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Higher Ed Marketing Memos by Emily Stulz

The Urchin Tracking Module World Takeover

UrchinIf you are like me, the first time you heard of the “Urchin Tracking Module” (or UTM parameters as they are more commonly known) you felt like you had stepped into a sci-fi movie you weren’t really ready for.

UTM parameters sounded interesting, were probably helpful and I knew I should want to learn more, but frankly, all these underscores and ampersands added to the web addresses (URLs) were exceptionally intimidating.

Now as a self-proclaimed quasi-user of UTM parameters, I don’t know how I ever worked without them.

Meet your best friends: UTM Parameters

So, what really are UTM parameters?

They are “assets” attached to the end of a link that can help track the path of the visitors who used this link. In other words, they can help gauge how people are accessing your website.

It’s that simple!

There are five categories of parameters you can attach to a URL:

  • Campaign Source (utm_source)
  • Campaign Medium (utm_medium)
  • Campaign Name (utm_campaign)
  • Campaign Term (utm_term)
  • Campaign Content (utm_content)

Personally, I only use source, medium and name. Because I usually create URLs for organic social posts, there aren’t differing ad creatives I need to test or specific keywords I am targeting within an ad set.

So, how do you actually make your UTM-tagged URL?

Google Campaign URL Builder

You can attach your parameters to your URL by hand, but it’s so much easier to do it using Google Analytics URL Builder

All you have to do is enter each parameter. Then, Google Builder automatically inserts them correctly into your link. Google supplies descriptions of each parameter underneath the box, so it’s easier to use the correct word for the correct parameter.

Before I use the URL builder though, I go to my running record of customized URLs. This helps me keep my parameters consistent in each URL I create. This running record of customized URLS is a Google spreadsheet based off one shared in the course on social media measurement for higher ed I took at Higher Ed Experts. On this sheet, I make sure to enter each of my parameters, as well as the original URL and the resulting URL with the attached parameters, in case I need to refer to them later.

Spreadsheet with all the UTM Parameters

I’ve learned a few things along the way when it comes to naming parameters, so here are a few tips:

  • Use all lowercase letters (no capital letters) as it makes the URL easier to read.
  • Use underscores to separate words if needed, not spaces. Spaces are automatically turned into plus signs (+) which makes your parameters harder to read.
  • Make sure to include the year or semester in your campaign content. In higher education, we have a lot of repeating events (annual giving campaigns, first day of classes, holiday breaks, etc.). Having ways to differentiate the events makes it easier to tie your data together

Put your UTM to good use

Now that you have your URL created, it is time to share and track it through Google Analytics. Yes, I said it. The dreaded GA for most social media pros, a tool so powerful no one truly knows how to access all it has to offer (well, except if you’ve taken one of the Analytics courses offered by Higher Ed Experts ;-).

To make it easier, I’ve created a super easy process to keep my analytics system set up consistent, so I don’t have to worry about computing numbers.

I follow these simple steps:

  1. Log into the email you use to access Google Analytics and create another user in your Chrome account.
  2. Install the “Page Analytics” Chrome extension by Google, so as soon as you land on a page you have access to the data surrounding it.
  3. In the top of the page bar, there is a link called “View in Google Analytics”. Click this and Google Analytics automatically opens with the correct configuration settings you need.

From here, you can reconfigure your settings to see the information you need. From age of users to what social platform they used, Google Analytics knows all!

Practice time!

Want to see an example?

Let’s step through the process with one of my recent social campaigns.

Every year, we create a “graduation party pack” of printable party favors for incoming students to display at their high school graduation parties. This year, I wanted to track how many people were visiting this “party favors” web page specifically from our Facebook post.

First, I labeled each of the parameters I wanted in my spreadsheet, as well as the original URL for the page. The parameters I used were:

  • Campaign Name: graduation-party-2017
  • Campaign Medium: social-media
  • Campaign Source: facebook
  • URL: www.nmu.edu/admissions/gradparty

Next, I entered this information in Google URL Builder. The resulting URL looked like this:
http://www.nmu.edu/admissions/gradparty?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social-media&utm_campaign=graduation-party-2017&utm_content=graduation-party-2017.

URL Builder Close-Up

This was too long and I wanted a little extra information, so I created a bit.ly link to use in my posts, which ended up as http://bit.ly/NMUGradParty2017.

Then came the moment of truth! I posted it all to Facebook and waited to see what would happen.

Facebook Post - NMU

I logged into my Northern chrome identity, went to www.nmu.edu/admissions/gradparty and activated the analytics extension. After switching the dates so that the analytics would show from the day before I posted the link on Facebook (May 12) to the last day of the month (May 31), I clicked “View in Analytics” to get the results.

I had two big questions for this data:

  1. How many people specifically visited this page because of the Facebook post?
  2. What was the age group of these people?

So, I opened Google analytics and went down into the menu. The first thing I did was click on the link labeled “Other”, right above the gray boxes with all the information. From the drop-down menu that appeared, I opened the label “Acquisition” and selected “Campaign.”

Google Analytics - Acquisition>Campaign

And, I could see that of the 334 pageviews (305 unique) we had received during that time period, 226 pageviews (205 unique) could be directly attributed to my campaign!

GA Report

To answer my second question, I went to the button labeled “Secondary Dimension” (right underneath). From this drop-down, I opened the label “User” and selected “Age.”

GA Report - Secondary Dimensions

I was now able to see (thanks to the UTM parameters I created) that of the 226 total pageviews and 205 unique pageviews over the past 30 days coming from my campaign, 76 pageviews (65 unique) came from viewers in the 18-24 age group.

I thought this would be my highest-performing category, but I was surprised to see that my second highest performing group was the 45-54 year olds with 40 pageviews (37 unique pageviews). It makes sense, since this is the age group of our students’ parents, but I didn’t think parents of were just as tuned into university’s social media accounts as they are.

The ability to track page views and visits referred by social media can provide even bigger insights when it comes to paid advertising, giving campaigns for alumni, etc. But, you won’t get this information (or at least not as easily!) without getting to know your urchin pals.

So, make friends with them. They look spiky, but they are super friendly!

Meet the Author: Emily Stulz

Emily Stulz is the Marketing Coordinator at Northern Michigan University. She is also a graduate of Higher Ed Experts’ professional certificate program in Social Media Measurement for Higher Ed

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