Campaigns and UTM tags
To see which ad, email or post sent each visitor, add UTM tags to the links you share. Nothing changes on your site; the tags go on the link itself:
https://example.com/pricing?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fall-sale
Foresite reads five tags:
| Tag | Use it for | Example |
|---|---|---|
utm_source |
Where the link was posted | newsletter, facebook, partner-blog |
utm_medium |
The kind of channel | email, cpc, social |
utm_campaign |
The campaign it belongs to | fall-sale |
utm_content |
Which link or ad, if a campaign has several | header-button |
utm_term |
The paid search keyword | running shoes |
Only utm_source matters for the Sources list; the rest are optional. Short links such as ?ref=producthunt or ?source=podcast count as utm_source too.
Seeing the results
On the dashboard, open the Campaigns tab in the Sources card and choose a tag from its menu. Click any row to filter the whole dashboard to it, including pages, countries and goals.
A visit is credited to the link it started from. If someone arrives from ?utm_campaign=fall-sale and then reads five more pages and signs up, all of it counts toward fall-sale.
Tips
- Tags are case-insensitive.
Fall-Saleandfall-saleare counted as one campaign and shown in lowercase. - Keep names consistent.
fall-saleandfall_saleare still two different campaigns. - Never put personal data in tags, such as a subscriber's email address. Tags that look like personal data are discarded, and the dashboard warns you if that happens.
- Check that your tags survive redirects. If a link redirects (for example from
http://tohttps://, or through a link shortener), make sure the tags are still in the address of the page that finally loads.
Ads without UTM tags
Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, TikTok, X and LinkedIn add their own click ID to the address when someone clicks an ad (for example gclid for Google Ads). Foresite recognises these, so ad clicks show as Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, TikTok Ads, X Ads or LinkedIn Ads in Sources, separate from unpaid search and social traffic, even without UTM tags. The click ID itself is never stored.
To see individual ad campaigns, add UTM tags to your ads as well. In Google Ads, you can add them to every ad at once with an account-level Final URL suffix such as utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign={campaignid}.