Website URL required

The destination URL (no query string yet)

utm_source required

Where the traffic comes from: facebook, google, tiktok, email, linkedin

utm_medium required

Marketing medium: paid, email, organic, referral, cpc, social

utm_campaign required

Campaign identifier — lowercase, dashes, no spaces

utm_content optional

Ad-level identifier (creative angle, variant)

utm_term optional

Ad set / audience identifier (or keyword in Google Ads)

utm_id optional, for GA4

GA4 campaign ID — use for stitching to Google Ads accounts

Your tracked URL

https://sliceofthepie.co/

Our naming convention

utm_source: the platform — facebook, google, tiktok
utm_medium: the channel type — paid, email, organic, cpc
utm_campaign: the campaign — lowercase, dashed
utm_content: the ad/creative — lowercase, dashed
utm_term: the ad set or keyword — lowercase

UTM parameters: small detail, huge attribution leverage

UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) parameters are the query strings appended to URLs that tell analytics platforms where traffic came from. Done right, they're the only consistent attribution signal across Meta, Google, GA4, and your back-end CRM. Done wrong, they create reporting chaos that's nearly impossible to unwind.

The 5 UTM parameters (and what they mean)

utm_source — the platform. facebook, google, linkedin, tiktok. Lowercase, no caps.

utm_medium — the medium type. paid, email, organic, referral, cpc, social.

utm_campaign — the campaign name. Lowercase, hyphenated. Examples: q1-launch, national-dtc, black-friday-2026.

utm_content — the specific ad/creative. Example: founder-ugc-15s-v1.

utm_term — the ad set or keyword. Example: 3a-hs-national.

The five rules of clean UTMs

Lowercase everything. GA4 treats Facebook and facebook as separate sources.

Use dashes, never spaces or underscores. black-friday not black_friday not Black Friday.

Pick a naming convention and write it down. Document every value used. Build a Notion doc. Stick to it.

Don't UTM internal links. Adding UTMs to links inside your own site overwrites attribution data — visitor came from Facebook, then clicked a UTM'd internal link, now GA thinks they came from "email."

Never put PII in UTMs. Email addresses or user IDs in utm_content end up in server logs, referrer headers, and break GDPR.

UTM red flags in your analytics

Open GA4 → Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition. If you see:

Multiple variants of "facebook" (Facebook, facebook, FACEBOOK, fb) — fix capitalization

"(not set)" in source/medium — UTMs were stripped somewhere (often Calendly or shortener)

50+ unique campaign names for a 5-campaign agency — naming wasn't standardized

"email" as both source AND medium on different URLs — pick one

Calendly + UTM passthrough

Calendly preserves UTM parameters from the landing page in its booking confirmation if you've enabled "Routing" with custom questions. Set up custom questions named utm_source, utm_campaign, utm_content and Calendly will auto-populate them from URL params. This is the only way to attribute paid leads to specific ads end-to-end.

Need help auditing your UTM setup? We do this on every audit. Book free audit →

Clean UTM tracking, in 30 seconds.