UTM parameters

Monitoring different marketing channels and their effectiveness can be challenging. With UTM parameters you can track the channels that readers use to access your content. You can also find out which are the most cost-effective marketing channels with these parameters. The channels you monitor can be, for example, different social media channels and newsletter deliveries that all use unique URL addresses that include the UTM parameters.

Five different kinds of parameters that help you gather data about your site traffic can be added to a URL address. When someone clicks a URL address with UTM tags, the parameters in it and their data is transferred to your Google Analytics account. You can follow the visitor traffic from different channels on the Acquisition tab in Analytics. UTM parameters also work with other common analytics tools, such as Matomo.

UTM parameters in LianaMailer

Feeding UTM parameters into an URL address is automated in LianaMailer. The monitors you want to use are chosen on the Settings tab of the delivery, in Other monitors. When Google Analytics is chosen, text fields open below where you can enter the relevant UTM tags and a link is created automatically. If you use Matomo tracking, select Google Analytics here, the same parameters also work in Matomo.

Campaign name
Give the campaign a name, for example summer sale. Note that the campaign name shows to the recipient in the link address of the newsletter.

Campaign medium
The recommended value is email or newsletter.

Campaign source
Campaign source determines what is displayed as the visitor source in your monitor. By default the text comes from the newsletter subject line.

Campaign content
Campaign content information enables you to separate the links that lead to the same URL address. For instance, two different versions of a campaign in A/B testing. This field can be left empty.

Custom Tracking
This feature allows you to enrich links with data that traditional Google Analytics doesn’t cover.
Custom tracking enables you to add tailored parameters to links, following the Key = Value principle.

How to activate:
Check the box labeled “Custom tracking.”

Define parameters:
Two text fields will appear, separated by an equals sign (=).

• Left field (Key): Enter the parameter name you want to appear in the link (e.g., customer_type or promo).
• Right field (Value): Enter the value you want passed along (e.g., vip or winter_sale).

To add more parameters, click the plus (+) button to create additional rows if you want multiple tracking codes in your links simultaneously.

Practical example:
If you fill in the fields as follows:
Left field: reference / Right field: campaign123
→ then a newsletter link originally written as
www.company.fi/product
will automatically change to
www.company.fi/product?reference=campaign123

How can you use Custom Tracking?

• CRM systems: When your webshop or CRM needs a specific identifier to connect a purchase to a campaign, but is not compatible with Google Analytics.
• Ad networks: When using a less common advertising system that requires its own tracking parameter such as ref_id.
• Special campaigns: For example, adding a discount code directly to the URL (e.g. discount_code=SALE20), so that the discount activates automatically on the landing page.

Important note:
Custom tracking adds the specified parameters to all links in your newsletter. It is recommended to send a test email and click the links to confirm that the destination website functions correctly.

More information about UTM parameters

Google shares this information about the parameters:

"There are five parameters you can add to your URLs:

• utm_source: Identify the advertiser, site, publication, etc. that is sending traffic to your property, for example: google, newsletter4, billboard
   
• utm_medium: The advertising or marketing medium, for example: cpc, banner, email newsletter.
   
• utm_campaign: The individual campaign name, slogan, promo code, etc. for a product.
   
• utm_term: Identify paid search keywords. If you're manually tagging paid keyword campaigns, you should also use utm_term to specify the keyword.
   
• utm_content: Used to differentiate similar content, or links within the same ad. For example, if you have two call-to-action links within the same email message, you can use utm_content and set different values for each so you can tell which version is more effective.

Each parameter must be paired with a value that you assign. Each parameter-value pair then contains campaign-related information.

For example, you might use the following parameter-value pairs for your Summer Sale campaign:

• utm_source = summer-mailer to identify traffic that results from your Summer Sale email campaign
   
• utm_medium = email to identify traffic from the email campaign vs. the in-app campaign
   
• utm_campaign = summer-sale to identify the overall campaign

If you used these parameters, your custom-campaign URL would be:

https://www.example.com/?utm_source=summer-mailer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=summer-sale

• When you add parameters to a URL, you should always use utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign.
• utm_term and utm_content are optional.