UTM Best Practices

Overview

UTM parameters are the foundation for accurate campaign tracking in HockeyStack. Every campaign, ad, and link should use UTMs so that traffic, conversions, and engagement can be attributed correctly to their source.

This guide outlines best practices for structuring and maintaining UTMs across all marketing and GTM activities.

1. Always UTM Everything

Every campaign, link, or creative that goes live should include properly formatted UTMs. Without UTMs, traffic from your campaigns may appear as “direct” or “unattributed” in analytics, making it impossible to measure true ROI.

2. UTM Structure

Each UTM combination must be unique to one ad. No two ads should share the same full combination of parameters.

Additionally, each URL should contain only one instance of each UTM parameter (for example, utm_campaign should appear only once).

Parameter	Purpose	Example	Notes
utm_source	Identifies the traffic source or platform	google, meta, linkedin, x, newsletter, partner-hubspot, event-dreamforce, creator-alexb	Use partner-, event-, or creator- prefixes for clarity
utm_medium	Describes the marketing channel	cpc, paid_social, email, display, affiliate, referral, organic_social, qr, sms	Keep channel naming consistent
utm_campaign	Groups related ads or assets under one initiative	2025-10-ai_launch-leadgen-prospecting-us-01	Follow this naming convention
utm_content	Distinguishes between creatives or ad variants	image-a-1080x1080, video-15s-v2, lpa-headercta	Use for A/B testing or multiple formats
utm_term	Captures keyword or audience segment	marketing-analytics-software, c-suite-list	Optional; primarily used for paid search or segmented audiences

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3. UTM Campaign Naming Convention

To ensure consistency across teams and reporting tools, use the following pattern for utm_campaign:

YYYY-MM-<product-or-offer>-<objective>-<audience>-<region>-<seq>

Examples

Field	Example	Description
YYYY-MM	2025-10	Month of launch
product-or-offer	ai_launch or ebook_analytics	Campaign focus
objective	traffic, leadgen, retarget, webinar, promo	Primary goal
audience	prospecting, customers, csm-list, lookalike	Target group
region	us, emea, apac, global	Target geography
seq	01, 02, 03	Sequence number for iteration

Example: 2025-10-ai_launch-leadgen-prospecting-us-01

If you change anything mid-campaign (like offer, copy, or audience), create a new sequence (02, 03, etc.) instead of renaming the existing one.

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4. Formatting Rules

• Use lowercase only

• Use hyphens (-) instead of spaces or underscores

• Avoid special characters (&, %, $, etc.)

• Don’t reuse UTM strings across campaigns

• Don’t modify existing UTMs mid-flight—create a new version instead

• Ensure no duplicate UTM keys in a single URL

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5. Example Full URL

https://hockeystack.com/demo?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=paid_social&utm_campaign=2025-10-ai_launch-leadgen-prospecting-us-01&utm_content=video-15s-v2&utm_term=marketing-analytics-software

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6. Quick Checklist Before Launch

✅ Every live link contains a full UTM string ✅ UTM combination is unique to the specific ad or asset ✅ Each UTM parameter appears only once in the URL ✅ Campaign name follows standard naming pattern ✅ Parameters are lowercase and hyphenated ✅ No reused or renamed UTMs mid-campaign

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7. Why This Matters

Proper UTM hygiene ensures:

• Accurate multi-touch attribution inside Atlas

• Cleaner reporting in dashboards and data syncs

• Better segmentation in audience workflows

• More reliable AI insights and intent scoring