Ian Jamieson

If you work with Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement long enough, you eventually hit the same question every digital marketer faces: how do I keep my UTM tracking clean, consistent, and actually useful? I have struggled with this topic for a while now, as business goalposts move and technology changes.

It sounds simple on paper—just add parameters to your links and off you go.

But in practice, when you’re juggling journeys, dynamic content, multiple teams, and a mix of ad‑hoc and automated sends, UTM governance can quickly become messy. The good news is that Marketing Cloud gives you several reliable ways to take control of your tracking without slowing down your workflow.

This post walks through the approach I use across projects and my own campaigns: practical, scalable, and built for teams who want clarity in their analytics, not chaos.

Why UTM Tracking Matters More in SFMC

Marketing Cloud is often the final mile of your marketing stack—the point where your carefully segmented audiences actually receive something. If your UTM parameters aren’t consistent at this stage, your downstream reporting in GA4, Adobe Analytics, or even your own dashboards becomes fragmented.

A single typo in a query string can split your data into multiple “channels,” and suddenly your email performance looks worse than it is. Clean UTM governance protects your attribution, your insights, and ultimately your budget.

Option 1: Use Marketing Cloud’s Built‑In Link Tracking

SFMC automatically appends tracking parameters to every link, but these are proprietary to Salesforce and don’t map cleanly to analytics platforms. They’re great for internal reporting, but not enough for cross‑channel attribution.

If you rely on GA4 or similar tools, you’ll want to override or supplement these with your own UTM structure.

Option 2: Add UTMs Manually (Good for One‑Off Sends)

For simple campaigns, you can manually append UTMs directly in the email editor.

A typical structure might look like:

?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=jan_sale

This works, but it’s prone to human error and doesn’t scale well. If you have multiple links, dynamic content blocks, or a team of contributors, manual UTMs become a liability.

Option 3: Use AMPscript for Dynamic, Consistent UTMs

This is where things get interesting. AMPscript lets you generate UTMs dynamically based on send context—ideal for journeys, triggered sends, and anything that needs to scale.

A simple pattern looks like this:

SET @utm = CONCAT(
  "?utm_source=salesforce",
  "&utm_medium=email",
  "&utm_campaign=", AttributeValue("CampaignName")
)
SET @finalURL = CONCAT(@baseURL, @utm)

You can pull in data from the send, the subscriber, or even the journey entry event. This ensures every link is tagged consistently without relying on manual edits.

Option 4: Centralise Your UTM Logic in Content Builder

If you want true governance, create a shared content block that contains your UTM logic. Then reference it across templates and journeys.

This gives you:

• One place to maintain your UTM structure
• Consistency across teams
• Flexibility to update tracking without editing every email

It’s one of the simplest ways to bring order to a busy SFMC environment.

Final Thoughts

UTM tracking in Marketing Cloud doesn’t need to be complicated. With a bit of structure—and ideally a centralised, AMPscript‑powered approach—you can ensure every email contributes clean, reliable data to your analytics stack.

It’s one of those small operational wins that pays off massively over time, especially when you’re building a scalable martech foundation.

If you want help implementing a dynamic UTM framework or integrating it into your journeys, I’m always happy to dig into the details.