UTM tagging without personal data
UTM tags are short labels added to the end of a link so your analytics can tell which post, email or campaign brought a visit. They work well when the labels are consistent, and they cause harm when someone puts an email address or a phone number in them.
The five tags, in plain words
- utm_source: where the link is placed, such as newsletter or a channel name.
- utm_medium: the kind of channel, such as email, social or referral.
- utm_campaign: the campaign name, such as spring-launch.
- utm_term (optional): a keyword, mostly for paid search.
- utm_content (optional): which version of a link or ad was clicked.
Common medium names include social, email, cpc, paid_social, organic_social, referral, affiliate, display, newsletter, video, qr, sms. Pick a small set and reuse it, because reports split every spelling into its own row.
Naming that stays readable
- Use lower case and hyphens, so Newsletter, newsletter and news-letter do not become three sources.
- Describe the campaign, not the person. spring-launch is useful; a name is not.
- Keep values short. Long values are hard to read in reports and are easy to get wrong.
- Avoid tagging links inside your own site. They can replace the original source of a visit in some analytics tools.
Why personal data does not belong in a tag
A link is copied, shared, logged by servers and shown in analytics. Anything in a UTM value travels with it. An email address in a tag can end up in reports that many people can read, and in the logs of every site the link touches. Keep tags to labels about the campaign, never about the person clicking.
The Branvoya UTM link builder refuses values that look like:
- an email address, including common obfuscated forms
- a phone number
- a long run of digits that could be an identifier
- a bank account number
- a secret such as a key or token
It also lowercases and tidies values and tells you what it changed, so you can see exactly what is in the final link.