admin, April 19, 2018Logaholic Web Analytics will support the use of UTM url parameters in it’s next release, Logaholic 7.1.
What are UTM parameters?
UTM parameters are a way of tracking your advertising and marketing efforts. The idea is to “tag” incoming links with the information you need to measure your marketing performance.
There are 5 variants used by marketers to track campaigns across traffic sources and publishing media. Wikipedia breaks them down as follows:
| Parameter | Purpose | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| utm_source (required) | Identifies which site sent the traffic, and is a required parameter. | utm_source=Google |
| utm_medium | Identifies what type of link was used, such as cost per click or email. | utm_medium=cpc |
| utm_campaign | Identifies a specific product promotion or strategic campaign. | utm_campaign=spring_sale |
| utm_term | Identifies search terms. | utm_term=running+shoes |
| utm_content | Identifies what specifically was clicked to bring the user to the site, such as a banner ad or a text link. It is often used for A/B testing and content-targeted ads. | utm_content=logolink or utm_content=textlink |
Here is an example of a link that uses UTM parameters:
http://www.logaholic.com/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_camp=Logaholic71
This link would allow us to identify the traffic source (Facebook), the ad payment type (CPC, cost per click) and the name we’ve given this campaign.
Using this information we can segment our traffic into discrete groups, so we can measure the conversion rates for each one.
Urchin Tracking Module parameters (or UTM) were first introduced by Urchin. Urchin later became Google Analytics. As a result, UTM parameters have become widely used.
If you’ve used UTM parameters in the past and have the log files for your website, you can now use Logaholic to analyze all your previous and current campaign data.
Logaholic 7.1 will be available early next week, so stay tuned.