As a reseller, you might want to run a marketing campaign on social media, through email or even paid ads. The best way to keep track of what’s working and what is not is by integrating UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) codes into your campaigns.
This article will detail how to use UTM codes to track marketing results.
Overview
UTM codes link marketing practices to Google Analytics to track metrics and provide results. A UTM code is attached to the end of the URL to track a campaign source, medium, keywords, and name. This code provides Google Analytics with the ability to display where website traffic originated from and what campaign directed them to you. If you’re running different versions of the campaign via email, social, and paid ads, you can compare all the results to see where your marketing is having the best effect.
Campaign URL builder
Let’s say you want to send a link to Prospectus in your email marketing campaign. Follow the steps below to create your custom campaign URL.
- Go to Google’s campaign URL builder
- Complete the required field
- Generate custom URL
Example UTM URL: https://app.sharearefund.com/prospectus?utm_source=email_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=try_prospectus
The link above would allow you to identify the traffic to your custom prospectus website that came from a specific email from your overall marketing campaign.
The key to UTM implementation
UTM codes are a powerful tool for online marketing campaigns. The main problem users run into is not using the parameters consistently. It’s likely that different people on the same team will end up using different terms for the same medium, source, or campaign. It’s important to have clear reports without fragmented data. Keep an Excel spreadsheet that’s divided by URL, source, medium, campaign name and content with specific drop-down selections for each column.
A tip on staying organized
Keep codes consistent among your team to avoid fragmented data. Using a spreadsheet to keep track of all tags and formats is a good idea.