UTM Tags Dashboard

What this dashboard does

This dashboard allows the user to easily view how UTM codes are used to assign tracking sessions to a marketing channel by the Distil attribution model.

How to use this dashboard

This dashboard can be used to verify and monitor UTMs to ensure that attribution and tracking are as accurate as possible. 

The dashboard contains the following filters to enable the user to select what values are being shown on all charts in the dashboard.

• Channel - the marketing channel that each session is assigned
• Source - the UTM source of each session
• Medium - the UTM medium of each session
• Referrer - the referrer (the webpage where the visitor came from for the first time) for each session
• Campaign - the UTM campaign of each session
• Content - used to further define/describe variable ad content 
• Session Date - the date that each session was started.

Dashboard Definitions 

UTMs

• Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters are seven variants of URL parameters used by marketers to track the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns across traffic sources and publishing media. The UTM parameters in a URL identify the campaign that refers traffic to a specific website and attributes the browsers’ website session and the sessions after that until the campaign attribution window expires to it. The parameters can be parsed by analytics tools and used to populate reports.
• This example URL has the UTM parameters Content, Medium, Source and Campaign: https://www.example.com/page?utm_content=buffercf3b2&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

The hierarchy usually follows this route (the top 5 are highly recommended):

• Campaign (recommended required): 
  • This is the name of your campaign. (This concept is delivered across multiple channels).
• Medium (recommended required):
  • This is the mechanism used to deliver marketing message. 
• Source (recommended required):
  •  This is the platform used to deliver the message.
• Content (recommended required):
  • If multiple variants are used this captures which one. I.e. “Autumn Sale Extravaganza - Brown Trousers” vs “Autumn Sale Extravaganza - Blue Jumper”
• Term (optional): 
  • These are the paid keywords that drive the campaign. 
• ID (optional):
  • Required for a GA4 data import specifically 
• UTM Source Platform (optional):
  • The media buying platform 

Channels

Channel does not appear in the UTM variables of Campaign, Medium, Source, Content or Term. A Channel is usually a combination of Source and Medium i.e. Google/Organic or Facebook/Social or Facebook/PPC. Within Distil we can also use the Referrer to determine the channel of a Session. This can be useful if the UTM parameters have not been correctly set up on the Customer’s website e.g. the Source is missing.

Not all web sessions have UTM codes. This may be because the website is not configured correctly or the user has installed privacy software that blocks this information from being passed to Distil. In this instance, these sessions are assigned to the Direct/Unknown Channel. This Channel also contains sessions where the user types or pastes in the URL to visit the site directly or clicks a bookmark.

Referrer

The Referrer is the last web address accessed by the browser before loading the current page, used to identify sources of traffic.

Session Count

A session is a group of user interactions with a website that take place within a given time frame. For example, a single session can contain multiple page views, events, social interactions, and e-commerce transactions. The Session count is the count of distinct sessions that have been started. These are identified using a session ID that is assigned by Distil.

Dashboard Charts

This dashboard displays the following chart:

• UTM Tags:
  • A table showing the number of sessions attributed to each combination of Channel/Source/Medium/Referrer/Campaign/Content/Session Count. The list is sorted by Session Count in descending order. By default the Top 200 rows are displayed - each batch of the next 200 rows can be viewed by selecting the page number using the control on the chart
• Channel Breakdown - The total number of attributed Sessions for each Channel.
• Source/Medium Breakdown - The total number of attributed Sessions for each Source/Medium.
• Referrer Breakdown - The total number of attributed Sessions for each Referrer.