What is a UTM?

UTM stands for "Urchin Traffic Monitor," and it refers to a system for tracking and analyzing website traffic. Originally developed by a company called Urchin Software Corporation, UTM parameters are now widely used in online marketing and analytics.

UTM parameters are tags that you can add to the end of a URL, allowing you to track the effectiveness of your online marketing campaigns. These parameters provide information to analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, about the source, medium, campaign name, and other details associated with a particular link. By using UTM parameters, you can better understand where your website traffic is coming from and measure the success of your various marketing efforts.

The typical UTM parameters include:

1. utm_source: The source of the traffic (e.g., Google, Facebook, newsletter).
2. utm_medium: The marketing medium (e.g., CPC, social, email).
3. utm_campaign: The name of the specific marketing campaign.
4. utm_term: The keywords associated with a paid search campaign.
5. utm_content: Used to differentiate similar content or links within the same campaign.

For example, a URL with UTM parameters might look like this:

https://example.com/page?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=summer_sale&utm_term=sunglasses&utm_content=ad1

By analyzing the data collected through UTM parameters, businesses can make informed decisions about their marketing strategies, identifying which channels are most effective in driving traffic and conversions.

UTM Tracking in Click Forms

Click offers UTM parameters that can be used to track the source of your visitors to help establish how efficiently your social posts, campaigns, or web pages are reaching your audience. These parameters can be added to the end of the URLs for your digital ads, emails, social posts, or web pages.

Click provides two different ways to pull UTM parameters into a Form Submission: via Widget Embed or via Single Input Fields

UTM Tracking via Single Input Fields

In the Form Designer, Single Input fields can be mapped to UTM parameters, so that the UTM parameters will be included in the Form Submission's associated Form Field records. This method works with standalone non-embedded Forms and with widget-embedded Forms. It does not work for iFrame-embedded Forms. 

To track UTM parameters via a Single Input Form Field, in the Form Designer create a Single Input Form Field mapped to UTM:

Then, in this Form Field's mapping properties, select the specific UTM Parameter that you would like to pull into the field:

Now, whenever someone submits this Form while the corresponding UTM parameter is present in the Form URL, that UTM parameter will be included in the Posted Field record generated for this specific Form Field. Of course, if the UTM Parameter is not present in the Form URL, there will be nothing for the UTM Single Input field to capture. 

You are free to add multiple Single Input Form Fields to capture any or all of the five UTM parameters.

A Single Input Form Field mapped to a UTM parameter will be hidden in the live Form, so that nobody viewing the live Form will be able to see your Single Input UTM fields. Your UTM Single Input fields are available for use with Form Logic.

UTM Tracking via Widget Embed

UTM Form Tracking is available for Click Web Content Forms created using both the Form Builder (Old) as well as the Form Designer (New) via Widget embed. However, please note that this method is only available in UCI environments and for forms that are embedded into a page using the Embed as Widget option.

This method of UTM Tracking is not available for the Embed as Iframe nor the Embed as Link options. It is also not available for use with basic Form Captures nor Form Captures integrated with Gravity Forms.

UTM Tracking will automatically be enabled for newly created Web Content Forms using any editor; however, for Forms created using the Form Builder (Legacy), you will need to re-save any existing Forms to apply the code for UTM tracking to be enabled. To do this navigate to the Web Content record that you want updated and select Design:

Once the form builder loads, select Save:

This will apply the appropriate code to allow UTM Tracking for that form.

Note: This will need to be done for each existing form that you would like to have UTM tracking enabled on.

Available Parameters

The following are the UTM parameters that are currently available for tracking:

• Source (utm_source): Helps identify the source of referral traffic to inform you of where your traffic came from.
• Medium (utm_medium): Labels the marketing channel from which the lead originates.
• Campaign (utm_campaign): Identifies a specific campaign or promotion and allows you to track the performance of a specific campaign.

Note: In order for the UTM Campaign field to link to and populate with the related Dynamics Campaign, the value for the "utm_campaign=" URL Parameter needs to be formatted properly.

For Campaign Names that have no spaces or are single words, no extra formatting is needed. For Example,

www.example.com?utm_campaign=googleads

For Campaign Names with multiple words or spaces in between, proper formatting is needed in any one of the following format options.

Option 1: Replace space with "+"

www.example.com?utm_campaign=Brand+Awareness+Search+Ads

Option 2: Replace space with "%20" in between words 

www.example.com?utm_campaign=Brand%20Awareness%20Search%20Ads

Option 3: Replace space with "_"

www.example.com?utm_campaign=Brand_Awareness_Search_Ads

• Term (utm_term): Indicates referral keyword from a paid search campaign.
• Content (utm_content): Applied to A/B testing to identify targeted content, ads, and links used to drive traffic to the same URL from different audiences or experiences.

These parameters will need to be added to the end URL of the page(s) that contain the widgets for your Web Content Forms. The parameters will need to be added to a query string and each one should be separated by an '&' symbol. Below is an example of UTM parameters applied to a Google page:

www.google.com?utm_medium=google&utm_source=demo&utm_campaign=2023+Campaign&utm_term=UTM+tracking&utm_content=style-2

Checking the UTM Parameters

For each submission that is made to a form with UTM Tracking via Widget available, you can check the UTM parameters on the created Form Submission record for that submission, as well as on the Lead/Contact record.

To check the Form Submission , you can navigate to Web and Events > Forms Submissions, select the submission you want to view, and select the UTM tab:

The UTM Campaign field will link to a Campaign Name or Campaign Code if a matching record is found. If no matching Campaign Name or Campaign Code is found in Dynamics, then this field will not be filled in. This is due to this field being a lookup field and requiring a record to link to.

To check the Lead/Contact record, you can navigate to Audience > Leads/Contacts, select the Lead/Contact record that you want to check, and select the ClickDimensions tab:

This will show you the UTM First Touch and UTM Last Touch sections. The UTM First Touch section will populate if:

• A form submission with added UTM parameters results in a new Lead/Contact record being created.
• A Lead is converted into a Contact record. In this case, the both the UTM First Touch and UTM Last Touch fields on the Contact will be inherited from the converted Lead.

Note: The UTM First Touch section will not update if subsequent submissions with UTM values are made. It will only update for the first submission.

The UTM Last Touch section contains only the Source and Campaign values as the other UTM values are best used for identifying how a Lead/Contact was initially generated. This section will be populated/updated if:

• An existing Lead/Contact without UTM values submits a form with UTM values. In this case, the UTM Last Touch fields will populate with the UTM values from that submission.
  
  
• Any subsequent form submissions are made for a Lead/Contact with UTM values. This helps to show that Lead/Contact's latest interaction.