Required Tag Details

Get the details about required tags for your campaigns. These standards ensure you can understand what users responding to your campaign do after they get to our website.

Campaign

The campaign name tag is the starting code of your UTM string. Having a consistent naming structure will allow you to roll up your results over time.

! Write all campaign names in lowercase without any spaces in between words, using underscores to separate campaign name elements and hyphens to join two terms.

CAMPAIGN NAMING STRUCTURE*: unitcode_marketing-activity_fyXX_[additional qualifiers]

There are 3 required elements of a campaign name:

Unit Code: Which unit is associated with this campaign activity? Follow the unit prefix code for your specific unit - use our URL builder to ensure accuracy!
Marketing Activity: What is the general name of your marketing outreach? (ex. hr-recruitment, student-awareness, day-of-giving, buckeyelove, faculty-staff-newsletter)
Fiscal Year: In which fiscal year did this campaign take place? (ex. fy20, fy21, fy22)

Optional (unless email - see more) - Additional Qualifiers

Use this field to specify the following if needed:

Email Descriptor
Audience Details (keep primary audience in marketing activity for email)
Channel or Platform (only needed in certain circumstances)
Academic Program
Medical Service Line

* When using tools like Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Acoustic or Sprout Social, you may already have built in tagging defaults so you can avoid having to build your own URLs. For all email campaigns, email names follow a similar structure to a campaign name tag, but require limited information (audience, goal) in the marketing activity and email details in the descriptor. See email tagging guidelines for more information.

Examples

The Alumni Association creates a post in March 2021 on their Facebook platform about alumni tours that sends users to a landing page to learn more about a trip to Europe.

Simple Campaign Name: aa_alumni-tour_fy21

Education & Human Ecology creates a post in March 2021 on their Facebook platform as part of a campaign about student stories that sends users to that student's story to read more.

Simple Campaign Name: ehe_student-stories_fy21

University Marketing creates a series of organic posts to support prospective graduate student recruitment for individuals interested in starting in AU23. They have a number of other student recruitment campaigns and want to be able to consider them together, but understand graduate students differently. They also may be adding email and paid search to the campaign in the near future.

Campaign Name Options:

umar_student-recruitment-graduate_fy21_au23
umar_student-recruitment-au23_fy21_graduate
umar_student-recruitment-au23-graduate_fy21 (best for google campaigns to reserve descriptors)
umar_student-recruitment_fy21_au23-graduate-introduction-to-ohio-state (meets email tagging requirements)

Medium

The list of medium codes below is specific to Ohio State. Using the medium naming conventions appropriately will help keep your analytics aligned - any medium you use that is NOT in the list below will result in a channel grouping of (Other). If you do not specify a medium, your traffic may be listed as (Direct).

Medium Code	Use Case	Channel
affiliate	Use when running campaigns for non-Ohio State units or departments (e.g., Scalefunder, Buckeye Nation Rewards, Vinoshippers, etc.)	Affiliates
cpc	Stands for cost-per-click. This should be reserved for paid search campaigns and only when auto-tagging is not in place within Google or Bing Ads.	Paid Search
cpp	Stands for cost-per-point. This is used for TV or audio/radio.	Other Advertising
cpv	Stands for cost-per-view. This is used for video campaigns.	Other Advertising
display	Use for display campaign, even if your pay model is cost-per-click.	Display
email	Use for all email campaigns. Typically, your source will be the name of the platform or vendor sending the email.	Email
out-of-home	Use for all out-of-home placements that have a place for URLs. Examples of out-of-home placements include billboards, kiosk takeovers, electronic signage, You will likely use the go.osu.edu link shortener for the URL using this code.	(Other)
paid-social	Use for tagged URLs coming from paid social posts. Your source will be the name of the social platform.	Paid Social
print	Use for print pieces that have a place for URLs. You will likely use the go.osu.edu link shortener for the URL using this code.	(Other)
social	Use for tagged URLs coming from organic social posts. Your source will be the name of the social platform.	Social

Source

The utm_source code is a required field. Google recommends using the “source” field to describe the referrer of traffic. For social media, use the platform you’re posting on as the source (e.g., Facebook is the source for Facebook posts, X for tweets); for email, your email system would be your source.