In Uncategorized

How To Use UTM Parameters to Capture Lead Source

3 Mins Read

You might already be using UTM parameters to track your marketing campaigns with Google Analytics, but are you capturing that information when a lead comes into your database? Capturing this data is critical in order to assess the value of your marketing campaign and is a lead management best practice.

What are UTM Parameters?

UTM parameters are tags you add to a URL. Marketers use this to be able to track the traffic from a variety of sources such as email, social media, banner ads, etc. The tags can be sent back to Google Analytics and tracked which can be used to gauge the effectiveness of campaigns and identify the best ways to drive more visitors to your website.

hidden-fields-in-forms-3

Create New Fields

The first thing you need to do is create 3 new fields in your Marketing database.

  1. utm_source
  2. utm_medium
  3. utm_campaign

hidden-fields-in-forms-2

Add The New Fields to Lead Capture Form

Next, add these new fields to your lead capture form(s). Make sure they are marked as hidden fields

hidden-fields-in-forms

Add Some Code to Your Landing Page

Some javascript code will need to be added to your landing page. 

// Parse the URL
function getParameterByName(name) {
    name = name.replace(/[\[]/, "\\[").replace(/[\]]/, "\\]");
    var regex = new RegExp("[\\?&]" + name + "=([^&#]*)"),
        results = regex.exec(location.search);
    return results === null ? "" : decodeURIComponent(results[1].replace(/\+/g, " "));
}
// Give the URL parameters variable names
var source = getParameterByName('utm_source');
var medium = getParameterByName('utm_medium');
var campaign = getParameterByName('utm_campaign');

// Put the variable names into the hidden fields in the form.
document.getElementsByName("utm_source").value = source;
document.getElementsByName("utm_medium").value = medium;
document.getElementsByName("utm_campaign").value = campaign;

This piece of code will parse the URL parameters and put the values into the hidden fields on your form.

Note: Some Marketing Automation platforms have an option within their form builders set the field value based on a URL parameter. If that’s the case, the javascript code will not need to be added to your landing page.

Create URLs and Test

Now you’re ready to start creating URLs and testing your form. Use this handy URL builder to create your links and then fill out the form to see if the values go into your database.

What if the lead navigates away from the landing page?

If a lead navigates away from the landing page (maybe to the ‘About’ page) and then returns to the landing page to fill out the form, the UTM information will not be captured. To capture that you need to need to use cookies. Check out my tutorial to learn how to use cookies to capture URL parameters.

Questions?

Email me, or send me a tweet @jennamolby.

Author

I'm a Freelance Marketing Operations Consultant With 15 years of experience in Marketing Operations, I’ve worked with a wide range of tools including Salesforce, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot), Marketo, and many other sales and marketing platforms. I help teams optimize their tech stacks, improve processes, and get accurate, actionable reporting. Whether it’s setting up your Marketing Automation Platform, building Salesforce reports, managing lead lifecycles, tracking attribution, or integrating your tech stack, I ensure everything is aligned to drive real results.

23 Comments

  2. vivek kumar Reply

    Hi Jenna

    i have done exactly that but i don’t get any data coming in database,
    plz guide to me how can i do..i am new in this task

  3. Pingback: 4 Ways to Capture Lead Source in Marketo

  4. tekboy Reply

    how to make this work in eloqua, i have form that submit to eloqua, i want to caputure this data in eloqua

    • Jenna Molby

      Hello! Since this is javascript, you can use this code on any marketing automation platform, including Eloqua.

      You would have to add the new fields to your Eloqua database (utm_medium, utm_source, etc) and them add them to a form. The IDs for your form fields might be a little bit different than shown in the example, so you might have to update the javascript to include your form field IDs.

    • tekboy

      Hi Jenna

      i have done exactly that but i dont get any data coming in,

      so i have created the fields in eloqua and added the code to the form as hidden fields

      and i have the js script like this but after testing these fields are empty not capture any data
      did i missed anything?

      // Parse the URL
      function getParameterByName(name) {
      name = name.replace(/[[]/, “\[“).replace(/[]]/, “\]”);
      var regex = new RegExp(“[\?&]” + name + “=([^&#]*)”),
      results = regex.exec(location.search);
      return results === null ? “” : decodeURIComponent(results[1].replace(/+/g, ” “));
      }
      // Give the URL parameters variable names
      var source = getParameterByName(‘utm_source’);
      var medium = getParameterByName(‘utm_medium’);
      var campaign = getParameterByName(‘utm_campaign’);
      var term = getParameterByName(‘utm_term’);

      // Put the variable names into the hidden fields in the form.
      document.getElementsByName(“utm_source”).value = source;
      document.getElementsByName(“utm_medium”).value = medium;
      document.getElementsByName(“utm_campaign”).value = campaign;
      document.getElementsByName(“utm_term”).value = term;

    • tekboy

      my url like this, it looks correct to me
      test.php?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=landing&utm_term=test

  5. Zak Reply

    Thanks for the great tips here. How can we get this method work if the form is on a different page from the landing page?

Write A Comment