UTM management: what it is and when a team needs it

Anyone can build a single UTM link in a minute. It gets hard when many people build links over years: the social media team, the newsletter, two agencies and the colleague from HR who posts job ads twice a year. For the reports to still fit together, a good builder is not enough. You need UTM management.

What UTM management is

UTM management is the rules, the process and the tools that keep UTM values consistent across all people and over time. It is also called UTM governance. It is not about the single link but about questions like these: does newsletter mean the same in October as in March? Do your own team and the agency write the same value? And will anyone still know in a year which link is on which poster?

A word on the terms: Matomo has its own campaign parameters (mtm_campaign, mtm_source and more) and understands the utm_ parameters just as well. We say UTM because it is the better known term. Everything in this guide applies to both.

The building blocks

Good UTM management consists of six parts that work together:

• Naming convention: which values are allowed for source, medium and campaign and how they are written. How to set one up is described in the guide UTM naming conventions for teams and agencies.
• Approval of new values: whoever needs a new value requests it. One responsible person decides, and from then on it applies to everyone.
• Building links: links are built from the allowed values, not from memory or an old e-mail.
• Checks before launch: the landing page answers, the parameters survive redirects, the tracking counts.
• An inventory of all links: one place where every link is listed with campaign, target, creator and where it is used.
• A look at your analytics: check regularly which values actually arrive, and assign every unknown value.

If one of these parts is missing, it usually only shows in the report. Without approval the list grows unchecked, without an inventory nobody knows which links must be changed before a relaunch, and without a look at your analytics nobody notices that a channel has been running under the wrong name for weeks.

Three maturity levels

How much effort makes sense depends on how many people build links. Most teams go through three levels:

1. One person with a free builder. One person builds all links, for example with Google's Campaign URL Builder, and keeps the rules in their head. That works as long as this person is around.
2. A shared spreadsheet. Allowed values are ready as a drop-down, a formula builds the link. The values now live in one place, but copies appear, everyone types in new values themselves, and the sheet does not know whether a link works.
3. A platform with rules. The convention is part of the tool, new values go through an approval, every link is stored and checked. The rules enforce themselves instead of someone having to chase them.

No level is wrong in itself. What matters is whether it fits the number of people involved. A detailed comparison of the tools is in the guide Google Campaign URL Builder or a UTM builder for teams.

Signs that your team needs it

• The campaign report shows several spellings for the same channel, such as newsletter, Newsletter and nl.
• Visits from campaigns land under "Direct" because parameters get lost on the way.
• Nobody can say which links are currently in use and who built them.
• More than one agency builds links, or an agency has changed.
• New values appear without anyone having decided on them.

If more than one point applies, a fixed process pays off. A good first step is to take stock: collect the values that are in your reports today and plan the next campaign deliberately by fixed rules. A template to plan and document campaigns is in the article Campaign tracking in Matomo on feinwerk.io.

Feinwerk Campaigns

Feinwerk Campaigns is a platform for UTM management in teams: an Admin sets the naming convention in the workspace, new values are requested and approved, the link builder builds every link from the allowed values, and every landing page is checked at once. All links are in one place and can be searched by target page, and with Matomo you get results per link. How to set up the convention is in the docs under Set up the naming convention, how values are approved under Request and approve values. How companies work with their team and agencies is shown on the page For companies. If you would like to try this, get in touch via the pilot page.