How to Create and Use UTMs and Coded UTMs#

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The Not-So-Secret Handshake of Serious Businesses – UTM Parameters and Coded UTM Parameters

Here’s the truth that separates successful, data-driven businesses from those flying blind: if you don’t know what a UTM parameter is, you’re probably not tracking where your customers are actually coming from. And if you’re not tracking that, you’re essentially burning money on marketing that may or may not work.

This isn’t gatekeeping—it’s reality. Businesses that understand and use UTM parameters represent a specific breed: the organized, the analytical, the ones who demand accountability from every marketing dollar spent. They’re the companies that don’t just “hope” their Facebook ad worked—they know it did, down to the exact campaign, ad set, and creative variant.

And here’s what the data shows: these data-driven businesses aren’t just slightly better than their competitors—they’re dramatically outperforming them in every meaningful metric.

The Data-Driven Advantage: Numbers Don’t Lie

The gap between data-driven businesses and those operating on gut instinct is staggering. Multiple research studies from leading institutions reveal just how significant this advantage has become:

Metric	Data-Driven Advantage	Source
Customer Acquisition	23x more likely to acquire customers	McKinsey Global Institute
Customer Retention	6x more likely to retain customers	McKinsey Global Institute
Profitability	19x more likely to be profitable	McKinsey Global Institute
Profit Increase	8% average increase	BARC Research
Cost Reduction	10% average reduction	BARC Research
Operating Margins	Up to 60% increase possible	McKinsey & DBSync
Competitive Profitability	6% higher profitability	PwC
Competitive Productivity	5% higher productivity	PwC
Revenue Goal Achievement	58% more likely to meet goals	Forrester Consulting
Revenue Goal Exceeding	162% more likely to exceed goals	Forrester Consulting
Strategic Decision Quality	69% report better decisions	BARC Research
Operational Process Control	54% report better control	BARC Research
Customer Understanding	52% report deeper insights	BARC Research

These aren’t marginal improvements—these are game-changing differentials. Data-driven organizations using advanced analytics demonstrate consistently superior performance in revenues (77% vs 61%), operational efficiency (81% vs 58%), and customer loyalty (77% vs 45%) compared to their less data-savvy competitors.

But here’s the fascinating part: implementing data-driven decision-making doesn’t require a massive team or enterprise-level budget. It starts with something as simple as properly tracking your marketing sources—and that’s where UTM parameters come in.

What Are UTM Parameters? The Foundation of Marketing Intelligence

UTM parameters are snippets of text added to the end of a URL that track exactly where your website traffic is coming from. Think of them as digital breadcrumbs that follow your visitors back to their source, telling you which marketing efforts are actually working.

There are five core UTM parameters, though only three are required:

1. utm_source (Required) Identifies which site or platform sent the traffic. Example: https://seresa.io/?utm_source=facebook

2. utm_medium (Required) Identifies what type of link was used (paid ad, email, social post, etc.). Example: https://seresa.io/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc

3. utm_campaign (Required) Identifies the specific marketing campaign name. Example: https://seresa.io/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=spring_sale_2025

4. utm_content (Optional) Differentiates similar content or links within the same ad or campaign. Example: https://seresa.io/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=spring_sale_2025&utm_content=carousel_ad_variant_a

5. utm_term (Optional) Identifies paid search keywords for campaigns. Example: https://seresa.io/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=analytics_tools&utm_term=wordpress+tracking+plugin

Real-World UTM Examples Using Seresa.io

Let’s look at practical applications:

Email Newsletter Link: https://seresa.io/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=november_product_update

Instagram Story Ad: https://seresa.io/?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=paid_social&utm_campaign=transmute_engine_launch&utm_content=story_swipe_up

LinkedIn Sponsored Content: https://seresa.io/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=sponsored_post&utm_campaign=b2b_lead_gen_q4&utm_content=carousel_post_2

Google Search Ad: https://seresa.io/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=server_side_tracking&utm_term=wordpress+analytics+solution

Affiliate Partner Link: https://seresa.io/?utm_source=techcrunch&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=product_review&utm_content=article_inline_link

These parameters flow into your analytics platform (Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, or your data warehouse) where you can see exactly which campaigns are driving conversions, revenue, and ROI.

The Critical Problem: Ad Blockers Are Killing Your Data

Here’s where things get serious. If you have been using UTM’s then while you’ve been diligently adding UTM parameters to all your marketing links, there’s been a silent data massacre happening in the background. The ‘data highway robber‘ has been stealing all your goodies!

Privacy-focused browsers, ad blockers, and tracking prevention tools have become incredibly aggressive. They see parameters like utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign in your URLs and think, “Aha! Tracking! Must destroy!” And destroy they do—stripping these parameters clean before they ever reach your analytics platform.

The result? You’re losing 30-50% of your attribution data. You see traffic landing on your site with no source information—just “direct” traffic that could have come from anywhere. Your carefully constructed UTM tracking strategy is being systematically dismantled by browser extensions and privacy tools, leaving you blind to which marketing channels are actually performing.

This is why businesses in the know have moved to coded UTMs—the not-so-obvious tracking parameters that slip past ad blockers like a digital ninja.

Coded UTMs: Your Attribution Data’s Best Friend

A coded UTM replaces the obvious utm_ prefix with innocuous-looking parameters that appear to be part of your site’s normal functionality.

Instead of the obvious tracking URL:

https://seresa.io/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=winter_promo

You use shortened, non-obvious codes:

https://seresa.io/?refab=refc

Or :

https://seresa.io/?refx=234sY

Here’s the genius: These coded parameters look like version numbers, content IDs, or page identifiers—things that any legitimate website might use. Ad blockers see them and think, “Eh, probably just internal site stuff,” and let them pass through unmolested.

But on your end, you have a lookup table that knows refab=refc means “source=facebook & medium=cpc & campaign=winter_promo”.

Your tracking remains intact, your attribution data stays clean, and you continue making data-driven decisions while your competitors wonder why their analytics show 70% direct traffic.

The key is consistency—you need a system to generate these codes and a way to decode them back into meaningful attribution data in your analytics without affecting your site functionality.

Enter inPIPE ™ – a free WordPress plugin solution: Your Coded UTM Solution

Creating and managing coded UTMs manually would be a nightmare. You’d need spreadsheets, lookup tables, constant updates, and a system that never breaks. This is exactly why we built inPIPE as a Free WordPress plugin.

inPIPE is a WordPress plugin that automatically creates coded UTMs and seamlessly tracks their usage without requiring you to manually manage encoding and decoding. It’s specifically designed to:

1. Generate coded UTM parameters that bypass ad blocker detection
2. Automatically decode them on your site on page open right before analytics processing
3. Preserve your attribution data that would otherwise be lost
4. Track usage patterns so you know exactly which campaigns are performing

The free version provides complete coded UTM functionality, protecting your marketing attribution data from the growing threat of ad blockers and privacy tools. It’s like having an invisibility cloak for your tracking parameters—they’re there, they’re working, but they’re not obvious enough for blockers to strip away.

Get inPIPE Free for WordPress: WordPress Plugin Repository – inPIPE by Seresa

Install it, configure your coded parameter patterns, and immediately start recovering the 30-50% of attribution data you’re currently losing to ad blockers. Your CFO will thank you when you can finally prove which marketing channels are actually driving ROI.

The Next Level: Server-Side Tracking with Transmute Engine™

Now here’s where businesses truly separate themselves from the competition. While coded UTMs solve the “getting data to your site” problem, there’s still a massive challenge: getting that data reliably to all your marketing platforms without browser-side tracking limitations.

This is where Transmute Engine changes everything.

Imagine you’ve successfully captured UTM data (coded or standard) when a visitor lands on your WordPress site. That visitor browses, adds products to cart, and completes a purchase. In a traditional client-side tracking setup, your website tries to fire tracking pixels to:

• Google Ads (to track conversions)
• Facebook Ads (for conversion API)
• Bing Ads (for conversion tracking)
• Klaviyo (for email segmentation)
• BigQuery (for data warehousing)
• Snapchat (for audience building)

But here’s the problem: Ad blockers don’t just strip UTM parameters—they also block tracking pixels, JavaScript tags, and cookies. Even if your UTM data made it through, your conversion events might not reach these platforms. You’re losing conversion data, under-reporting campaign performance, and watching your ad platforms optimize based on incomplete information.

Transmute Engine solves this with server-side event processing all at a button click.

How Transmute Engine Works

When an event occurs on your WordPress site (page view, add to cart, purchase, form submission), Transmute Engine captures all the event data—including your UTM parameters—and processes it server-side. This means:

1. Event data is captured at the server level where ad blockers can’t touch it
2. UTM attribution is preserved through your entire conversion funnel
3. Events are transmitted from your server directly to multiple endpoints
4. No browser dependencies—100% server-to-server communication
5. No data loss from ad blockers, browser restrictions, or privacy tools

With Transmute Engine, you click a button – add your API keys – and your event data flows securely to:

✅ Google Ads – Full conversion tracking with accurate attribution ✅ Facebook Ads – Conversion API events with UTM source data ✅ Bing Ads – Conversion tracking that actually works ✅ BigQuery – Complete data warehouse with all UTM parameters ✅ Snapchat – Conversion API for audience optimization ✅ Klaviyo – Email segmentation with full attribution history ✅ LinkedIn Ads – B2B conversion tracking ✅ TikTok Ads – Event tracking for social commerce – and this list is always growing.

All of this happens server-side, meaning it’s untouchable by ad blockers and their privacy-protecting friends. Your data flows reliably, your attribution remains intact, and your marketing platforms receive accurate conversion signals for optimization.

The Complete Solution: From Coded UTMs to Server-Side Processing

Here’s how a data-driven business operates in 2026 and beyond:

Step 1: Use inPIPE Free to create coded UTM parameters that bypass ad blocker detection Step 2: Visitor lands on your site with attribution data intact Step 3: Transmute Engine captures all events server-side with complete UTM context Step 4: Events are reliably sent to all your marketing platforms via server-side APIs Step 5: You make decisions based on complete, accurate data while competitors wonder why their campaigns “stopped working”

This is the difference between operating a business and running a data-driven machine. This is why understanding UTMs matters. This is why our products exist for businesses that refuse to accept “I think it’s working” as an answer.

The Bottom Line

If you made it this far and you’re thinking, “This is exactly what I need”—congratulations, you’re our ideal customer. You understand that marketing without measurement is just expensive guessing. You recognize that data infrastructure isn’t an IT problem; it’s a competitive advantage. You know that the businesses dominating your industry aren’t smarter or luckier—they’re just better informed.

If you made it this far and you’re thinking, “This seems complicated”—that’s okay too. Not every business needs this level of tracking sophistication. Some businesses are genuinely fine with approximate data and directional insights. But they’re not the businesses we built Transmute Engine for.

We built it for the data-driven businesses. The ones that understand UTM parameters. The ones that refuse to lose 40-50% of their attribution data to ad blockers. The ones that demand server-side reliability because their competitors are eating their lunch with better information.

Ready to join them?

Start with inPIPE to protect your UTM tracking from ad blockers. Then give our: Transmute Engine service free trial.

Graduate to Transmute Engine when you’re ready for bulletproof, server-side event processing that sends your data everywhere it needs to go—reliably, accurately, and completely untouchable by browser-side limitations.

Because in 2026 and beyond, data-driven isn’t just an advantage. It’s the baseline for survival and gives you all the data you will need to feed any AI in the future.

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About Seresa & Transmute Engine

Seresa specializes in planting and growing DATA TREES for our clients. We currently service the WordPress market with server-side tracking solutions for businesses that demand complete attribution accuracy, 100% data ownership and 100% data privacy. Our Transmute Engine platform processes event data from WordPress sites and distributes it to multiple marketing endpoints ( outPIPES ) using server-side processing—ensuring your data remains intact regardless of browser limitations, ad blockers, or privacy tools. Give our free full 3-day-trial a spin today.