UTM parameters: how to use them and what to look out for

You send a newsletter, run an ad and post a link. A week later you want to know which of them brought visitors. UTM parameters are how a link answers that question.

This article explains what UTM parameters are, how to name them so your reports stay clean, which mistakes wreck them and how Privatrak reports them. To build a link as you read, use the free UTM builder.

What UTM parameters are

UTM parameters are the extra details at the end of a link. They are also called UTM tags or campaign parameters. A link with them looks like this:

https://example.com/spring-sale?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=spring-sale

Visitors don’t notice them, and the page opens as usual. An analytics tool reads them when the link is opened and files the visit under that source, medium and campaign. Without them, a visit from a newsletter, an app or a PDF often arrives with no information about where it came from.

Source, medium and campaign name are the three to fill in every time. The other two are optional.

How to add UTM parameters to a link

1. Pick the link. It should lead to your site from somewhere else: a newsletter, an ad, a social post or a partner’s website.
2. Choose source, medium and campaign name from your own list of names (see the convention below).
3. Build the link. The first parameter follows a ?, the next ones are joined with &, and everything comes before a # part, if the address has one. The free UTM builder does this for you and warns you about the mistakes further down.
4. Open the finished link in a private browser window and check that it lands on the right page.

A UTM naming convention you can copy

UTM parameters only help when the same thing always has the same name. A convention is a few rules written down once:

• Lower case only. email, never Email.
• Dashes instead of spaces. spring-sale, never Spring Sale.
• Source is the place, medium is the kind. linkedin is a source, social is a medium.
• The campaign name is the effort, not the place. Add a year or a month if the campaign comes back, like spring-sale-2027.
• Keep a list. A short sheet of the sources and media you use is enough. Everyone picks from it instead of inventing a new spelling.

These are examples of how a convention can look:

There is no official list of values. What matters is that email in March is still email in October. Use utm_content for the position of a link, like header and footer, and utm_term only for paid search keywords.

UTM mistakes that wreck your reports

Capital letters that split one value into two

Many reports treat Email and email as two different values, so one newsletter shows up as two rows and each has half the visitors. Write everything in lower case and the problem can’t happen.

Tagging links inside your own site

A link from one page of your site to another doesn’t need UTM parameters. In many analytics tools, a visitor who clicks such a link can start a new visit, and the tags replace the real source: the visitor who came from a search engine now looks like they came from your homepage banner. Use UTM parameters only on links that lead to your site from elsewhere.

Tagging what the referrer already says

When someone clicks a link on a partner’s website, their browser usually tells your site which website it was. The tag then adds a name, not new information. Tags earn their place where the browser says nothing: emails, PDFs, messaging apps, QR codes and the in-app browsers of social apps. They also help when you want to tell two placements on the same website apart. Tagging every link out of habit gives you more names to keep tidy for no extra insight.

Spaces and special characters

A space in a value turns into %20 or + in the link, and other special characters are encoded too. The link gets long and hard to read, and a value typed with a space in one link and a dash in another becomes two campaigns. Letters, digits and dashes keep it clean.

Email addresses and other personal details

A link doesn’t stay private. It shows up in analytics reports, in server logs, in browser history and in the referrer that your site sends on to the next one. Never put an email address, a name or a customer number in a UTM parameter, for example to see which subscriber clicked. If you need that, use your email tool’s own reports.

Changing names in the middle of a campaign

Links you have already sent can’t change. If you rename the campaign in the second newsletter, the first and the second land in different rows, and you add them up by hand. Decide the names before the first link goes out, and keep them until the campaign ends.

The # part in the wrong place

Some addresses end with a # part, like #pricing, which jumps to a section of the page. UTM parameters belong in front of it. Behind it, they sit inside the fragment, which the browser doesn’t send to the server and analytics tools usually don’t read, so the visit arrives untagged. Adding parameters by hand to an address like this is where it goes wrong most often. The UTM builder keeps the # part at the end for you.

Redirects and link shorteners that drop parameters

A redirect, a link shortener or a sign-in page can lose the part after the ?on its way to your site. Before you send a link to thousands of people, open it in a private window and look at the address of the page you land on. If the UTM parameters are gone, the campaign can’t be told apart from other visits.

Very long links

Every extra word in a value makes the link longer. Long links are awkward in emails and print, and some tools cut them off. Short names such as spring-sale are easier to read in a report, too.

How Privatrak reports UTM parameters

Privatrak reads all five parameters, and ref as well, which some websites add to their links. You see the result on two pages:

• Sources shows where all your visitors came from: search engines, social networks, AI assistants, other websites and your campaign links.
• Campaigns shows the visitors who came through campaign links, by campaign name and link variant.

The rules behind the numbers:

• Each visitor counts once per day, under the link that brought them to their first page that day. A visitor who comes in through your newsletter in the morning and through a search engine in the afternoon counts for the newsletter.
• A tagged link decides the source, even when the visitor also came from another website. utm_source=newsletter counts for the newsletter.
• Source and medium ignore capital letters. Newsletter and newsletter are one source. Campaign name, link variant and search term keep theirs, so Spring-Sale and spring-sale are two rows. That is one more reason for lower case throughout.
• Visitors from your own site are not a source. If a visitor opens their first page of the day from a page of your site, Privatrak doesn’t list that as a source.
• Counting starts when your project starts counting sources. Visits from earlier days have no source and campaign.

Privatrak sets no cookies, so in many countries no consent banner is needed for it. The article Do you need a cookie banner for analytics? explains when that holds.

This is general information, not legal advice.

The Campaigns page has a link builder of its own, Create campaign link. It suggests names you already use, so your newsletter is spelled the same way every time, and warns about capital letters and spaces. To measure what a campaign leads to, such as sign-ups or sales, Track a campaign with UTM parameters shows the steps.