How to Make Sense of your UTM Data 

Adding UTM codes to your marketing URLs adds extra bits of information that get passed to Google Analytics.

If you’ve made it this far in the “Tracking Your Real Estate Marketing” saga, you’re using both Google Analytics and UTM codes. If either of those sound unfamiliar to you, take a step back and explore the links above.

By adding UTM codes to your marketing URLs, you’ve added extra bits of information that get passed to Google Analytics. You have more fine control over how the data appears, and what micro-info gets tracked. Better tracking means less wasted time and money. 

Now, it’s time to start making sense of your results. Here’s how.

Get into Analytics

Log into your website’s Google Analytics account. (Forgot the login? Here’s how to get back in).

In the left-hand menu, click Acquisition (this is the section that tells you where your traffic is coming from).

From the All Traffic dropdown, select “Source/Medium.” This will show you all of the different sources (like facebook, google, bing, newsletter) and their respective mediums (cpc, organic, email, etc). 

Now, look for the dropdown that says “Secondary Dimension.” Click it and search for Campaign. This will add a column for all of the Campaign parameters you’ve added. You’ll probably see “not set” for source/mediums you didn’t use UTMs for, like organic Google traffic.

Make Sure Your UTMs are tracking

If you’ve been using UTM codes properly, the Source/Medium/Campaign values should look familiar to you. Here are some ways to tell if you did not set up your UTMs properly:

• If you’re only seeing things like “google/organic” and “facebook/referral” for Source/Medium - not values you added. 
• You’re only seeing (not set) under Campaign - not parameters you wrote. 
• You’re seeing your own values for Source/Medium/Campaign, but they’re split across different capitalizations, punctuation, or spelling (i.e., you used both maylistings and May_Listings in the same ad set, so your results got split up)

If something seems off, go back to our UTM guide and make sure you did everything properly. It might take a few tries to get the hang of, but it’s worth it! Plus we’re happy to help if you need it.

Also remember that you’ll only see a UTM parameter in here if it has generated traffic. If no one clicked the link yet, you won’t see it in your traffic report.

Look For Budget-Wasters

The whole point of using UTM codes is to make sense of what marketing is working - and what is wasting your time and money. Below are indicators of “bad” traffic:

• Higher bounce rate (this is subjective) 
  • Bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave your website after landing on a page and taking no other action. They land, they leave. 
• Lower Pages/Session and Avg. Session Duration 
  • If you’re seeing “time on site” averages of just a few seconds, your users are really disinterested in the content, the page is taking too long to load, there’s not a lot of content on the page, or they’re bots. 
• Fewer conversions (if you have goal tracking set up) 
  • People are not completing the goals you have set up on these pages, like contact forms or purchases.

Users in these categories are coming to your site and leaving without taking a desired action - or any action. They might leave your site before it even loads. They aren’t getting in touch with you. They don’t explore your site beyond the page they landed on. So basically, they just show up and leave - and they don’t provide you any value.

Why might they be “bad” traffic? There are a slew of reasons.

• Your site was very slow and they were too impatient to let it load. 
• Your ad and your landing page didn’t match up, so they bailed. 
• The landing page didn’t give them something to do next. 
• You were targeting people who weren’t really interested in taking the next step. 
• They got everything they needed from the landing page - not necessarily a bad thing.

Notice, we’ve been putting “bad” in quotes. That’s because “bad” stats are subjective (a 50% bounce rate might be good to one site and terrible to another). Also, there are reasons why a page actually SHOULD have a high bounce rate or a low time-on site. Crazy, I know.

Here’s an example: an ad directs a person to a listing details page, and the person fills out a “I want to tour this home” form… that’s it! They’re done! That might be all they want to do, and it’s a success! But if they leave from that listing page, without being directed to another page, it still counts as a bounce.

That’s why you want to get really well acquainted with your own analytics. You have to think critically about how users interact with your site and what you really want them to do in order to determine whether a particular statistic is cause for alarm.

Look for Better-Performing Traffic Sources

“Good” traffic, of course, would have the opposite signals.

• Lower bounce rate 
• Higher time on site 
• Higher conversions

These are signals that people are landing successfully, and are interested in your content. They feel compelled to view other listings, read more about you, explore your site, read your blog, send a contact form, etc. They’re staying longer and doing more. Perfect!

This is the traffic you should nurture. Wherever it’s coming from, you should nurture that. Pay more time and attention (and ad spend if necessary) for the type of user who’s going to be really engaged with your site.

Making Marketing Decisions Based on UTMs

With Source, Medium and Content, you’ll be able to drill down and find answers to questions like:

• Which Facebook ads are driving more traffic? 
• Which links from my email kept people on-site the longest? 
• Which of my Google ads have a high bounce rate? 
• Which platforms bring in better-quality traffic?

Without UTM codes, you’ll never know the answer to any of these questions. With this insight, you can make better decisions about which campaigns or efforts are worth your time, energy and money. 

Bottom Line

Do more of what works. Fix what isn’t working. That’s easier said than done, of course, but seeing your UTM data is the best place to start making those decisions.