UTM naming convention

When to use it

Attribution reports are junk because every campaign tags links differently. Fix the convention once; every report downstream improves.

The prompt

Design a UTM naming convention for a B2B company using HubSpot. Our channels: [LIST — e.g. Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, newsletter, partner webinars, ChatGPT Ads]. Produce: 1) Allowed values for utm_source and utm_medium per channel, consistent with how HubSpot buckets original source — flag where a custom value would break HubSpot's automatic bucketing. 2) A utm_campaign pattern (e.g. {year}-{quarter}-{initiative}-{geo}) with 5 worked examples from our channels. 3) Casing and separator rules, and the 5 most common mistakes that split one campaign into several rows. 4) A pre-launch validation checklist someone can run in 2 minutes. 5) A one-paragraph explanation of why this matters, written for the colleague who thinks UTMs are optional.

How to use it

1. 1List your real channels in the placeholder, including the odd ones.
2. 2Publish the convention where links get built — not in a drive folder nobody opens.
3. 3Build the links with our free UTM tag builder to enforce the values.
4. 4Audit last quarter's links against it once; fix forward, not backward.

Tips

• Lowercase everything — 'LinkedIn' and 'linkedin' are two different rows in every report.
• utm_source is the platform, utm_medium is the mechanism; most conventions die by mixing them.
• HubSpot's original source buckets have opinions — test one link per channel before rollout.

Related resources