UTM tracking in magnews communication links with Google Analytics – magnews Help Center

Google Analytics automatically tracks where visitors come from, but in some cases, such as email marketing campaigns, this information is not available. In these scenarios, UTM parameters help reintroduce the missing data, allowing you to accurately identify traffic sources and connect them to specific marketing activities.

The Google Analytics app allows you to automatically apply tracking parameters (UTM) to communication links. This lets you identify source, channel, campaign, and other custom traffic attributes, making it easier to analyze performance in Google Analytics or other web analytics tools.

To use UTM tracking, you must install the app from the Connect section of the platform. No direct integration with Google Analytics is required: the app simply generates UTM parameters in a consistent and automated way within your outgoing messages.

Tracking profiles by domain

Once installed, click on the Google Analytics item and you can access the list of Tracking profiles, custom configurations that define which UTM parameters should be applied to links, based on the communication domain.

You’ll initially see a default configuration called All domains (disabled). It provides a basic UTM structure you can use as a starting point. To activate it, you need to specify which domains should be tracked.

Example: if your company runs campaigns across multiple domains like campaign.example.com, contest1.example.com and contest2.example.com, and you want to apply the same UTM parameters to all of them, use a wildcard like *.example.com. A single configuration will then apply consistently across all subdomains.

If you want to differentiate tracking between promotional campaigns (campaign.example.com) and contests (contest1.example.com, contest2.example.com), create two separate tracking profiles. Each profile will have its own UTM rules and will only apply to the assigned domains, allowing you to analyze the results separately in Google Analytics.

If multiple tracking profiles match the domain of a link, magnews applies only the first compatible profile. Others, even if valid, are ignored. The order of profiles in the list is therefore relevant, make sure the most specific configurations appear before more generic ones.

Customizing UTM for Google Analytics

With the default configuration, clicking a tracked link will produce results in Google Analytics like:

Source/Medium = magnews/email
Campaign = ecommerce
Content = Did you forget something in your cart? (06/06/2025)
Term = 2 - Complete your purchase

If a link already contains one or more UTM parameters manually added in the communication content (e.g. by the designer), the system does not overwrite them. Manually defined parameters take precedence over automatically generated ones. Example: if the link contains utm_term=Cart recovery and the configuration includes utm_term=[content:name], the final value will be Cart recovery, regardless of the content name.

Each UTM parameter can be customized using either a fixed string (e.g. "magnews") or a placeholder that dynamically resolves based on context.

Example:
[message:channel] returns "email" if the link is in an email, "sms" if in an SMS.

Clicking the "+" icon gives access to the full list of placeholders, with a search function by name.

Sample list of placeholders (subject to change between app releases):

[journey:idjourney] / [journey:name]: journey ID and name
[newsletter:idnewsletter] / [newsletter:name]: communication ID and name
[newsletterproperties:customfield1]: custom field from communication setup (replace customfield1 with your field name)
[delivery:iddelivery] / [delivery:sentdate]: delivery ID and date (mass sends only)
[message:channel] / [message:fromemail] / [message:fromname] / [message:subject]: channel, sender email, sender alias, subject
[content:idcontent] / [content:name]: ID and name of clicked content
[workflowproperties:name]: workflow name
[contact:idcontact] / [contact:iddatabase] / [contact:email] / [contact:nome_utente]: contact data (use [contact:FIELD_ID] for other fields)
[var:varname]: journey or database variables (replace varname with your variable name)
[asset:type]: asset type (campaign, transactional, workflow, landingpage). Labels can be edited by clicking "Customize asset".

For Google Analytics, utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign are considered required parameters, as they identify the traffic origin, communication channel, and marketing campaign. Without them, tracking is incomplete and aggregated data cannot be interpreted correctly.

Tracking for systems other than Google Analytics

If your tracking system uses parameters different from standard UTM, you can add them directly in the configuration.
Example: for Matomo, use parameters like mtm_campaign, mtm_kwd, and remove unnecessary UTM parameters.

If tracking involves redirecting to an external system before reaching the final landing page, enable advanced mode by clicking Use destination link as parameter (Advanced). Specify the tracking system URL and use the [destinationurl] placeholder to insert the original communication URL.

Dual tracking

In advanced mode, if you don’t remove UTM parameters, the [destinationurl] will retain them. Tracking will then occur both on the external analytics system and on Google Analytics.

Activate tracking

After assigning domains to a tracking profile, you must click Activate to make it operational. The activation status of each profile is shown in the list, so you can quickly verify which configurations are currently applied.

Parameters are added to the URL only during real sends. They are not visible in previews.