- utm_medium
- utm_source
- utm_campaign
- utm_content
- utm_term
Parameters exist for marketing campaign tracking. Each Google Analytics parameter has a different purpose and requires different values (more on that later).
utm_medium is used to designate the channel of this particular marketing. This includes large sources of visitors like:
- Paid search
- Affiliate
- Offline Ads
utm_source should differentiate sources of traffic within a given channel. If you have an affiliate program, you could separate out traffic from Linkshare from Commission Junction. In paid search, you’d want to distinguish Google, Yahoo and MSN.
utm_campaign is unique among the parameters. It’s the only parameter that can be common among different sources and mediums.
For example, let’s say you sell Earth friendly products and you have a marketing campaign promoting canvas totes for Earth Day on April 22nd. You could be promoting this in a variety of channels–email, paid search, and affiliate banners.
You can see all of the activity for that campaign, regardless of channel, rolled up into one report. Just give the utm_campaign parameter the same value (discussed below), such as “earth-day-totes-042208″, for each tactic in your marketing campaign. You’ll be able to get the standard metrics in the Campaigns report: visits, page views, bounce rate, conversion, etc (Go to Traffic Sources, then Campaigns).
utm_content is meant to help you provide a bit more information about the creative/messaging that sent a visitor to your site. There are any number of ways to use it:
- Display – Banner size and message (e.g. 160×800-free-shipping)
- Paid search – Ad variation.
- Email – You could distinguish among the different locations of links, e.g. right-nav-link, offer-link.
utm_term is used only for non-AdWords paid search. Google automatically recognizes AdWords campaigns (if you want to get cost data in, you have to link it within AdWords under the report tab in the AdWords interface).
