UTM best practices and strategy

Marketing & Content Hub Tips, Tricks & Best Practices
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1

Hello!

Was just curious on how you all have set up your utms for email when your email has multiple asset links. So for example, I am sending an email out to promote a new product or a generic newsletter email and in that same email I am also promoting a guide and webinar -- both of them have their own individual campaigns. Which utm campaign should I use? Should I use the utm campaign that’s tied to the email or tied to the assets for the links?

I’ve been getting a lot of conflicting info, internally and online and want to check!

Do I do Utm_campaign=newsletter/product promo campaign (for the email that I am sending) or do I use urm_campaign=Guide/webinar (for the links I’m promoting in the email)

2

There isn’t one universal rule. However, the most widely adopted best practice is to use the email address or send as the `utm_campaign` value for all links in that email, then differentiate individual links using `utm_content`.

3

Ah in this case it will be best to use the newsletter campaign for the utm rather than the campaign that’s tied to the asset? So utm_campaign=newsletter, utm_content=[asset campaign]

Would that same logic apply if I am sending an email promoting a webinar and have a link to promote an asset that’s different from the campaign of the webinar (like webinar is on say Apples and there’s a link promoting a guide for tangerines)

4

Hey @Johnnyw - thanks for following up here!
Re-tagging @clwydp to see if they have any insight on this follow-up inquiry!
Shane, Senior Community Moderator

5

Adding a bit more context here, the “campaign” can be seen as the vessel that delivers all links while the specific links are identified by their final url in your traffic report to see how effective the specific medium of delivery is.

Though the landing page itself for the product and webinar are linked to ongoing campaigns, what the utm aims to do is tell you is the overall success of the email in generating web visits and conversions.

This means that:

  • utm_source Identifies the platform or site that sent the traffic (e.g., google, facebook, linkedin). In your example, it would be set to hubspot.
  • utm_medium Identifies the type of marketing medium used (e.g., cpc, email, social, organic_video). In your example, set to email.
  • utm_campaign Identifies the specific marketing campaign, slogan, or promotion (e.g., apple_webinar). In your example, this should be set to the same campaign as you are measuring the effectiveness of the newsletter email as the campaign “vessel” of delivering info.

For the example you’ve shared, I’d think the utm tracking would look something like:

Link to Apple webinar: Vehicle Technology Overview | Chevrolet_source=hubspot&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=apple_webinar

Link to Tangerine guide: mylink.com/guide?utm_source=hubspot&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=apple_webinar

If you are using more than one link to point to the same landing page, you can add utm_content to identify if traffic came from clicking the banner or the text link:

Link to webinar from hero banner: Vehicle Technology Overview | Chevrolet_source=hubspot&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=apple_webinar&utm_content=banner

Link to webinar from text link: Vehicle Technology Overview | Chevrolet_source=hubspot&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=apple_webinar&utm_content=text_link

This way, when you are looking at page-level reports of the webinar you can trace traffic back to the source (the email that included the link) and even which part of the email they clicked.

It also helps you see how your “Apple” audience is responding to “Tangerine” offers.

6

Hey @JasmineOejbro,
Thanks so much for providing all of this context! Re-tagging @Johnnyw for visibility!
Shane, Senior Community Moderator

7

Ah! So in this case let’s say that the email that contains multiple assets is a monthly newsletter and the campaign is 26-MayNewsletter. So the link to the webinar will be

mylink.com/webinar?utm_source=hubspot&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=26-MayNewsletter

nstead of it being utm_campaign=apple_webinar, is that right? Same thing with the other asset, it will be the newsletter campaign rather than the tangerine campaign because it’s the newsletter campaign that is directing people to the asset’s landing page.

Is there a pro and con to using one or the other? This is the part where it gets a bit confusing because I’ve seen people say multiple things, just want to know what will be considered the “best.”

8

Exactly.

I’m not sure what sources you are referencing, but if you’ve seen other examples on how to do it I think it all boils down to “What question are you trying to answer with the data?”.

The “best” setup is what fits the purpose of what you’re tracking.

Intent: Review the vessel and page-level analytics

?utm_campaign=26-MayNewsletter

This is the most common use-case I’ve come across.

The goal: See how effective the May Newsletter was at driving clicks.

What to look at: In HubSpot you can review the utm_campaign to see all the sessions from the 26-MayNewsletter to your website AND look at the page title + utm campaign to see the total number of pageviews to your Tangerine guide or Apple webinar from that specific email.

Insights when you use campaigns this way: What specific campaigns (email sendouts, ads, social media posts) drive views to the Tangerine or Apple pages?

Pros: You can look at ROI for the newsletter and compare April to May. You can also compare campaigns across different sources (ads vs newsletter vs social) in how they drive traffic to your page.

Cons: You likely have to build your own custom report to get the data you want, or look at specific pages’ data to see the total interest from all utm-tracked links.

Consider: you could use the utm_content to track the specific link to the different landing pages if you want to use utm to drill into this information (otherwise this is available by the page title or page url).

Intent B: Track assets by the campaign

?utm_campaign=tangerine_guide

The goal: You want a report to tell you about all the traffic to the Tangerine guide, regardless of where the link was featured.

What to look at: In your campaign report you can see all clicks/sessions/pageviews for that specific page.

Insights: How much interest in total has this asset got?

Pros: Easy to see total interest for a specific asset at a glance.

Cons: More difficult to compare specific contributions of campaigns (two different newsletter, rounds of thematic social posts or ads). If you have utm_source you can glean at which platform sent the information (and combined with utm_medium if it was a paid or organic placement), but gives you less overall insight to what specific actions are driving results.

My recommendation

Stick to the “vessel” approach as this gives you the most granular data and more insights. It’s easier to drill into page-level data than to go hunting through old social posts, emails and ads to map together old click data if you want to review it later on.