# Campaigns and UTM tags

> Tell your newsletters, ads and posts apart by tagging their links, and see which ones bring visitors and conversions.

This page shows how to find out which of your links bring visitors. After reading it you can switch campaign capture on, build tagged links, read the Campaigns screen, and understand how a visit gets its source when a link carries no tag.

## What UTM tags are

A UTM tag is a small label added to the end of a link. When someone follows the link, the label says where the visit came from. These are the tags:

| Tag | What it says | Example value |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `utm_source` | Who sent the visitor | `newsletter` |
| `utm_medium` | The kind of link | `email` |
| `utm_campaign` | Which campaign the link belongs to | `spring-launch` |
| `utm_term` | A search term, for paid search | `web analytics` |
| `utm_content` | Which link within the campaign | `header-button` |

Clear Saga reads these tags and nothing else from the address of a page. The rest of the query string is never read or stored. With Match sales to ads on, the full script also reads the ad click IDs: see [ad attribution](/docs/ad-attribution).

## Switch campaign capture on

Tags are only read once you ask for it. Open Settings, Installation, find "Tracking options", switch on "UTM campaigns" and save. Owners and Admins can do this. The change takes up to 5 minutes to reach your site.

Your site picks this setting up while a page loads. On a slow connection the very first page view can leave before the setting has arrived, and that is the page view that carries the tags. To rule this out, add `data-campaigns="true"` to the tag on your site. [Script options](/docs/script-options) explains the attributes of the tag.

Nothing is stored in the browser for campaigns. Depending on where your visitors are, measuring campaigns can still need a notice or consent.

## How a visit gets its campaign

Tags belong to a visit, not to a single page view.

- The tags on the page a visit starts on become the tags of the whole visit. Every page and event of that visit is counted under them.
- If the same visitor arrives again through a link with different tags, a new visit starts, so each campaign gets its own visits.
- Capital letters make no difference when visits are grouped: `Newsletter` and `newsletter` are one source. The spelling that was seen first is the one shown.
- Each value is trimmed and cut at 120 characters.

## Build a tagged link

On the **Campaigns** screen, "Create campaign" opens the link builder. Fill in:

- **Destination URL.** The page the link opens. Parameters and anchors it already has are kept.
- **Campaign name.** A name for you to read in the dashboard, up to 80 characters.
- **Campaign key.** The value sent as `utm_campaign`. It is filled in from the name in lower case with hyphens, and you can change it. A key uses lower-case letters, digits, dots, underscores, tildes and hyphens.
- **Source.** Required. Sources and mediums your site has already seen are suggested.
- **Medium, Term and Content.** Optional.

The builder shows the finished link for you to copy, and saving keeps it as a campaign link of the site. The link is a normal, long address. Nothing shortens it, and nothing tags your links for you: share the tagged one.

A saved campaign is listed on the Campaigns screen from the start, with zeros until its first visit. From the menu of its row you can copy the link again, adjust the tags for another placement without saving, edit it or delete it. Deleting removes the saved link only. Visits that arrived with its key stay in your reports.

You do not have to save anything to see a campaign. Any `utm_campaign` value that brings a visit is listed by itself, and "Save as campaign" in its menu turns it into a saved one. A site can hold up to 200 saved campaigns, each with its own key.

Owners and Admins can create, edit and delete campaign links. So can a program or an AI agent that holds a token with the Write permission. The [campaigns reference](/docs/api/campaigns) lists the operations.

## The Campaigns screen

The tiles at the top sum up the visits that arrived through tagged links in the chosen date range.

| Tile | Counts |
| --- | --- |
| Campaigns | The different `utm_campaign` values that brought visits |
| Visitors | People who arrived through a tagged link |
| Views | Pages viewed during those visits |
| Conversions | Goal completions during those visits. While no [conversion goal](/docs/conversion-goals) is switched on, every custom event counts |
| Orders and Revenue | Orders credited to campaign visits, and what they were worth |

Orders and Revenue fill once a store is connected, which is Shopify today. See [Revenue](/docs/revenue) and [connect Shopify](/docs/connect-shopify).

Below the tiles, "Campaign performance" lists the same traffic in these tabs: Campaigns, Sources, Mediums and Source / medium. Each row shows Visitors, Views, Conversions, Orders and Revenue. Select a name to see only that traffic. The filter stays set as you move between the screens of the site until you remove it. Realtime, Revenue and Performance do not apply it.

"Conversion events" shows which goals were completed during the visits of each campaign, with a count, or, while no goal is switched on, which custom events were sent.

## Visits without a tag

Most visits carry no tag at all. Every visit is still sorted into one channel, from its tags when it has them and from the site it came from when it has none:

- Direct
- Organic search
- Organic social
- Referral
- AI
- Email
- Paid
- Other campaigns

The first rule that fits wins, in this order:

1. A medium that means advertising, such as `cpc`, makes the visit Paid.
2. An email medium, or an arrival from a webmail site, makes it Email.
3. An arrival from an AI assistant makes it AI.
4. An arrival from a search engine makes it Organic search.
5. An arrival from a social network, or a social medium, makes it Organic social.
6. Any other tagged visit falls under Other campaigns, unless its medium says `referral` or `link`.
7. Any other visit that came from another site is a Referral.
8. A visit with no tags and no other site behind it is Direct.

A source tag that names a mail service, an AI assistant or a social network counts like an arrival from it. A source tag that names a search engine counts only when no other site is behind the visit.

Paid traffic can only be recognised from tags. Without them, a click on an ad in a search engine counts as organic search, so tag the links in your ads. What an ad cost you is not part of these reports.

Links between your own pages never count as a source. That covers the domain of the site and all of its subdomains.

**Next:** [Conversion goals](/docs/conversion-goals), [The dashboard](/docs/dashboard), [Filters and saved segments](/docs/filters-and-segments)