Campaign tagging is the science of adding the right campaign tracking codes to your marketing campaign URLs, in order to generate accurate and more detailed data about your visitors.
A URL without the campaign tagging looks like this:
https://www.camptag.ai/product.html
Though this URL will send your customers to the right page and show the right information, it does not collect any information about your visitor.
But by adding campaign tracking codes to the end of the URL, you can capture some vital information about the visitors to your website, from various campaigns like PPC, social media campaigns, email marketing, affiliate marketing, press releases and more.
https://www.camptag.ai/product.html?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=prodlaunch&utm_term=utmtagging
The extra terms in your URL are called parameters or dimensions which are assigned specific values depending on where your campaigns are running.
You can add any number of UTM parameters to your campaign URLs to capture the information you want. The most common ones are:
utm_source – This dimension specifies where the traffic comes from.
If your visitor comes from a Google ads search campaign, it would say
utm_source=googlesearch
If you visitor comes from an email campaign, the parameter value would be
utm_source=mailchimp
utm_medium – This dimension specifies what kind of campaign brought in your traffic.
If your channel is paid marketing, the dimension would be
utm_medium=ppc
If your visitor comes from an email campaign, the dimension would be
utm_medium=email
utm_campaign – This dimension is used to denote the type of campaign you are running, say ‘lead generation’ or ‘branding’ or ‘Christmas sale’
utm_campaign=leadgen or utm_campaign=christmas21
utm_term – This dimension denotes the keyword used by the visitor to arrive at your website. It’s very insightful to know what keywords brought in the inquiries, so that you understand what search terms to spend money on.
utm_term=campaigntagging or utm_term=customurlbuilder
utm_content – This dimension denotes the type of ads like text ads, banner ads, carousels, header, logo etc.
utm_content=textad or utm_content=headerlogo
In addition to these common parameters, you can also add many custom parameters like product category, sub-category, geography, goal and almost anything you want.
If you would like help with adding hundreds of campaign dimensions, including custom dimensions, reach out to CampTag, the awesome marketing taxonomy and campaign URL builder.
While UTM parameters are still very popular with marketers and widely used in campaigns, many are now moving towards utm_id or cid (campaign ID). In this case, the URL is very simple and short.
https://www.camptag.ai/product.html?utm_id=355478
https://www.camptag.ai/product.html?cid=457866
As you can see, these URL formats have some advantages:
Read this article for more information about importing campaign data to Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics.
There are many manual as well as automatic ways of tagging campaign URLs. Here are the most commonly used methods for campaign URL tagging.
As and when the campaigns are created on a platform, the destination URL is typed in with parameters like utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign and anything else that’s necessary for you to get accurate data.
But this method is error-prone, and a small data entry error at this stage can even lead to the wrong landing page, or give you wrong data.
There are many simple, easy-to-use URL builders that can help you tag campaign URLs in a few easy clicks.
They have some limitations in terms of the number of UTM parameters you can add, and also that you have to copy-paste or type each parameter value.
The final URL generated should also be copied and pasted into the campaign URL field.
These free URL builder spreadsheet templates can help you create campaign URLs in bulk very easily. Macros to take care of null values, easy concatenations and data validation, ensures that you have a reasonably error-proof system to generate campaign URLs.
Collaboration, locking cells to make them non-editable, and maintaining version histories are also possible with Google spreadsheets.
Limitations of Google spreadsheet URL builders is lack of access controls, data entry errors and scalability.
Our team has worked with top organizations to come up with a Marketing Taxonomy and URL builder tool that incorporates all the best features of the previous systems, like creating custom dimensions, collaboration, import/export functions.
In addition to this, CampTag allows you to create different workspaces so that you can have complete access control for your team members. It’s easily scalable, allowing you to create hundreds or even thousands of custom dimensions in a few easy clicks.
And here’s what we are proud of – Marketing Taxonomy. Not many marketers give a lot of attention to naming campaigns. Names like leadgen2021 or videocampaignUS is very common. These names make it difficult to understand the nature of the campaign, when you have thousands of rows of campaign data.
With CampTag, you can create campaign names that incorporate values from your dimensions, making your campaign taxonomy near-perfect.
Would you like to try out our awesome campaign taxonomy and URL builder tool.
The mantra here is ‘Any incoming link to your website must be tagged.’
Paid Marketing campaigns
Whether you are running these campaigns on Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat or any of the common platforms, the links in your ads, banners, or videos should be tagged.
Email campaigns
All email campaigns, whether adhoc ones or regular newsletters should have the links tagged accurately to give you information on what works, and what does not.
PR
It is very important to get accurate information about the performance of your press releases, especially since you do not have too much control of which websites will feature your press releases.
PR syndication websites will have a network of websites, both big and small where your press releases get published. Tag all URLs in your press releases for insightful information on your PR ROI.
Article or blog submissions
Most marketers engage in article submissions and guest blogging to get backlinks to their websites. Though it might be difficult to tag these links, it would be helpful if you could.
Try to tag any and all links to your website, so that you can understand where your visitors come from, and which of your marketing activities are the most effective.
Offline campaigns
Here’s a good way to tag links in newspapers, magazines or billboards. You can add a vanity url like www.campatag.ai/customurls and redirect that to a campaign tagged URL like
https://www.camptag.ai/product.html?utm_source=thenews&utm_medium=newspaper&utm_campaign=leadgen
As I’ve mentioned earlier, try to tag ANY AND ALL LINKS directed to your website, using paid or organic campaigns.
If you need help with campaign tagging your URLs, reach out to CampTag. We will ensure that you campaigns are tagged accurately and effectively, for the best results.