What are UTM parameters and how should we tag campaigns?
UTMs tell your analytics where a visit came from. A naming convention keeps the data usable.
UTM parameters are five optional tags you add to the end of a link so your analytics can tell where a visit came from. The parameters are the easy part. The naming convention is what decides whether the data is still usable a year from now.
The five parameters
- utm_source: where the traffic came from. google, facebook, newsletter, partnername.
- utm_medium: the type of channel. cpc, email, paid-social, organic-social, referral, display.
- utm_campaign: the campaign name. spring-promo-2026.
- utm_term: the keyword. Mostly used for manually tagged paid search.
- utm_content: which creative or which link. Use it to split two versions of an ad, or the header button from the footer button in the same email.
Source and medium are the two that matter most, because they are what GA4 builds its channel groupings from. Get those wrong and your channel report is wrong.
The convention that keeps the data clean
- Lowercase everything. Analytics treats Facebook and facebook as two different sources, and you will end up with both.
- No spaces. Hyphens only.
- Fix the medium values to a short written list and do not improvise. One list, shared, in one document.
- Use one campaign name per campaign, spelled identically across email, social, paid and partner links.
- Never put UTMs on internal links inside your own site. It starts a new session and overwrites the original source of the visit.
Two things people get wrong
First, auto-tagging. Google Ads adds its own click identifier automatically and does not need UTMs, and stacking both can cause conflicts. Meta, LinkedIn and most email tools do need manual UTMs. Decide per platform rather than blanket tagging everything.
Second, UTMs only describe the visit. They do not follow the person into your CRM by themselves. Pass them into hidden form fields so the lead record keeps them, which is the part that turns campaign data into reporting you can act on.
Related: How do you track lead source in a CRM?, Why don't GA4 and my ad platform conversion numbers match?, What kinds of dashboards can you build?, 5 Use Cases For Using GA4