UTM Links for Tracking Referrals in Honey

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Setting Up UTM Links for Referral Tracking in Honey
• Why UTM Links Are Important in Honey
• What a UTM Link Looks Like
• What Each UTM Tag Means
• Where to Find UTM Info in Honey
• What “No_UTM_Source” Means

Setting Up UTM Links for Referral Tracking in Honey

UTM links help track how people are finding your study through digital ads and campaigns in Honey. This guide explains how these links work and how to set them up so you can see where your referrals are coming from.

Why UTM Links Are Important in Honey

Honey brings together recruitment data from many sources, and UTM tags are key to making that work. Here’s why:

• Track where candidates come from: UTM tags help Honey connect traffic to a specific platform, partner, or ad type (like Facebook, email, or a banner ad).
• See what’s working: You can track how much you spent and how each campaign or ad performed throughout the recruitment process.

What a UTM Link Looks Like

A link with UTM tags usually looks like this:

https://studyURL.com/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=melanoma_q3&utm_term=immune_therapy&utm_content=ad_banner

• The question mark ? starts the tracking part of the URL.
• Each piece of information is separated by an &.
• You don’t have to use all the tags, just the ones you need.
• To create one, take your usual link and add info about where it’s being shared, what type of ad it is, and which campaign it belongs to.

What Each UTM Tag Means

1. utm_source: Tells you where the person came from (how they learned about the study). Examples include facebook, google, linkedin, newsletter
2. utm_medium: Describes the way the study was shown to the person, such as email, cpc (cost-per-click)
3. utm_campaign: Used by marketers to compare different efforts. These could be setup as specific site campaigns, regional indications, or other advertising “pushes” such as melanoma_q3, spring_recruitment, or diversity_drive
4. utm_term: The words or phrases that sparked interest for your study. This is most commonly used for search advertising through search engines like Google and Bing.
5. utm_content: Images or other indications of different advertising versions. Some examples may be male_smiling or sad_woman
   
   

Where to Find UTM Info in Honey

Location	Description	Screenshot
Candidate assessment tab	Shows UTM info tied to individual candidates
Candidate table	Overview of multiple candidate entries
Candidate sources (sponsor/referrer accounts)	Breakdown by where traffic came from

What “No_UTM_Source” Means

Sometimes Honey can’t identify where a referral came from. Here’s why that might happen:

1. Missing Tags – The link wasn’t tagged properly during setup.
2. Shared Manually – Someone copied and pasted the link without the tracking info.
3. Link Tools Removed Tags – Some link shortening tools delete UTM info unless set up to keep it.
4. Tracking Didn’t Work – Something went wrong, and Honey couldn’t read the source.
5. Privacy Tools – Some browser add-ons block the code that tracks UTM info.