UTM naming conventions for a Shopify team

A UTM naming convention is a shared rulebook for the labels your team adds to marketing links. Use lowercase names, an approved source and medium list, and the same promotion name across channels. Give someone ownership of that rulebook and check links before launch.

That gives your Shopify team a consistent way to read campaign reports. The paid media agency, email manager, and partnerships lead should use the same standard.

Agree on the rules before building links

Start with the report you want to read. If the same Facebook promotion appears under facebook, Facebook, and fb, comparing its results takes extra cleanup.

Write down these rules in a shared guide:

• Use lowercase for values your team creates.
• Use hyphens between words in campaign and creative names.
• Choose sources and mediums from approved lists.
• Keep names short enough to understand without a separate glossary.
• Request approval before adding a new source, medium, or campaign pattern.

Hyphens are a readability choice, not a tracking advantage. Underscores can work too; preserve an established convention if changing it would create more confusion. Avoid spaces and punctuation that make labels harder to read.

These rules govern the values you enter, not the field names supplied by your link builder. Leave platform identifiers unchanged when they require a particular format.

Give each field one job

Source names the platform or publisher sending the visit. Medium names the type of marketing, while campaign identifies the promotion. Content distinguishes the creative or link placement; term usually holds a paid search keyword.

Use source, medium, and campaign as your team's minimum for manually tagged campaign links. Add content when comparing creative variants or placements. Leave term empty when no relevant paid keyword is available.

Here is a starting list to review against your reporting setup:

Replace partner-name with the approved publisher name. For email, choose either a stable newsletter name or your sending platform, then keep that choice consistent. Keep audience and creative details in their assigned fields rather than inventing new sources for each send.

Confirm that these source and medium pairs appear in the intended channels in your analytics reports. Check the channel classification as well as the spelling. Google's default channel definitions are the reference if you use GA4.

For a longer introduction to the fields, see what a UTM tag does.

Keep the promotion name across channels

Use a readable campaign name that identifies the promotion independently of its placement. A fictional skincare launch might use apricot-launch-2026 across Facebook ads, a newsletter, and partner articles.

Before links are built, the marketing lead approves apricot-launch-2026 in the guide. If an agency proposes apricot-facebook-launch, keep the approved promotion name and record its ad variation under content.

The source and medium change for each channel. The campaign stays apricot-launch-2026, so the team can find the same launch in campaign reports. Content could be jar-video for an ad and hero-button for an email link.

Add a region when separate markets need separate reporting. Agree on its position before launch, and include a year when a promotion repeats. Avoid adding details that nobody plans to use in a report.

This is a fixed-order approach: each part of the name has an agreed place. It suits a small team with a short list of reporting needs. If that list becomes hard to remember, explicitly labeled attributes can make a longer name easier to interpret.

An opaque campaign ID is another option when your tools already maintain a reliable lookup. It makes manual checking harder because the name no longer explains the promotion. Choose that approach only when someone owns the lookup and its use across tools.

Include lifecycle marketing in the naming review

Include email and SMS owners when agreeing on the standard. They need the same campaign names as paid media when supporting the same promotion.

This is channel context, not evidence that a naming convention increases revenue. Email and SMS appear together in the comparison. The chart does not measure missing tags or the quality of a team's naming rules.

Keep one shared guide and link log

Give the marketing lead responsibility for the approved names. Channel owners can propose additions, while the lead keeps the guide consistent across staff and agencies.

Keep the approved values, campaign pattern, optional fields, and worked launch example in the same shared document. Record the destination, chosen labels, owner, and approval for each campaign link in a shared log. Include a place for exceptions and the date a new rule takes effect.

A spreadsheet with dropdowns can be enough for a small team. A dedicated builder becomes useful when maintaining templates and approvals in that sheet gets difficult. Google's Campaign URL Builder can create a link, but your shared guide still supplies the naming decisions.

Ask agencies to use the guide and return their completed links for review. Check automatic email tagging against your approved values, so a platform does not add a conflicting campaign name. Dynamic ad fields can fill in campaign or creative identifiers, but someone must test the resulting values.

Do not disable Google Ads auto-tagging to make a manual convention look consistent. Review how the two work in your reporting setup before changing either.

Check the link before launch

Test the link from the place a shopper will click it. Use a test email, an ad preview, or the partner's planned placement where possible.

Follow this checklist before approving it:

• Confirm the correct product or collection opens.
• Check the destination after a short link, redirect, or discount link.
• Check that the intended campaign labels reach the destination.
• Confirm the expected labels appear in your analytics test view when tracking is permitted.
• Check that automatic tagging has not duplicated or replaced the approved labels.

Keep personal information out of tags, including customer names, email addresses, and order details. URLs can be visible to visitors and other services. Follow your store's consent requirements during testing and live campaigns.

Reserve acquisition UTMs for marketing links bringing visitors into the store. Leave them off homepage banners, navigation, and links between your own product pages. Ask whoever manages analytics to track internal promotions separately.

Roll out changes without losing the history

Apply the new convention to upcoming campaigns from an agreed date. Save the previous names and their replacements in the guide. Updating a live link changes future visits; it does not rewrite visits already recorded.

After launch, review source, medium, and campaign labels in your acquisition reports. In GA4, use Traffic acquisition and inspect session source/medium and session campaign. Look for unexpected spelling, empty campaign values, or sources absent from the approved list.

Correct the originating link or platform setting, then record the change. If older labels need combining for analysis, document that reporting decision separately from the original values.

Consistent names help you compare campaigns, but attribution still depends on the report and its rules. See Shopify marketing attribution models before interpreting differences between tools. Use that context when allocating your Shopify advertising budget.

Once the labels are agreed, By the Numbers brings spend, ROAS, CPC, and campaign results together in its advertising ROI reports.

How we measured these benchmarks

These benchmarks use anonymized, aggregated data from Shopify stores in the By the Numbers network. No individual store is identifiable from any figure. Stores that use an analytics app are not a random sample of all Shopify stores, so read the figures as a reference point, not as an average for the whole market.

Keep reading

If you want the full picture on ROAS and attribution, start with the ROAS and attribution guide.

Related reading: ROAS vs MER: Which Metric to Trust on Shopify, Marketing Attribution Models Explained for Shopify and Segmentation For Retargeting Ads Shopify.

By the Numbers builds this into the dashboard. See advertising ROI.