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Short answer: UTM parameters are small pieces of text you add to a destination URL (e.g., ?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email). ShortPen can attribute each click and conversion to the right source, medium, and campaign.
In short: UTMs make your reports trustworthy by telling you where traffic came from and which campaigns worked.

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What are UTMs?

UTM parameters are standardized key–value pairs added to a URL’s query string. They help you identify exactly where your traffic comes from and why users clicked, whether from an ad, an email, or a social post. When someone clicks a ShortPen link with UTMs, those parameters are stored and sent along with the visit. This information isn’t limited to ShortPen: it’s also recognized by most analytics platforms such as Google Analytics, Matomo, Mixpanel, or HubSpot. These tools read the UTM values and use them to group sessions, conversions, or revenue under the right marketing source. In other words, UTMs connect the dots between your ShortPen links, your traffic sources, and your external analytics dashboards, giving you a complete, consistent view of how campaigns perform across channels. The most common parameters are:
  • utm_source – Who sent the traffic (e.g., newsletter, facebook, partner-x).
  • utm_medium – The marketing channel (e.g., email, cpc, social, qr).
  • utm_campaign – The initiative or promotion (e.g., spring_sale_2025).
  • utm_term – The keyword/creative (often for paid search or A/B tests).
  • utm_content – Variation or placement (e.g., cta_bottom, hero_banner).

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Why UTMs matter for attribution in ShortPen

UTMs are essential for reliable marketing attribution. They ensure that every click and conversion tracked by ShortPen, or by your external tools like Google Analytics or HubSpot, carries the same source, medium, and campaign values. This alignment allows you to measure traffic consistency across multiple platforms and attribute performance back to the correct marketing effort. Without UTMs, analytics often fall back to referrer or device data, which can be lost by redirects, UTMs travel inside the URL, so ShortPen can: The result is clearer ROI reporting, faster optimization decisions, and fewer “unknown” buckets in your dashboards.

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When should you use UTMs?

Use UTMs for every link you control in any campaign where you’ll later ask, “Which channel performed best?”. Common cases:
  • Email newsletters and lifecycle flows (utm_medium=email).
  • Paid ads across search/social/display (utm_medium=cpc, utm_source=google, utm_campaign=brand_emea_q3).
  • Organic social posts (utm_medium=social).
  • Partnerships/affiliates (utm_source=partner-name).
  • Offline materials via QR Codes (utm_medium=qr, utm_campaign=event_launch).
Skip UTMs only if you don’t need attribution for that URL, or if the destination breaks on query strings.

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UTM building blocks and naming tips (the essentials)

Keep values predictable and lowercase. Avoid spaces and special characters; prefer hyphens or underscores. Make them meaningful at a glance:
  • Source: the owner of traffic (newsletter, meta, x, partner-acme).
  • Medium: the channel (email, cpc, social, qr).
  • Campaign: the initiative (summer_sale_2025, product-launch).
  • Term/Content: the variant (brand_kw, video_ad_a, cta_bottom).

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FAQ

No. Start with source, medium, and campaign. Add term/content when it helps analysis.
No. UTMs are query parameters for tracking. They don’t change the page content and do not harm search indexing.
Yes. UTMs are embedded in the destination URL and are preserved when a QR code is scanned.
Learn more: How to create and customize QR Codes in ShortPen
Use link-level analytics for one link, or workspace analytics to compare by folder/tag and campaign.