Mastering Performance Variants (UTMs)

As you embark on a journey to unlock the full potential of your website's data, you will encounter the term UTMs, or Urchin Tracking Modules. UTMs are powerful mechanisms that enable you to track the source of your website traffic, identify which marketing campaigns are driving results, and gather insights into the behavior of your audience.

UTM What?

UTMs or Performance Variants are a set of parameters that are added to the end of a URL to track the source and medium of website traffic. These parameters are used to categorize and identify the source of website traffic, whether it's from a search engine, social media, or email campaign. For example, if you are promoting a tweet on Twitter, you can add UTMs to the URL that directs visitors to your website, such as `www.example.com?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=spring_sale`. This allows you to track the number of clicks, conversions, and other important metrics from the specific Twitter promotion. By using UTMs, you can gain a deeper understanding of the performance of your marketing campaigns and make informed decisions about your marketing strategy.

The five main UTMs are:

1. `utm_source`: This parameter identifies the source of the website traffic, such as Google, Twitter, or an email newsletter.
2. `utm_medium`: This parameter identifies the type of marketing channel, such as paid search, social media, or email.
3. `utm_campaign`: This parameter identifies the specific campaign or promotion that the website traffic is associated with, such as a sale or product launch.
4. `utm_term`: This parameter is used to track the specific keywords or ad group that the website traffic is associated with.
5. `utm_content`: This parameter is used to differentiate between multiple ad variations or links within a single marketing campaign, such as a A/B test.

Ok, Give me Some Examples

Wondering how to effectively utilize UTM parameters in your marketing campaigns? Here are 5 practical scenarios to showcase the power of UTMs in tracking and measuring your efforts.

1. Tracking Social Media Campaigns: A business can add UTMs to the URLs in their social media posts to track the performance of their campaigns. For example, a Twitter campaign promoting a new product could have a URL with UTMs such as `www.example.com?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=new_product_launch`.

2. Measuring Email Marketing Performance: A business can add UTMs to the links in their email newsletters to track which promotions or products are most popular among subscribers. For example, an email promoting a sale could have a URL with UTMs such as `www.example.com?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=spring_sale`.

3. Analyzing Paid Search Results: A business can add UTMs to the URLs in their paid search ads to track which keywords or ad groups are driving the most conversions. For example, a paid search ad for a new product could have a URL with UTMs such as `www.example.com?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=new_product_launch&utm_term=new_product_keyword`.

4. Evaluating A/B Tests: A business can use UTMs to track the performance of different variations of a marketing campaign. For example, two variations of a Facebook ad promoting a new product could have URLs with UTMs such as `www.example.com?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=new_product_launch&utm_content=variation_1` and `www.example.com?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=new_product_launch&utm_content=variation_2`.

5. Understanding Referral Traffic: A business can add UTMs to the links on their partners' websites to track the referral traffic to their own site. For example, a link on a partner's website promoting a sale could have UTMs such as `www.example.com?utm_source=partner_website&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=spring_sale`.

Perfomance Variants and Proxima Analytics

Proxima Analytics makes it easy to effectively track and analyze UTM parameters with its robust parsing and categorization capabilities. Incoming UTM parameters are recorded, categorized, and visualized in the our statistics Dashboard, allowing you to easily browse and filter page views and events based on their associated parameters. The `Performance Variants` section in the dashboard splits all stored performance data into five distinct categories: Campaign, Source, Medium, Content, and Term, providing a clear and organized view of your data.