It is important to know if your emails are opened. But what do your recipients do after clicking? That is the real question, one that can be answered thanks to UTM tags, which offer a true follow-up of your email campaigns. But one must still know how to use them precisely. In this article, learn how to get the most value from UTM tags. Objective: move from raw data collection to a detailed analysis of your performance, without losing clarity or reliability.
What is a UTM tag? A quick and clear reminder
UTM tags (“Urchin Tracking Module” in English) are parameters added to the end of a URL. Their purpose is to allow tools like Google Analytics to accurately trace the traffic source to a site. Concretely, they serve to answer this crucial question: which campaign (and which link in that campaign) generated this click?
Thanks to these tags, marketers can better understand user journeys, differentiate the effectiveness of their communication channels, and refine their strategy accordingly.
For example:
URL without UTM tag: https://your-site.com/promo
URL with UTM tags: .../promo?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=promo_may_2025
The five UTM parameters and their utility
| UTM Tag | Role | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| utm_source | Indicates the source of the traffic | newsletter, mailchimp, linkedin |
| utm_medium | Indicates the type of channel | email, sms, cpc |
| utm_campaign | Name of the marketing campaign | promo_summer_2025, blackfriday_b2b |
| utm_term | Keyword (often used for paid search) | client_b2b, vip_earlyaccess |
| utm_content | Differentiates multiple links in the same campaign | top_button, bottom_image_link |
Why use UTM tags in your email campaigns?
Integrating UTM tags in your email campaigns allows you to:
- Analyze the actual performance of your emails (beyond open rates).
- Isolate the campaigns, sources, and content that generate the most conversions.
- Better measure the ROI of each action.
- Test different elements within the same email.
- Automate campaign reporting in your analytics tools.
- Avoid misattributed data in Google Analytics (the “direct” channel might obscure a poorly tagged email click).
How to correctly integrate UTM tags in emailing
Use a custom URL generator to avoid manual errors.
Do not rely on ad-hoc copy-pasting; typing or case errors can skew your data. Generators such as Google’s or UTM.io ensure a clean, consistent structure easily readable by your analytics tools.
Maintain a consistent naming convention.
A clear naming convention avoids duplicates in Google Analytics. For example, Email and email will be considered different sources. Choose a standardization rule (lowercase, underscores separators, no accents) and apply it strictly.
Document your tags in a shared tracking table.
Use a centralized file, ideally shared internally, to list all your tags by campaign. This avoids redundancies, keeps a history, and unifies UTM strategy among all team members.
Do not use all parameters if they are unnecessary: simplify without losing useful information.
For example, if you send a single version of your email to a single segment, utm_content or utm_term might not be indispensable.
Too many parameters make your links unreadable and do not always add value to the analysis.
Always test your links in a preview environment before sending.
Before any send (especially in large quantities), open each link, check that the landing page displays correctly and that the UTM parameters appear as expected. This way, you can detect tagging errors or broken links before they reach your recipients.
For example:
Bad UTM: utm_campaign=PromoSummer and utm_source=NL
These tags present several issues: the use of uppercase can lead to data duplication in Google Analytics (“PromoSummer” will be counted separately from “promo_summer”), accents can generate encoding errors, and the abbreviation “NL” is not very descriptive, making analysis more complex.
Good UTM: utm_campaign=promo_april_2025 & utm_source=newsletter_march
This version is much clearer and more effective. The names are in lowercase, words are separated by underscores for better readability, accents have been removed to avoid any technical problems, and the source is descriptive enough to be easily identified in reports.
5 key errors to avoid
1) Leaving the automatic tags of your emailing tool unchanged, as these are often generic or imprecise and risk skewing your traffic analysis.
2) Using generic campaign names, such as “test” or “email1,” which do not allow for precise identification of a specific campaign’s performance.
3) Multiplying variations for the same campaign without documentation. This practice makes analysis difficult and prevents proper comparison of results between versions.
4) Not checking the compatibility of links with your tracking tool. A poorly formatted link or one blocked by a redirection system can compromise the transmission of UTM data.
5) Ignoring GA4, because even if you tag your links correctly, you need to exploit these data in an appropriate analysis tool. GA4 being the current standard, ensure your tracking environment is configured to accommodate and interpret these parameters.
Which tools to generate and track your UTM tags?
Among the most used tools, there is the Google Campaign URL Builder, which allows you to easily create custom UTM links. Another interesting alternative is UTM.io, a platform dedicated to the centralized management of UTM parameters with collaborative features.
Many emailing tools such as ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp, or Brevo also offer internal generators that facilitate the automatic addition of UTM tags when creating a campaign.
Finally, for effective tracking, you can use Google Sheets or Airtable spreadsheets with integrated custom formulas, to document and reuse your tags in a structured manner.
