UTM builder
Tag a campaign URL so the visit arrives in analytics as the poster, the table tent or the newsletter it actually came from — instead of as “direct”, which is where untagged traffic goes to become unreadable.
What is a UTM builder?
A UTM builder appends five tracking parameters to a web address — source, medium, campaign, content and term — so analytics can attribute the visit. Fill in where the link is going, where it will be printed or posted, and what campaign it belongs to; the tagged URL is what you point the QR code or the link at.
The source and medium pair that QR codes always get backwards
For a QR code, utm_medium is qr and utm_source is the physical placement — table-tent, a3-poster,shop-window. Medium is how the visit reached you; source is where it came from. Reversed, every printed surface collapses into one row called “qr” and you lose the only comparison worth having.
This is worth getting right first time because it cannot be fixed afterwards. Analytics records what it was sent; a month of traffic tagged the wrong way round stays wrong. If you are printing several things at once, decide the naming before the artwork goes out — and write it down somewhere the next person will find it.
Two rules that stop one campaign becoming three rows
- Lower-case everything. Google Analytics treats
Facebookandfacebookas different sources. One campaign then arrives split across two rows, and neither is the real number. The builder above lower-cases for you. - Hyphens, never spaces. A raw space is encoded as
%20and shows up that way in the report.ramadan-2026, notRamadan 2026.
A naming scheme that survives contact with a second campaign
| Parameter | Answers | Good values |
|---|---|---|
utm_source | Where was it? | table-tent, a3-poster, newsletter, instagram-bio |
utm_medium | How did it reach them? | qr, print, email, social |
utm_campaign | What are you running? | ramadan-2026, launch-week |
utm_content | Which version? | design-a, design-b |
utm_term | Which paid keyword? | Rarely used outside search ads |
Do not encode the tagged URL into the QR code
UTM tags add 60 to 90 characters to a URL, and every character becomes more modules in the same printed square. Encode a short link that redirects to the tagged URL instead. The payload stays around 30 characters, the pattern stays coarse enough to survive a print run, and the tags still reach analytics on arrival.
This is the same argument as the one on sizing, arriving from the other direction: a Klip payload is 30 characters and lands at version 3, while a tagged campaign URL is routinely 120 and pushes you to version 7 — a 45×45 grid instead of 29×29, so each module prints at roughly two-thirds the width on the same paper.
The tags also do a second job once the link is short. Analytics sees the campaign; Klip sees the scan. Between them you get the two halves that neither tool has alone — how many people scanned the poster, and what they did after they landed.What each half can and cannot tell you.
Questions
The things people ask before they commit something to paper.
What is a UTM builder?
A UTM builder adds five optional parameters to a URL — source, medium, campaign, content and term — so that analytics software can tell you where a visit came from. Without them a visit from a printed poster is indistinguishable from someone typing your address, and both are filed as “direct”.
How do I track QR code scans in Google Analytics?
Tag the destination with utm_medium=qr and a utm_source naming the physical placement, then point the QR code at that tagged URL — ideally through a short link, so the encoded payload stays short and the pattern stays coarse. Scans then arrive in Analytics as a named channel instead of as direct traffic.
What should utm_source and utm_medium be for a QR code?
Medium is qr, because that is how the visit reached you. Source is the physical placement — table-tent, a3-poster, shop-window — because that is where it came from. People routinely reverse these, and once a month of data is recorded that way it cannot be corrected retroactively.
Are UTM parameters case sensitive?
Yes, in Google Analytics. “Facebook” and “facebook” become two separate rows, so one campaign arrives split in half and neither number is right. This builder lower-cases everything for that reason, and replaces spaces with hyphens so they do not come through as %20.
Do UTM parameters make my QR code harder to scan?
Yes, if you encode the tagged URL directly. Tags routinely add 60–90 characters, which pushes the pattern to a higher version with smaller modules at the same printed size. Encode a short link that redirects to the tagged URL instead: the payload stays around 30 characters and the tags still arrive.