Link analytic tags help collegiate webmasters identify how website visitors are finding their way to University of Iowa web properties. By appending specific URL parameters to links, it is possible to identify that a user visited a website thanks to a referral from an email sent from Dispatch. Dispatch can automatically append these analytic tags to all links inside of your communication.

Tags Explained

The standard link analytics tags that are used are the following:

UTM_MEDIUM

The medium responsible for the visit such as email, social, sms, etc.

UTM_SOURCE

The source of the link: Example: Search Engine, another domain, or name of email list.

UTM_CAMPAIGN

This is a name that helps you keep track of your different campaign efforts Example: Fall_Drive, Christmas_Special

UTM_ID

Used to identify which ads campaign this referral references. Use utm_id to identify a specific campaign.

UTM_CONTENT

This is for split testing or separating two links that go to the same URL.

Modes

When configuring your Campaign or Communication, you can choose a mode for tags to be added to the links inside of your content.

Disabled

No tags are appended to links. This is the default mode.

Inherit

Applicable only to Communications. The communication will inherit the setting from its parent Campaign.

Auto

Tags will be automatically appended to links. See Tags Mapping for a more detailed explanation.

Manual

You provide the tags you want appended to all links. See Manual Tags for a more detailed explanation.

Tags Mapping

When the Link Analytics Tagging mode is set to Auto tags will be appended to your links using the following mapping.

UTM_MEDIUM

For Email communications, this value will be set to email. For SMS communications, this value will be set to sms.

UTM_SOURCE

The source will use a convention used in other engagement tracking services offered by ITS. The value will be set to d.${clientName} where the "d" indicates "Dispatch" and the "clientName" is the client sending the message from Dispatch.

UTM_CAMPAIGN

The value will be the Campaign name that sent the message.

UTM_ID

This value will be ${campaignId}.${communicationId} to assist in uniquely identifying both the Campaign and Communication responsible for referring the traffic to the URL.

UTM_CONTENT

For Email communications, this value will be set to the text or image that was clicked on (the part between the <a> tags). For SMS communications, this value will be the constant sms-link.

Manual Tags

If you want tags appended to the links within your communication, but you want to customize the values you have two choices.

• You can manually add the tag parameters to your links when you insert them into your content. No tag parameters will be appended to links regardless of tagging mode if utm_ is found in the link address.
• You can set the Link Analytics Tagging mode to Manual and provide override values.

When the tagging mode is set to Manual, the UTM_MEDIUM and UTM_CONTENT tags will still be appended automatically with the values described above. You can override the UTM_ID, UTM_SOURCE, and UTM_CAMPAIGN tags using the fields available.

Using with SMS messages

When using Link Analytics Tagging with SMS messages, please consider using it alongside with Link Tracking to create shorter links. SMS messages are broken up into 160 character chunks. If send long links inside of your message, you could be sending more expensive messages. If you elect to not enable Link Tracking alongside appending link analytic tags, all the parameters will be clearly visible in the SMS message.