UTM link builder for campaign tracking.

Tip: hit return to quickly copy the URL to your clipboard :)

How to work with UTM tags.

Analytics is there to get insights. One important aspect is to get grip on where traffic is coming from. Adding campaign information to external links is key to accomplish this, and UTM parameters help you do this.

Why should you use UTM?

It’s valuable to know where traffic is coming from, you can see find this in your analytics report. Using Google Analytics or a privacy friendly alternative like Smolbig. To improve the data and reports there, you can add UTM’s.

That way you can see if traffic is coming from LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook. If you are running paid ads you’ll see the difference between paid ads and social posts. Or measure the success of different campaigns like a product launch and a summer sale.

When you track details like this you learn more about what content on which platform works, improving your marketing over time and allocating resources to what is successful.

What are those UTM codes in your URL?

You add parameters to your URL on external platforms. That way analytics tools like Google Analytics and Smolbig have more information where a visitor is coming from. The result, better reports about the performance of your marketing efforts.

Examples always work best, if we would run an ad on LinkedIn for this page we would not use:

https://smolbig.com/tools/utm/

But probably something like this:

https://smolbig.com/tools/utm/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=cpc&utm_name=launch-utm-tool

As you can see the URL now has a bit more information about the where a visitor comes from, through which medium and the reason.

What does UTM mean?

Short history lesson here, the abbreviation UTM is short for “Urchin Tracking Module” and developed by Urchin Software Corporation, a company acquired by Google in 2005.

Why use a free UTM link builder?

The Smolbig UTM builder is free to use. We use it a lot ourself and want to share it with you, it makes working with UTM’s a lot easier because you have a cheatsheet. That way you’ll never forget a parameter.

UTM links explained, what do they mean?

  • Webpage URL: where traffic is going, your webpage.
  • Source UTM tag: where traffic is coming from, newsletter, facebook, instagram, linkedin, etc.
  • Medium UTM tag: how the traffic is getting there, social (post), cpc (ad), email (newsletter), etc.
  • Campaign UTM tag: why traffic is going there, summer-sale-2024, product-launch, etc.

Using UTM’s needs practice.

Those are the basics, it’s best to start adding UTM to your URL’s today and practice. You’ll get the hang of it. Do make sure you have an analytics tool, like Smolbig, in your website.

And don’t forget to regularly analyse your analytics reports and see what you can learn from the results!