Tracking UTM Parameters

Tracking UTM Parameters

In a considerable amount of cases we see companies that invest vast amounts of money in campaigns and advertising, but don't get the accurate information about the effectiveness of those campaigns.

Each company runs different types of campaigns, and of course, they would like to know which is the best channel to invest in.

One of the issues is when a lead enters the website a few times and only then decides to fill out a form, meaning he was an anonymous lead until he decided to fill a form on the website.

Anonymous - People whose web activity is tracked, but their identity is not yet known.

‘Lead’ - an identified person, an identified person, is someone who has an interest in your business and has given you details about himself (most often name and email address).

There are some ways to get tracking information about your website visitors, for example

Google Analytics, Plugins for the dashboard of your website. However, we see that many times clients complain that the information that they are getting is inaccurate and lacks important details.

We have decided to explore those issues and realized that we could also use Marketo to our advantage.

We realized that using UTM parameters for measuring your marketing activities will allow you to track the traffic you send to your landing pages and overall website.

With proper usage, you will learn which traffic sources bring you the best return on investment (ROI), which will then allow you to determine where is the best to invest your budget.

If you are using paid channels such as LinkedIn or Facebook ads, you will be able to compare the efficiency of each channel, and, in the long run, determine what portion of your marketing budget to invest in each channel.

One of the variables that we wanted to use was the UTM source; this is one of the UTM parameters that provide us with information and gives us the source of the visitor.

For example, someone entered your website with Utm_source=X, the next day he entered the website with Utm_source=Y and didn't make any engagement.

You as a marketer would like to know which of the two was his first source.

Another example is when someone entered your website with Utm_source=X,

the next day he entered the website with Utm_source=Y and filled out a form. Your interest can also be finding out what was his last source before filling out the form.

There are some meanings to the term "source," and everyone should decide which one is the best fit for him:

- The last UTM source that the lead had before he filled out the form.

- The first UTM source that the lead had for the first time that he visited the site.

We have created a set of smart campaigns that will also provide us the information from Marketo, and we will be able to crosscheck it with other channels.

Smart campaigns

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Smart List

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Flow

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Those Smart campaigns can be used for every UTM parameter that you wish.

From our experience, the best way is to use multiple channels to monitor the activity of your website visitors. Utilizing these parameters optimally will let you make the most out of your marketing budget.

Ronen Wasserman
4 REPLIES 4

Re: Tracking UTM Parameters

Thanks for Sharing! this is helpful.

Karan Hari
Senior Product Manager - Marketo Engage

Re: Tracking UTM Parameters

We are using UTMs for our digital programs, but we are having issues with them being stripped out once they enter Marketo. We know on the front end of what we should see in terms of conversions for each of the UTMs, but not seeing this in Marketo. We have spoke with Marketo Support, worked with our web team, etc. and we still cannot figure it out. Have you heard of this before?

Re: Tracking UTM Parameters

Hi Karen,

We would suggest checking the munchkin code and see if it works properly.

If you already checked the issue with Marketo support, it seems that it would take a more thorough analysis to find the cause to this issue.

Feel free to PM us.

Ronen Wasserman

Re: Tracking UTM Parameters

Thanks for sharing Ronen Wasserman​ . This is really helpful.

Best regards,
Sant Singh Rathaur