Creating and running campaigns is one of the core pillars of digital marketing. There are many channels for acquiring visitors such as SEO, PPC, referral traffic, email, etc. A common denominator is to measure and understand how the campaigns perform. This is for creating reports and metrics and make decisions the right decisions. All this takes into consideration the unique characteristics of each case.

By doing these we can be able to calculate conversion rates and customer acquisition costs, all the can be measured with tools like Google Analytics, Piwik, Mixpanel, and using the UTM codes. Almost to all campaigns we use text links in-text ads, banners, emails newsletters an example is the following link, which is a just simple link that points to a registration page.

https://vontikakis.com/company/create

Generating URL with GA Campaign URL builder

using UTM codes to track the performance to our URL we have to append three extra parameters at the end of the previous link with names utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign. So the link will take the following structure

https://vontikakis.com/crm?utm_source=facebook&utm medium=social&utm_campaign=lead

UTM parameters in detail

  • utm_source is a tag that you can place values such as facebook, AdWords, newsletter, this answers to the question from which channel came the traffic or more accurate who is the referrer.
  • utm_medium is the second parameter could be assigned with values such PPC, social, email and last parameter
  • utm_campaign where we give a name for each campaign such summer_sales so we can identify the name of the campaign.
  • utm_content is optional parameter where can place more info about the campaigns especially if you run A/B split tests on different ads or landing pages.
  • utm_term here someone can place terms or keywords to track performance from paid AdWords pay per click campaigns

To create such URL easy can be campaign utm builder So measuring making A/B testing could improve your online strategy. So measurements, data analytics could an integral part of a digital transformation program. 

Where to use UTM parameters

  • Banner ads
  • Emails
  • Push Notifications Messages
  • SMS campaigns with short URLs from services like bit.ly
  • Social Shares
  • Guest Blog Post
  • Referral Promo Codes

After you identify the best sources of leads and sales you can make better-investing decisions on wich media channels to invest your marketing budget. Do not forget to check your investment calculator using the investment calculator future value