Urchin Tracking Modules (UTMs) are used to identify campaigns that refer traffic to a specific website. You can automatically add UTMs to your campaigns' link URLs. For example, if you want to track where your traffic comes from, and your website has that capability, then you can automatically add UTMs to links such as ?Ref=email. UTM tags can be custom code (such as the one above), or it can be a Google Analytics code, or you can edit and customise Google Analytics code values.
UTM tags allow you to gather valuable information on how your links are being used and how effective they are – providing you with enhanced site analytics.
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Before you start
Things you need to know:
UTMs can't be added to links using Liquid.
UTM tags aren’t automatically applied to personalised links. For example, account-level UTM tags won't be added to https://@DOMAIN_URL@/homepage/footer. You must add the tags manually to personalised links.
When adding, removing or updating a UTM and its values, changes only take effect for existing campaigns once the campaigns are modified and re-saved. New campaigns that are subsequently created have these values automatically applied. You‘re reminded of this in-app after having made the change.
You can add different or additional tracking to your email campaign links at an individual campaign level.
Learn more in Add campaign-level UTM tags to email campaign links.
Add generic UTM code
To add a single generic UTM to your outbound links (using analytics other than Google):
Expand the User menu and go to Settings > Tracking > Broadcast email link tracking.
Select ADD NEW, this opens the Link tracking menu.
For Field, enter a field into the textbox.
You can also enter a System field here too.
For Value, enter a value into the textbox.
For example, setting the field as 'Ref' and the value as 'email' generates the following: www.example.com/?Ref=email You can also add a contact data field here too.
Select the Remove unsafe characters checkbox to automatically remove unsafe characters that are deemed unsafe so your UTM’s parameters are not removed by website security profiles.
The following characters are removed: < > “ # % { } | \ ^ ~ [ ] ` ‘
Select SAVE.
Add personalisation to your UTM code
You can add personalisation UTM’s Field and Value.
Contact data fields
You can add contact data field personalisation to the link tracking Value. To add contact data fields to your UTM:
From the Link tracking menu, select the Personalisation icon at the end of the Value text box.
Choose a data field from the drop-down menu.
For example, if you set the field as 'country' and select the contact data field 'COUNTRY' from the personalisation drop-down menu, this generates the following: http://www.example.com/?country=@COUNTRY@ Then, if for example 'England' is stored against the contact's 'COUNTRY' contact data field, England is added to the UTM in place of @COUNTRY@.Select SAVE.
System fields
In addition to your contact data fields, there are a number of system fields that you can choose from to populate a value into your UTM. They are:
$CAMPAIGN_NAME$
The name of the campaign that the link is contained in.
$CAMPAIGN_TAGS$
A list of the campaign tags added to the campaign. Multiple tags are separated by an underscore:tag1_tag2_tag3$CAMPAIGN_ID$
The numerical ID of the campaign.
$CAMPAIGN_NAME_WITHOUT_ID$
The campaign name only, without the appended campaign ID.$COMPANY_NAME$
Your company name, as recorded in Settings > Billing > Billing details > Company details.$LINK_KEYWORD$
The link name entered in the Add a link window in EasyEditor.$SPLIT_TEST_VERSION$
Returns the version number for each creative content version. For example:
1 for version A
2 for version B
The split test Creative setting must be enabled for this field to return results. Learn more in Split test an email campaign.
To add system fields to your link tacking:
From the Link tracking menu, enter one of the above system fields to the Value textbox.
Select SAVE.
Edit and delete a UTM
Any UTMs that you create and save appear under Link tracking. From here you can:
edit your UTM by selecting the edit icon at the end of each UTM.
delete your UTM by selecting the checkbox next to a UTM and selecting DELETE.
Track links in split test campaigns
You can track the creative content of your different split test campaigns with UTMs by adding the system field $SPLIT_TEST_VERSION$:
The split test Creative setting must be enabled for this field to return results. Learn more in Split test an email campaign.
Campaign
To add tracking to an individual split test campaign:
Create a new split test campaign or edit an existing one.
Go to the split test Create page.
For Link tracking, select CHANGE.
On the Link tracking side menu, select the CAMPAIGN SPECIFIC tab.
Select NEW TRACKING.
For Field, enter your UTM field.
For example, utm_content.
For Value, enter CampaignVersion_$SPLIT_TEST_VERSION$.
Select SAVE and APPLY.
The results should look like this:
Version A:
http://www.example.com/buy_page?utm_source=Dotdigital&utm_medium=email&utm_content=campaignVersion_1&utm_campaign=Postpurchase
Version B:
http://www.example.com/buy_page?utm_source=Dotdigital&utm_medium=email&utm_content=campaignVersion_2&utm_campaign=Postpurchase
Account
To add tracking to your account so it automatically applies to all your split test campaigns:
Expand the User menu and go to Settings > Tracking > Broadcast email link tracking.
Select ADD NEW, this opens the Link tracking menu.
For Field, enter your UTM field.
For example, utm_content.
For Value, enter CampaignVersion_$SPLIT_TEST_VERSION$.
Select SAVE.
Add Google Analytics UTMs
Select the GOOGLE ANALYTICS TRACKING button in the top right.
If you don't see this button, then this process has already been carried out and you should see the Google fields already listed under Site analytics.
The Google Analytics tracking window displays to confirm the field and values you're adding:
Select CONTINUE to add these values under Link tracking. By doing this, you are automatically adding the following to your links:
utm_campaign=*Your campaign name* - noting which campaign it was that referred the user to the site
utm_medium=email - noting the medium by which someone arrived on the site
utm_source=*Your company name* - noting the name of the company referring the visitor to the site.
As with generic UTM code, you can also edit and delete Google Analytics UTM code.
We recommend making sure that you add names to your links when creating your campaign. This means you should be able to find them in your Google Analytics 4 dashboard reports by navigating to Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns, selecting the campaign you're interested in, and then can adding a Secondary dimension of Ad Content. This adds an Ad Content column that shows all the sessions that came in through those named links.
Again, remember to modify and re-save any existing campaigns for any changes to take effect.
Customise Google Analytics UTM values
If you don't want to use our default values for Google Analytics tracking, you can customise them by selecting the Edit icon next to the value you want to change. For instance, you might want to customise a couple of the values as follows:
utm_medium=MyEmailMarketingProvider - the name of your email marketing provider/medium, so that will be us!
utm_source=email marketing
Select Edit next to the UTM you want to edit, this opens the Link tracking window.
Enter your own value in the Value textbox.
You can use the personalisation function for contact-specific values.
Select Save to confirm any changes made.
Remember to modify and re-save any existing campaigns for any changes to take effect.