UTM parameters explained, with a naming scheme that survives a busy quarter

UTM parameters are labels added to the end of a URL. They do not change the page a visitor sees. They tell your analytics tool where that visitor came from, so that two people landing on the same page can be counted under two different campaigns.

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

The five parameters

• utm_source is who sent the visitor: newsletter, linkedin, partner_acme.
• utm_medium is the kind of channel: email, social, cpc, qr.
• utm_campaign is the initiative: autumn_launch, webinar_growth_playbook.
• utm_content tells two links in the same message apart: header_button, footer_link.
• utm_term records the keyword for paid search.

Source, medium and campaign do most of the work. Use content and term when you have a specific question they answer, and leave them out otherwise.

A scheme that holds up

Analytics tools treat Email, email and e-mail as three different mediums. Almost every messy UTM report comes from that, so the rules worth having are about spelling, not strategy.

1. Lower case, always. No exceptions for brand names.
2. Underscores between words. autumn_launch, not Autumn Launch or autumn-launch.
3. A fixed list of mediums. Decide the handful you use and do not invent new ones mid-campaign.
4. Source is a place, medium is a type. If you could swap it for another vendor, it is a medium.
5. Never tag internal links. A UTM on a link inside your own site overwrites where the visitor really came from.

Let the tool do the typing

Rules like these fail when people type tags by hand at five o'clock on launch day. In Lnki, Campaigns & UTM removes the typing: you create a campaign once, choose the channels it will run on, and get one tagged short link per channel. Channels are saved, so newsletter / email is spelled the same way next month.

Because each channel gets its own short link, you also get an answer inside Lnki without opening another tool. The Campaigns & UTM overview shows clicks per campaign and per channel, and the Tagged links tab lists every link whose destination carries UTM parameters.

A worked example

Say you are promoting a webinar by email, on LinkedIn and with a QR code at an event. That is one campaign, webinar_growth_playbook, on three channels: newsletter / email, linkedin / social and event_booth / qr. Three short links, one per channel, all pointing at the same registration page.

After the webinar you can see which channel filled the room, and the names will still make sense when you plan the next one. The campaign links tutorial builds exactly this, step by step.