data is captured inside each form submission so CRMs, BI and other marketing tools inherit it automatically with no additional customizations or dashboards required.
Beyond UTMs, Madlitics gives you dependable, first-party context from click to close. You’ll see which ads, audiences, and creatives drive real pipeline, reallocate budget with confidence, and prove ROI without wrestling spreadsheets or rebuilding your stack.
Madlitics is built to help marketers see where leads come from and send the data where it belongs. Start a free 14-day trial and get decision-ready attribution without changing your tools.
https://yoursite.com/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=paidsocial&utm_campaign=q1_promo
UTM tagging matters because it provides marketers with precise and consistent tracking of campaign performance across channels, campaigns, and ads. By using UTM parameters consistently, marketers gain clear insight into which campaigns and channels drive traffic and conversions, enabling accurate attribution.
With clear data, you can spend your marketing budget smarter and focus on what really works with tools like Madlitics to help connect UTM tags with your customer data, giving a full picture of success. UTM tags turn messy data into clear insights so you can grow your business better.
