Naming and channels

Donations are found and grouped by the values in their tags, so a campaign written two ways, such as winter-emergency and winter_emergency, counts as two campaigns. Agree each value before the first link is built, and share it with everyone who builds links for the campaign.

Writing tag values

• Use lower case.
• Join words with hyphens, for example winter-emergency.
• Leave no spaces.
• Spell each value the same way every time it is used.

Build a separate link for each place a campaign appears, changing only the tags that tell them apart. The same appeal sent in a newsletter and posted on social media needs two links with different sources and mediums, so that the donations from each can be told apart.

Recommended source and medium

Where the link is used	Source	Medium	Channel
Meta advert	The network, such as facebook	paid-social	Paid
Google search advert	google	cpc	Paid
TikTok advert	tiktok	paid-social	Paid
Email newsletter	newsletter	email	Email
Organic social post	The network, such as instagram	social	Social
Printed material with a QR code	The item, such as leaflet	print	Other

Where one advert runs on more than one network, such as Facebook and Instagram, agree a single source for it and use that source on every link for the advert.

Printed material has no channel of its own. Its donations are classed as Other and are told apart by their source and campaign.

How the medium decides the channel

Each donation is given a channel, worked out from its source and medium. Capital letters and spaces around a value are ignored, and every other character has to match exactly. The rows are checked from the top, and the first that matches decides the channel.

Channel	When
Paid	The medium is cpc, cpm, display, paid, paid-social, ppc or retargeting
Email	The medium or the source is email
Organic Search	The medium is organic
Social	The medium is social, for posts that are not paid for
Direct	The source is direct
Referral	The medium is referral
Other	Any other value

Three common mistakes lead to the wrong channel:

• paid_social written with an underscore, which is classed as Other.
• A source with no medium, which is classed as Other unless the source is email or direct.
• A medium with no source. Without a source the medium is not used, and the donation is classed by the website the visitor came from.

A donation with no source, such as one from a visitor who has not followed a tagged link, is classed by the website the visitor came from. A search engine gives Organic Search, a social network gives Social, any other website gives Referral, and no website at all gives Direct.

Marking brand campaigns

A brand search campaign reaches people who are already searching for your organisation by name, so its results are best reported apart from campaigns that reach new audiences. Mark and name brand campaigns so that they can be separated.

• Add Marketing tactic (utm_marketing_tactic) to every advert link. Use brand for brand search campaigns, prospecting for campaigns aimed at new audiences, and retargeting for campaigns aimed at people who have already visited or given.
• Include brand in the name of every brand search campaign on the advertising platform, and in the campaign value in Campaign (utm_campaign), for example winter-emergency-search-brand.