Why Use UTM Coding When I Have Facebook Insights and Email Reporting? 

 

In the world of data and analytics, the war between Facebook, Google and other online channels rages on, leaving you with disconnected data and an uncertain path on how to proceed. Using pixels and tags is one way to connect the data and in the post below, you’ll learn how UTM coding is another way to connect disparate data sources. 

What I Like About Facebook Insights That Google Analytics Doesn’t Provide 

Have you ever seen a Facebook post that makes you laugh just enough to “like” it, but not enough to distract you from Facebook stalking your new coworker? Everyone has. That’s why organic Facebook metrics are based on overall reach, impressions, and engagement. That is to say, how many people your post reached, how often people saw it, and what they did when they saw it. 

Facebook bases most of their metrics on the post and page level because they don’t want users to leave their website. The longer a user stays, the more ads they can serve a user. The more ads they serve a user, the more money they make. But if you’re paying for the ads a user is seeing, Facebook actually gives you another layer of data. 

For boosted posts and ad campaigns, Facebook will offer you a Facebook pixel to put on your website, allowing you to now track user interactions beyond Facebook. This means any time someone views a page, adds an item to their cart, completes a purchase, and more after viewing your Facebook ad, you’ll know! More than that though, you’ll be able to have a layer of demographics like age and gender that you wouldn’t otherwise get. 

Lastly, the Facebook pixel allows you to have data on view through conversions – the idea that you saw an ad, and although you didn’t click on it, eventually that ad caused you to make a purchase. 

What I Like About Email Reporting That Google Analytics Doesn’t Provide 

Email reporting provides a wealth of data that you can’t get from Google Analytics, namely open rate. Open rate is arguably one of the most important email metrics because if someone doesn’t open your email, there’s no chance they’ll receive your message. Open rate is so important that some email systems even have the ability to A/B test subject lines. After all, who doesn’t want to expose more people to their message?  

If you have a more complex email system, the data you get doesn’t stop there. You can get view through conversion information like you get with Facebook (those who viewed your email and eventually took an action, just not when they opened up your email). 

The last really important feature of email reporting is the fact that it stores personal information. While this may seem like an obvious benefit (an email system that stores emails…whaaaa?), it’s a huge contrast from Google Analytics, which forbids any personally identifiable information (PII). With the personally identifiable information email reporting gives you, you can segment your audiences and build user personas. If you’re feeling fancy, you can even use incentives to fill the gaps of information you don’t have (give us your birthday and we’ll give you a cookie). 

Why I Still Recommend UTM Coding with Facebook Insights and Email Reporting 

Unless you have a database dedicated to combining Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, and analytics from your email platform, it’s likely that Google Analytics is your main source of truth for all your web analytics. Without enhancing your Google Analytics data with information from your other marketing channels, you won’t be able to know which online campaigns are the most successful at driving a conversion. You also won’t know how people are interacting with specific messages across different channels.  

Essentially, if you’re looking at your different channels in a silo, you’re missing out on the bigger picture. UTM coding helps create that larger picture within your existing platforms. While social media management platforms like Hootsuite can provide you with out of the box analytics on your different social media profiles, it’s UTM coding that brings all that data into your Google Analytics account – your one source of truth for all web activities. 

For a more in-depth look on how to create that larger picture, read my article on Where to Use UTM Coding and follow it up with Best Practices for Using UTM Coding Part 1 and Best Practices for Using UTM Coding Part 2 just to make sure you don’t paint the wrong picture. 

Summary 

Effective marketing requires you to gather as much information as possible about your messages across different channels and learn which ones are and aren’t working. UTM coding can be the glue that sticks Facebook and email to your Google Analytics data and make sure you’re being the best marketer you can be. 

 

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Best Practices for UTM Coding: Part 2 

 

UTM coding can quickly go awry if you don’t follow best practices. Consistency and attention to detail can be the difference between an easily analyzed set of data and one that provides no insight at all. Read part 2 on UTM best practices and the different rules to make sure your extra work results in better data. 

Have Unique Ad Content When UTM Coding 

If you’re going to use ad content to distinguish posts (read my post about ad content and UTM coding here), make sure your ad content is unique on each post. If your ad content is not unique, you will be unable to distinguish between posts, and all your time spent UTM coding will be lost. If you have two posts on the same day on two different channels, you’re in the clear because the source and medium will be your distinguishing factor. 

Don’t Use UTM Coding on PPC 

UTM coding is super cool, but it’s also pretty limited in the information it passes along. The links automatically generated by AdWords (auto-tagging) on the other hand are extremely complex. When auto-tagging is enabled, Google AdWords passes along a parameter called a gclid (short for Google Click ID). The gclid stores source, medium, campaign, ad group, keyword, and ad creative, just like UTM coding, but it does it automatically.  

Additionally (and more importantly), the gclid contains:

  • query match type
  • hour of day
  • keyword positions
  • display targeting
  • video campaign data
  • shopping campaign data
  • Ad Group
  • AdWords final url
  • ad format (text, display, video)
  • ad distribution network (Google search)
  • placement domain (the domain on the content network where your ads were displayed)
  • AdWords Customer ID

The gclid also contains potentially more top-secret information that Google hasn’t told us. (Note: Google changes their mind often. For a complete up to date list, click here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1733663?hl=en).

Pay Attention to Your Trailing Slash 

A trailing slash or a lack of a trailing slash on your initial website url can break your UTM coding. Unfortunately, there’s no absolute rule of whether or not you should use a trailing slash. Trailing slash rules are dictated by your server configuration and server configuration is different for every website. What may seem like a trailing slash to you may actually be something completely different from a development perspective.  

My advice to you is that unless you speak fluent server, it’s best to test out your UTM codes for different page types on both mobile and desktop before you post it on the World Wide Web. 

Summary 

In the words of Monica from Friends “Rules are good! Rules help control the fun!” You can say the same for UTM coding. By following the above UTM best practices, you can be sure that your dive into data is a party for more ROI, not a funeral for your analytics. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Best Practices for UTM Coding Part 1 here or learn more about why you still need UTM coding even when you have Facebook Insights and email reporting.

 

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Best Practices for UTM Coding: Part 1

 

UTM coding can very quickly go awry if you don’t follow best practices. Consistency and attention to detail can be the difference between an easily analyzed set of data and one that provides no insight at all. If you’ve already read my post about UTM coding 101, read below to learn about the different rules to make sure your extra work results in better data. 

Keep UTM Coding Consistent 

Consistency is something that can be easily missed when you’re sharing your UTM coding duties with others. When choosing your source, medium, campaign, and ad content, make sure you use the same pattern and nomenclature. For example, you’ll need to decide whether you name your source facebook or fb and stick with it. You may find it helpful to keep a Google Doc that you share with your coworkers to remind all of you the naming conventions you decided on.  

Plan for growth with your UTM Codes 

When naming your campaigns, think about possible future campaigns and how to categorize them. For example, your campaign name shouldn’t be fall-sweaters if you plan on selling lawn mowers in the future. A more applicable campaign name might fall-clothing or just fall-promotions. 

Don’t use profanity in Your UTM Codes 

Although this may seem like an obvious recommendation, remember – users can see your UTM coding when they look at the address bar in their browser. Don’t use profanity or other inappropriate wording unless you have a strong desire to be called in by your human resources department. 

Only Use Lowercase in Your UTM Codes 

The suggestion to only use lowercase in your UTM codes comes from a “better safe than sorry” place. Having both uppercase and lowercase ad content increases your chances of inconsistency. This inconsistentcy can split up your data and can cause you miss larger patterns in your data.

Even more important though, using uppercase can throw off the source and medium for Google and make it unable to be categorized into a specific channel (for more on sources and mediums, see my blog article here).

Don’t Use Special Characters in Your UTM Codes 

This is another “better safe than sorry” recommendation. Spaces and special characters in your UTM code increase your chance of breaking the URL. This is a factor that can vary based on browser and the server configuration you currently have on your website.  If you’re still insistent that your words be broken up somehow, I would recommend using dashes instead of spaces to separate out words. 

Always Use Source and Medium in Your UTM Code 

Your UTM code won’t work without a source and medium. While you may think you’re saving time by not including this information in your UTM code, at the end of the day the joke’s on you – none of the information you typed into that UTM code will make it to Google Analytics. 

Summary 

In the words of Monica from Friends “Rules are good! Rules help control the fun!” The same can be said for UTM coding. By following the rules above, such as always using lowercase and never using profanity, you can be sure that your dive into data is a party for more ROI, not a funeral for your analytics. Be sure to check out Best Practices for UTM Coding Part 2 and where you can use UTM coding.

 

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Where to Use UTM Coding 

 

In our blog about UTM Coding 101, we went over the basics of UTM coding, specifically source, medium, ad content, and campaign. Now that you’re familiarized with the basics though, it’s important to know where you should use them. 

Use UTM Coding for Offline Advertising 

UTM Coding can be great at tracking offline marketing efforts that often times don’t have a direct ROI. For example, if you have a print ad or a billboard, there will be almost no way to track your ROI without a UTM coded vanity URL. 

A vanity URL is a unique web address that is branded for marketing purposes (example: funinthesun.com would be a vanity url that you would want to use instead of your regular url gregsbeachwear.com). A vanity URL is more beneficial than a long url since people are less likely to type in all of the url (gregsbeachwear.com/billboard-promo). 

When we assign the vanity URL for our offline marketing effort, we can then use a UTM code when we redirect it to the main site: (ex: gregsbeachwear.com/?utm_source=billboard&utm_medium=offline).  

Use UTM Coding for Email Content 

Email marketing programs have come a long way. In some cases they can even attribute view through conversion (i.e. someone who viewed an email, didn’t click on it, but then later made a purchase on your website). The downfall of almost all email marketing programs, however, is that they’re recorded in Google Analytics as direct traffic (see my blog about sources and mediums if you’re unfamiliar with this term). 

Right now you probably don’t believe me that you’re getting almost no credit for your emails in Google Analytics, but luckily there’s a way to test this out. By using the real time feature in Google Analytics, click on a link in one of your emails and find out what Google deems the source and medium to be. 

Once you’ve decided that you do want to UTM code your email links, take this opportunity to begin testing out different creative, calls to action, and email formats to see which versions are driving visits to your website. 

Use UTM Coding for Social Post and Social Buttons 

While Google is normally pretty good about attributing the right source and medium for your social posts, if you’re featuring posts that go to the same page multiple time or you’ve got special book buttons like the one you see below, it may be useful to use UTM coding. 

If you want to take your UTM coding a step further, you can test out targeting different audiences, posting at different times of the day (especially with platforms like twitter), or different creative (especially with such visually-centric mediums such as Pinterest). 

Use UTM Coding for QA 

In an ideal world, we’d have a view in our Google Analytics account just for our own IP address. But in the event where we don’t have permission to filter out our own IP address, or if our IP addresses are anonymized to comply with GDPR, a UTM code may be your best bet for QA (Quality Assurance). 

A test UTM code can be as simple as example.com/?utm_source=test&utm_medium=test

Lastly, this test UTM code may be helpful to QA your IP exclusion filters in Google Analytics. By asking the organization you’re filtering out to click on your test UTM code, you can see whether or not their traffic came through. 

Summary 

UTM Coding can be used anywhere and everywhere – whether you’re doing quality assurance on your website or tracking marketing initiatives across digital and traditional channels. Each opportunity to track is an opportunity to learn more about your audience and can increase ROI if done properly. Check out my other blog posts about UTM coding best practices with UTM coding part 1 and UTM coding part 2 or dive into why you still need UTM coding even though you have Facebook Insights and email report.

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UTM Coding 101 

 

If you’ve gotten past the basics of Google Analytics sources, mediums, and channels, you’re likely ready to learn about the wild world of UTM coding. Here in my UTM 101 post, I’ll introduce you to the topic and in a later blog, we’ll discuss common mistakes made with UTM coding. 

What is UTM Coding: UTM 101

A UTM code is a collection of text added to the end of a url that tracks the source and medium of website traffic. A UTM code can also track other traffic specifics, such as the particular campaign that generated the visit or the specific post that generated the visit. 

UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Method. Google purchased the company Urchin in April 2005 to form Google Analytics, which is why Google Analytics and UTM Coding go hand in hand (and why I suggested you read the blog about basic Google Analytics). We see UTM in everyday life, but we don’t often recognize it. An example of a url with utm coding is below: 

www.example.comcom?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=fall-promotion&utm_medium=social&utm_content=100118

In this UTM code, you’ll notice we’re tracking more than just the source and medium mentioned in my previous blog post – we’re also tracking the campaign and the content that brought a user to the website. Your campaign can be as straightforward as your regular marketing campaign. Ad content is an additional parameter that we use in UTM coding to tell which specific piece of content drove traffic. 

The Beauty of Ad Content 

Ad content is, in my opinion, one of the coolest parts of UTM coding, which is why I’m such a huge proponent of it. Without using the ad content parameter, if you post the same link twice on the same channel, you wouldn’t be able to tell which one drove the traffic to your website when looking at your Google Analytics. 

Instead, they would all look like this in Google Analytics: 

Without knowing which specific posts drove traffic, your ability to make data-driven decisions about which social posts or emails generated website traffic and key KPIs is very limited. While you may get a certain level of reporting from your social platforms or email marketing program, you’re still limited in knowing how users interacted across channels (for more information on multi-channel attribution, see my blog post here).

Naming Your Ad Content

Because the ad content parameter is your main distinguisher between posts in Google Analytics, it’s important to keep it unique if you’re using the same source and medium. I often suggest you name your ad content based on the content you post. 

For example, if you send out a monthly newsletter, it might make sense to name your ad content something like this: 

  • monthly-newsletter-june 
  • monthly-newsletter-0617 

If you’re posting on a channel multiple times a week, it might be best to put the date as your ad content: 

  • 010217 
  • 102117 

If you’re posting multiple times a day (such as is the case with Twitter), you may want to add in the time of day or the number of your post 

  • am-102117 
  • pm-102117 
  • 1-102117 
  • 2-102117 
  • 3-102117 

Notice with each, consistency is key. It will be much easier to analyze data if you can drill down by a common denominator. I like to end all my posts with 19 because I know I can use some regular expressions to easily distinguish it from other ad content (such as PPC ad content which we’ll discuss in another blog post). 

Once you’ve met with your marketing team and agreed on the overall campaign (or decided not to attach the post to a campaign at all), determine your source, medium, and ad content. When doing all this, make sure your source and medium match Google’s standard categorizations found here. After you’ve got all your parameters set, plug them into Google’s UTM builder here and shorten it if you like. 

Summary 

As the need for data-driven decisions increases and the pressure for knowing the ROI of your marketing channels increases, take some time to familiarize yourself with UTM coding. By learning UTM 101, you can make sure you’re delivering content that resonates with your audience and your pocketbook. Also, now that you’ve learned the basics of UTM coding, read part one of UTM coding best practices and follow it up with part two of UTM coding best practices.

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