UTM best practices?

[Hank_Hansen]

Are there any downsides to putting UTM values into custom fields to retain this information with a lead? I'm using embedded forms on our site (no landing pages yet) and hidden fields with custom fields for the UTM values.

I'm also following some discussions about passing the UTM values into cookies so it's not lost if a conversion doesn't occur and the users comes back to convert in a subsequent visit. That's of interest down the road a bit.

[John_Clark1]

Hi Hank,

Using custom fields is the standard way to capture this kind of information, and is how we here in support recommend that it be done.

The only downside I can think of is that these fields could be overwritten if I a lead filled out your form again, but if you  block them from updates then there's no problem.

John

[Josh_Hill13]

I talk alot about this and you need to consider the data and what you will do with it: First Touch (blocked)/ Last Touch - most recent. ..which is where John mentions the field blocking and overwriting things.

There are some threads on this and if you do a search, you will find a ton of content.

[Hank_Hansen]

Thanks John & Josh - important considerations to plan for.

[Dan_Stevens_]

We capture about 5 UTM parameters in 5 hidden fields on our forms.  When submitted, our smart campaigns are designed to move leads (from a master program where the form exists) into the specific peer (channel-specific) programs that we create to ensure proper program membership is given depending on how the lead was referred to the web page (where we too use an embedded form on that page).  For example, the field "Avanade UTM Source" is evaluated to determine if the source was from a remarketing ad or an email/edm - at which point it sends the lead to the campaign in the appropriate program for assignment of the program status in that program - in this case "filled out form"

Once all of this has been processed, we reset the UTM fields back to NULL, so that the lead can participate in additional marketing tactics without the confusion of leftover UTM values.

[Hank_Hansen]

Thanks for the info Dan!

[Anonymous]

Thanks for sharing Dan! We use a similar setup to capture leads by asset-channel.

On your CRM side, do you limit the number of channel ("child") campaigns that are associated to an asset? This is becoming difficult to manage on our end as their are many different channels to promote an asset, but they don't all convert as well as one another.

[Dan_Stevens_]

Alex, we don't integrate with any campaigns in CRM since we're on MS Dynamics and Marketo doesn't sync with the campaign entity with Dynamics.