How to create a UTM link (and keep your campaign data clean)

When someone lands on your website, analytics tools try to work out where they came from. Links in emails, PDFs, messaging apps and many social apps often arrive with no referrer at all, so the visit gets lumped into “direct” traffic. UTM parameters fix that by labelling the link itself.

What a UTM link looks like

A UTM link is a normal URL with a few extra query parameters on the end:

https://example.com/pricing?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=october_launch

The page is the same for the visitor. Your analytics tool reads the tags and records the visit against that source, medium and campaign.

The five standard parameters

• utm_source — who sent the traffic: newsletter, linkedin, partner_site.
• utm_medium — the type of channel: email, social, cpc, referral.
• utm_campaign — the specific promotion: october_launch, black_friday_2026.
• utm_term (optional) — usually the paid search keyword.
• utm_content (optional) — tells apart links within the same campaign, such as header_button and footer_link.

Source, medium and campaign are the three you should set every time. Google Analytics 4 also uses the medium to sort traffic into its default channel groups, so sticking to widely used values such as email, social and cpc keeps those reports accurate.

Step by step

1. Copy the exact URL of the page you want people to visit.
2. Open the UTM builder and paste the URL.
3. Fill in source, medium and campaign using your naming convention (see below).
4. Copy the generated link and use it wherever you share the page.
5. Click the link once yourself and check that it opens the right page.

A naming convention that keeps reports clean

UTM values are case-sensitive, and analytics tools won’t merge near-duplicates for you. Email, email and e-mail become three rows in your report. A few simple rules avoid most of the mess:

• Use lowercase everywhere.
• Use underscores or hyphens instead of spaces — pick one and stick with it.
• Keep a shared list (even a simple spreadsheet) of approved source and medium values.
• Put the date or season in the campaign name when you run the same promotion more than once.

Where not to use UTM links

Don’t add UTM parameters to links between pages on your own site. When a visitor clicks a tagged internal link, analytics starts a new attribution for that visit, so the real source — the search engine or email that brought them — is overwritten.

Using UTM links offline

Printed material can be tracked too. Build the UTM link first, then turn it into a code with the QR code generator. Visits from the flyer or poster will then show up under their own source and campaign.