#36 UTMs can be sexy (sometimes)

I always found UTMs to be old-fashioned and underrated.
They felt like relics from the early days of marketing, something we had to do, not something that actually moved the needle.

The reality…

Most of the time, they didn’t.
Tracking was missed. Links were broken. Reports were inconsistent.
Half the time, you’d build this beautiful campaign… and then realize your UTMs were pointing to nothing.

I once spent three full days fixing UTMs, only to discover we weren’t tracking anything at all (!!!).

In my previous company, we launched influencer partnerships, paid newsletters, and used UTMs everywhere. But tracking? Nowhere. GA said one thing, Mixpanel another, and Ghost analytics (or any CMS analytics, really) was just vibes.

There’s nothing like watching three dashboards tell three different stories while you question your entire career. At one point, I was literally arguing with a chart like it was gaslighting me.

So, I partnered with the Growth team

This time, at vibe.co I partnered with a team that owns analytics. We sat down and rebuilt everything from scratch. Clean naming conventions, consistent UTMs, proper tagging, and a clear line of sight from campaign to activation.

The results?

Apart from reliable tracking? In 5 weeks, we achieved the following:

📊 1.9K website visits
💬 12 meetings booked
🔥 11 activations

We could finally see what was working and what wasn’t.
Even better, we could retarget people who had engaged with our newsletters, something we never had the confidence to do before.

Now, every campaign tells a story. But still, UTMs aren’t glamorous. They won’t make your dashboard look sexy or your slides pop. But when done right, they tell your whole growth story!

Helpful resources

• Upcoming tl;dl podcast episodes 🎙️ 

Stay tuned for the next episode featuring a Meta and ex - Amazon PMM expert.
If you have any specific questions you would like me to ask, you can submit them here:

• Book recommendations of the week 📚️ 

  • The 4-hour work week, by Tim Ferriss

  • Presence, by Amy Cuddy

  • Shoe Dog, Phil Knight

PS: if you have any book recs you would like to add to the list, feel free to hit reply!

Until next time 💌