What are tracking links?
Tracking basically means that you're able to tell in what way a person ended up in your ticketshop. This could be nice, for instance, if you have several campaigns running at the same time to promote your event. To be able to gauge which of these campaigns is most successful, and therefore repeatable is quite valuable going forward.
When you share your ticketlinks in more than one place, your Marketing report can tell the origin of those links apart. For instance the website the traffic came in through.
But if you want to go more specific, it's good practice to make sure your links are tagged. A tracking link, often called a UTM link, is your normal ticketshop link with a few extra tags attached. Those tags are what turn a row that just says "Direct" into "Instagram story," "Newsletter," "Flyer campaign" or "Ambassador."
What do tracking links look like?
Your normal ticketshop link:
https://organisation.weticket.com/your-event/shop
The same link, tagged:
https://organisation.weticket.com/your-event/shop?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=summerfest-19-04
Everything after the ? is tracking only. It does not change where the link goes, your buyer lands on exactly the same ticketshop.
The five tags
utm_source — where the click comes from:
instagram,newsletter,flyer.utm_medium — the type of traffic:
social,email,print,cpc.utm_campaign — which event or campaign this belongs to:
summerfest-19-04.utm_content — optional. Use it to tell two links apart within the same post or email.
utm_term — optional. Only used for paid search keywords.
Source, medium and campaign are the three that matter. If you only ever fill in those, your report will still be useful.
Build a link with the UTM builder
You do not need to write these links by hand. Use the WeTicket UTM builder to generate your own tracking links.
Open the UTM builder.
Copy-paste your ticketshop link.
Fill in Campaign. For example, use the event name plus the date, so every link for one event groups together, for example
summerfest-19-04.Under Where are you posting it?, click the channel you are sharing on. This fills in source and medium for you. Or, alternatively you can type your own.
Click Copy link and paste it wherever you are sharing.
Two things worth knowing:
Planning a big campaign? Switch to Every channel at once to get one link per channel in a single step, ready to paste into a spreadsheet.
Click Show QR code for flyers to generate a QR code for the link you just built — useful for print, where you cannot click anything.
Keep your naming consistent
This is the part that makes or breaks the report. instagram, Instagram and IG are three different values, so they become three separate rows instead of one. A few rules keep it clean:
Always lowercase.
Use dashes instead of spaces:
bio-link, notbio link.Use the same campaign name on every link for the same event.
Pick one word per channel and stick to it across events.
The UTM builder does this for you automatically, it lowercases your values, replaces spaces with dashes and strips accents, and shows you what it saved.
See where your sales came from
Once people start clicking your tagged links, the results show up in the Marketing report for that event.
Go to your event.
Click Insights in the left menu.
Click Marketing report.
The Campaign tags panel breaks your sales down by UTM tag. Use the dropdown to switch between source, medium, campaign, term and content, and click any row to filter the whole report to just that value.
Sales that arrived without a UTM tag are grouped under None, and visitors with no tracked referrer at all appear as Direct.
For everything the report can do, see How does the Marketing report work?
Note: Tracking only starts from the moment someone clicks a tagged link. You cannot add UTM tags to a link after it has been shared and have earlier visits counted, those stay under Direct or None. So always build the tracking link before you post it.