Automatic UTM Tracking (or tagging) went in to public preview February 2023, and I wrote about how to use it to get the most from Google Analytics (and other analytic tools). Since the preview came out, it’s had a few changes that are definitely worth reviewing to give you more custom UTM tracking. Plus, the functionality is now generally available (meaning it’s supported and no longer a preview feature) April 2023. Let’s check out the new stuff!
The setting to start using UTM tracking is still in the same place. Go to Settings then Feature switches and then turn on UTM tracking.
As before, the parameters by default are shown in the table below:
| Parameter | Example Value | Details |
|---|---|---|
| utm_source | Dynamics 365 Marketing | this will always be the same |
| utm_medium | the channel used, email, sms, custom etc. | |
| utm_campaign | Google Analytics G4 Overview | the name of the journey |
| utm_content | Thank You For Your Help OR You Are Wonderful! | the name of the message |
| utm_term | N/A | not used in D365 Marketing |
But what if you want to use something different? Well now the option exists to customise things slightly. From the Settings area, in Customer engagement, click on UTM tracking.
You can only have one active UTM Tracking Options record so create a new one and give it a name. The UTM Source can be changed. Maybe instead of Dynamics 365 Marketing you just want to abbreviate it to D365 Marketing. The Campaign can be set by pulling from a field on the Journey table, by default this is the Name field. The Medium cannot be changed, it would always be either Email, Text Message etc. to define the medium of the communication used. Finally, you can now determine if the UTM Content tag should even be used. Leave it turned off if it’s not relevant for your organisations needs. Then save the record. That’s it! Go back to my original blog about UTM Parameters to understand how to find the UTM data in Google Analytics.
What about using a different field instead of the Journey name? Well as per the blog I wrote about customising the Real-time Marketing Journey table, we can add a new field for this purpose. You might have a specific naming convention for your Journeys and not want the same info transferred back through to Google Analytics. First, create a solution and pull in the RTM Journey table (msdynmkt_journey). Add a new text column and call it UTM Campaign.
We can add this new field to the settings area of a Journey, but what if someone forgets to fill it out? We can create a simple business rule on the Journey table that states if the UTM Campaign field does not contain data, populate it with the value from the Journey Name field. This way it will always have something in there.
This just shows you the business rule logic:
Now add your new field to the Settings tab on the main Journey form.
Go back to your UTM Tracking Options record you created earlier. Now you can find the new field and link the UTM Campaign to this instead of the Journey Name. Save the record.
Now if we created a new Journey, we can give it what ever name we like.
Go to the settings tab on the Journey and if you didn’t fill out the UTM Campaign field prior to saving the record, you will notice it’s populated with the name of the Journey.
We can now change this field so it’s something more meaningful for us, rather than simply using the default of the Journey Name.
