Using Dynamic Variables In The Link Builder

Easy-to-build UTMs that don’t take you away from your work are the dream.

And we understand that. This is why we created dynamic URL parameters.

Dynamic URL parameters auto-fill your UTM parameters in seconds. They also standardize your UTMs so you don’t have to worry whether your campaign name was “Jan20” or “jan20” or “january20”. Both these benefits result in quick UTM links that give you accurate campaign data you can count on.

All you have to do is set your link format, such as current month or Facebook ad ID, and UTM.io will take care of the rest.

What are dynamic variables?

A URL parameter is a name-value pair, such as MMM="jan" where MMM is the name and jan is the value. When you’re using a dynamic URL parameter, you provide the name of the parameter and UTM.io auto-fills the value for it.

For example, {{MMM}} stands for current month. If you set this as your parameter, UTM.io will automatically fill it with the current month, such as “Mar”.

How can I use them?

There are three ways to use UTM.io’s dynamic URL variables:

Use the dynamic URL parameters offered by UTM.io
Use dynamic URL parameters offered by other advertising platforms like Facebook Ads or Google Ads.
Use your own custom URL parameters (reach out to [email protected])

In this article, we’ll explore how to add UTM.io’s dynamic URL parameters.

1. Adding a date variable to your UTM links

To get started, head to the Links module and click on ‘Create Link’.

Here, choose the dynamic URL parameter you’d like to use. Let’s say you want to add the current month, like ‘feb’, to your UTM link. To do that, click on the ‘Date’ field and add MMM in curly brackets like so:

This date format returns the first three letters of the current month such as ‘jan’, ‘feb’, ‘mar’, and so on. You can also use other date formats for months depending on your UTM conventions as well:

{{MM}} represents months as double digits such as ‘01’ for January, ‘02’ for February, ‘03’ for March, and so on.
{{MMMM}} represents months as their full names such as ‘january’ for January, ‘february’ for February, ‘march’ for March, and so on.
{{ddd}} represents the first three letters of the current day of the week such as ‘mon’, ‘tue’, ‘wed’, and so on.

Now, let’s add that {{MMM}} to the Date field.

This auto-populates the URL with the current month i.e. ‘feb’ in our case.

2. Adding multiple date variables to your UTM links

You can also create a date format with multiple data points. Just separate each with a hyphen.

Let’s look at an example. To add a complete calendar date, you can use “{{dddd}}-{{D}}-{{MMM}}” where:

{{DDDD}} = current day of the week, such as monday, tuesday, and so on.
{{D}} = current calendar date of the month, such as ‘1’, ‘2’, and ‘30’.
{{MMM}} = current month, such as ‘jan’, ‘feb’, and so on.

Here’s what that looks like in the link builder.

3. Adding more than one variable type to your UTM links

You can also use different dynamic URL variables together in your UTM links. Let’s see how we can use the Date variable along with the Medium variable.