The only way to maximize your event marketing results is to optimize your event marketing investments, but you can’t do either if you’re not effectively tracking the results of every dollar you spend. That’s where UTM codes make everything so much easier and more accurate.
In simplest terms, UTM codes are snippets of text added to the end of a URL – such as a URL you use in a digital marketing campaign. When someone clicks on a link that has a UTM code appended to the URL, the data about that click is sent to Google Analytics so the marketer (like you) can track the behavior and the success of the marketing campaign and investment.
Using UTM Codes and AttendStar to Sell More Event Tickets
When you use AttendStar to sell event tickets, UTM data is passed directly to the AttendStar platform, so you can easily track your event marketing investments directly in your ticketing software!
Learn All About UTM Codes for Event Marketing in AttendStar’s Guides:
- Learn the Code that Boosts Your Marketing ROI and Ticket Sales
- A Guide to Implementing UTMs on Your Own
AttendStar’s event clients use UTM codes for many reasons. The most important reason for many clients is that they have tight marketing budgets, and they want to make sure they spend every penny as carefully as possible. For clients with big budgets, they don’t want to waste a penny!
The AttendStar team has integrated UTM code creation and tracking into its ticketing software, and we use UTM tracking every day. For example, we use UTM codes:
- To send email messages for our clients to their current and past event attendees
- In all of the Facebook advertising we do for clients
- As part of the event promotional features built into the AttendStar platform, such as Remind Me, Ticket Buyer Buzz, and Re-engagement
To give you an idea of how UTM codes work, take a look at the screenshot of the Remind Me setup page in the AttendStar software, which has been set up to promote a Monster Truck Wars event.
In the above example, a series of five Remind Me messages are scheduled to go out in the weeks leading up to the event, and the link that will be included in each message for people to click uses a URL with a specific UTM code added to it.
The goal is to track the results of each email that is sent in order to learn which email messages are most effective at motivating recipients to click and learn more about the event (and hopefully, buy tickets).
You can see what one of those URLs looks like with the UTM code added to the end in the image below.
What does all of the data in the UTM code mean? Read A Guide to Implementing UTMs on Your Own for all the details.
Diving in a bit deeper, below is an image that shows you all of the UTM codes AttendStar uses in its event email marketing and social media marketing.
As you can see, UTM codes can get complicated when you create a comprehensive tracking strategy to optimize your event marketing budget. You can set them all up within the AttendStar software, and in an upcoming AttendStar release, you’ll be able to create UTM codes automatically within the software!
If you don’t use AttendStar, you can use this free UTM builder tool from Google to create your UTM codes. As your list of UTM codes gets longer and more team members create them, you may need to develop a list of codes that everyone can access and update in real-time. If you’re not using AttendStar to create and track your UTM codes, utm.io is a great tool to organize them.
Another helpful resource is Google Analytics. Its support documentation explains all of the technical details about creating UTM codes. For example, you can learn about how Google Analytics reports your UTM results.
Key Takeaways about Using UTM Codes in Event Marketing
You don’t have to guess which of your event marketing investments are working and which aren’t when you use UTM codes to track the results of your digital campaigns. But that’s not all! If you’re using AttendStar to sell tickets, you can track your marketing investments using UTM codes directly within the software!
No need to use separate tools. Just set up your campaigns and UTM codes in the AttendStar platform (don’t worry, it’s easy), and you’ll be able to navigate to the Campaigns page within your AttendStar account to track clicks, sales, ROI, and more for each campaign and link.
Need help with your event marketing campaigns, tracking, and ticket sales? AttendStar’s Client Success Team is here to help you monitor your data behind the scenes and improve your results at any time. Contact AttendStar using the contact form or call us at 615-223-1973 to learn more about how you can sell more tickets when you choose AttendStar as your ticketing software.
