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Marketing glossary
What are UTM parameters?
UTM parameters help analytics software distinguish visits from particular links and campaigns. A small naming convention agreed in advance prevents a surprisingly large future archaeology project inside your reports.
What UTM parameters mean
The parameters appear after a question mark in a URL. The five standard labels are:
- utm_source: the specific source, such as
linkedinornewsletter; - utm_medium: the channel type, such as
paid-social,emailorqr; - utm_campaign: the agreed campaign name;
- utm_term: commonly used for a paid-search term or audience detail;
- utm_content: distinguishes links or creative within the same campaign.
Source, medium and campaign are the usual minimum. Term and content are optional when they answer a real reporting question.
A practical SME example
A consultancy promotes a webinar through its email newsletter, LinkedIn adverts and a printed letter with a QR code. It creates separate tagged links:
?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ai-webinar-sep-2026
?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=paid-social&utm_campaign=ai-webinar-sep-2026
?utm_source=direct-mail&utm_medium=qr&utm_campaign=ai-webinar-sep-2026
The destination remains the same, while analytics can group the shared campaign and compare recorded sources. The consultancy should test each link, keep names lower-case and store them in a campaign register rather than allowing everyone to improvise variants.
Why UTM parameters matter
Consistent tagging can:
- separate paid, organic, email, partner and offline-link traffic;
- preserve campaign names across platforms;
- compare creative or placements when
utm_contentis useful; - support marketing attribution and campaign reporting;
- stop unrecognised visits falling into vague referral or direct categories.
They are particularly helpful for channels that send people through links you control, including QR codes, partner newsletters, email signatures and downloadable documents.
Common mistakes
Inconsistent naming fragments one campaign into several rows. LinkedIn, linkedin and linked-in may be reported separately. Establish controlled values for common sources and media, then generate URLs from those values.
Do not tag internal website links. Clicking a UTM-tagged internal link can overwrite the visitor’s original acquisition information and create a false new source. Use event tracking or ordinary navigation analysis instead.
Avoid placing personal data or confidential information in parameters. URLs can appear in browser history, analytics, server logs and referrer information. A campaign label should describe marketing activity, not contain an individual’s email address or sensitive characteristics.
Finally, UTMs do not solve every attribution gap. Links may be copied, parameters stripped, cookies refused and journeys continued on another device or by telephone. They improve observation; they do not create a complete causal history.
Related guides
Related terms
Do UTM parameters affect the destination page?
They normally load the same page while passing tracking labels in the URL. The website and analytics configuration must preserve and record them correctly, so test tagged links before publishing a campaign.
Should UTM values use spaces or capital letters?
Use a documented, consistent convention, commonly lower-case words separated by hyphens. Spaces become encoded and capitalisation can split reports, so paid-social is usually easier to manage than improvised variations.
Who wrote this
Steve Ward.
Steve founded Epitomise in 2017 after UK, international and global marketing leadership roles, most recently as Global CMO of the Vitec Group’s Videocom Division. He works with SME and technology businesses on strategy, positioning and the execution that follows — more about Steve.
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