UTM tracking that shows which campaigns work

UTM tracking tells you which newsletter, ad or social post sent each visitor to your site. Fathom reads all five UTM tags on your links and puts them on your dashboard, so you can compare campaigns, sources and mediums side by side. There’s nothing to set up, and no cookies.

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Animation: an inbox shows a new email from Your Site called Spring sale starts today. The visitor opens it, scrolls down to the Shop the sale button and clicks it. A new browser window pops open on the sale page, and its address bar shows yoursite.com/sale with the campaign tag utm_campaign=spring_sale highlighted. The link also carries utm_source=newsletter and utm_medium=email. In a copy of the Fathom dashboard filtered by UTM Campaign is spring_sale, site visitors go from 1,284 to 1,285. The visitor then buys a cat sticker pack for $19.99, and in the same filtered dashboard the Purchase event goes from 96 to 97 completions and from $1,919.04 to $1,939.03 in value. Example data.

What can you measure with UTMs?

If you can add tags to a link, you can measure it. Here are the most common places to use them.

  • Newsletters and email

    Tag the links in each issue and see which ones bring readers back to your site.

  • Paid ads

    Auto-tagged Google and Bing ad clicks count as Paid/campaign. Add UTMs to drill down into each campaign and keyword.

  • Social posts

    Some social apps hide where visitors came from. A UTM-tagged link fixes that.

  • Partners and creators

    Give each sponsor, affiliate or podcast host their own link and see who sends the most.

  • QR codes and print

    Put a tagged link behind the QR code on a flyer or package.

  • AI tools

    ChatGPT tags its links with utm_source, so those visits get their own spot on your dashboard.

Tag a link in seconds

UTMs are a few tags added to the end of a link. utm_source says where it was shared, utm_medium says what kind of link it is, and utm_campaign names the push it belongs to. You can add utm_content and utm_term to tell similar links apart.

Our free UTM builder puts them together for you. Already tagging links in your email tool or ad platform? Those work too, because Fathom reads any standard UTM.

https://yoursite.com/sale
  ?utm_source=newsletter
  &utm_medium=email
  &utm_campaign=spring_sale

Shown on separate lines so it’s easier to read. A real link is one line.

Every campaign, source and medium in one place

Your UTMs get their own box at the bottom of your dashboard, with tabs for Campaign, Source, Medium, Content and Term. Each value shows its site visitors and views. There’s nothing to create first: any value that sends you a visit shows up.

For the bigger picture, the Sources tab in your Referrers box puts every tagged visit (and every auto-tagged Google or Bing ad click) under Paid/campaign, so you can compare it with Organic, Social, AI and Direct.

Campaign tracking that follows visitors to conversion

When someone arrives on a tagged link, their whole visit belongs to that campaign, even after the tags drop out of the address bar. If they sign up or buy something a few pages later, that event is credited to the campaign that brought them in.

Many analytics tools need a cookie to make that connection. We don’t. Each visitor gets an anonymous signature that resets every day, so everything they do that day is credited to the campaign they arrived on. That means no consent banner for your analytics, and no missing numbers from people who click “decline”.

Animation: a visitor lands from a newsletter link tagged spring_sale, views your pricing page, then buys a sticker pack at checkout. Every step stays credited to spring_sale, and the purchase is added to a copy of the Fathom Events box filtered by that campaign. Example data.

Want the whole picture? Click any campaign on your dashboard to filter it, and you’ll see every page its visitors viewed and every event they completed.

Dig into your campaigns

  • Break them down

    Open the UTM box and add a secondary dimension, like Country or Device Type, to see each campaign split by it.

  • Save your favourite views

    Filter by a campaign once, then save it as a view. Your whole team can switch to it in one click.

  • Share them with clients

    Anyone with a shared dashboard link sees your UTM box and can filter by campaign, without an account.

  • Take them with you

    Add UTM parameters to your data exports, or group and filter by them through our API.

Questions you might have

What is UTM tracking?
It’s a way to see which campaign sent a visitor to your site. You add UTM parameters (short tags like utm_source=newsletter) to the end of the links you share, and your analytics reads them when someone clicks. Our guide to UTMs goes deeper.
Do I have to use your UTM builder?
Nope. Fathom reads utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_content and utm_term however you create them, whether by hand, in a spreadsheet or in your email or ad platform. The builder is just there to make it quicker.
Are UTM values case-sensitive?
Yes. spring_sale and Spring_Sale show up as two separate rows, so pick a style (we like lowercase) and stick with it. If you’ve already mixed them, a “contains” filter ignores case and will find both.
Why am I seeing UTMs I didn’t create?
Anyone can add UTMs to a link to your site, and we show every one that sends you a visit. If you don’t recognise a value, someone else tagged the link. Here’s more on that.
What if a visitor comes back the next day?
Their new visit is credited to however they arrive that day. To protect privacy, we credit visits by the first source we see each day, and that resets at midnight UTC. We don’t connect visits across days. Here’s how attribution works.
Does Fathom work with Google Ads?
Yes, and you don’t need a Google tag. Clicks with Google’s gclid (or Bing’s msclkid) count as Paid/campaign automatically. Add UTMs to see which campaign and keyword they came from. Our Google Ads guide walks you through it.

Want to see what else Fathom can do? Explore all our features.