Questions about Sessions and Conversion Attribution when using UTM Forwarder

[mannyindigoag]

Hi everyone,

Long time lurker, first time poster here. I'm in the process of implementing Sanford's UTM Forwarder and would love to have some advice from anyone who has previous experience with this.

Since this script effectively parses the last available query string/UTM tags a person follows onto URL and then loads the form after the URL's been modified, will this be counted as starting a new session in the middle of the current session? We do have Google Analytics and Bizible running on the background, and I want to ensure that this won't interfere with how those platforms identify and attribute touchpoints and conversions as well as avoid any potential internal tagging issues such as inflated sessions, incorrect session duration, … 

A quick example of this: A prospect visited our webpage through one of our ads, dropped off, then came back the next day organically to fill out a form. In that scenario, normally Google Analytics and Bizible will attribute the first touchpoint to our ad channel and the 2nd touchpoint (which led to a conversion), to our organic channel. Will this script make it so both touchpoints will now be attributed to paid channel? 

Any more insights and feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

[SanfordWhiteman]

Hi @mannyindigoag, sorry for the delay. Been meaning to get back to this one but lots of other stuff came up.

You probably shouldn't be using the UTM forwarder if you also have something sophisticated and multi-session/multi-touch like Bizible running. But not because there's a conflict per se, I would just wonder why.

As long as Biz and GA see the page before you append the params (load order is important) they won't start a new session. Even safer would be restoring different query param values (not utm_campaign but utm_campaign_restored, for example) that would never be considered a new session. But then it wouldn't be a simple 15-line forwarder anymore. 🙂