As a marketer, I rely on UTM parameters all the time. They’re one of the easiest ways to see which emails, social posts, or announcements are sending people to your community and which ones aren’t pulling their weight.
So if you’ve ever looked at your analytics and wondered “How did people end up here?” a missing UTM might be the reason.
Whether you’re promoting a discussion, event, or knowledge base article, a quick UTM tag gives you the visibility you need. And in Vanilla, you can filter and chart this data directly in the Page Views report.
What are UTMs?
UTMs are short tags added to the end of a URL. Super helpful when you're linking to your community from:
- Email newsletters
- LinkedIn posts
- Event follow-ups
- In-app announcements
- Paid ads
Example
Let’s say you’re hosting an upcoming Ask Me Anything (AMA) session in your community, and the event post lives here:
yourcommunity.com/events/ama-with-product-team
You want to promote it:
- In your product newsletter
- On LinkedIn
- Via a homepage banner inside the community
Each version of the link can include a unique UTM string, like this one for the email version:
yourcommunity.com/events/ama-with-product-team?utm_source=productnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ama_promotion
What each UTM parameter means
UTM parameter | What it answers | Example |
|---|
utm_source | Who is sending traffic (where it’s coming from) | newsletter, linkedin, homepagebanner |
utm_medium | How it’s being sent (the type of channel) | email, social, internalbanner |
utm_campaign | The name of the specific campaign or initiative | amapromotion, q3events |
utm_term (optional) | The keyword or topic driving the click (used in paid or search ads) | community+platform |
utm_content (optional) | To differentiate similar links or CTAs, e.g., you want to know whether people clicked the banner or button in an email | headerbanner, ctabutton |
You can build a link manually or use a free UTM builder like this one from Google Analytics.
Be sure to stick to consistent, human-readable names for each parameter. Your future self will thank you when you’re sorting through analytics.
Where to see UTM performance in Vanilla
In Vanilla’s Analytics, UTM data is available in the Page Views data source. You can:
- Group by UTM values (e.g. by campaign)
- Filter by source or medium
- Compare internal vs. external traffic (Vanilla automatically labels these for you)
This makes it easy to see whether your homepage banner or LinkedIn promo drove more AMA visits and to report on what’s working.
For full implementation details, refer to our documentation on UTM tracking.
