How should I implement UTM tracking in an email marketing tool, like Active Campaign, so that it has meaning to me in my Google Analytics reports?

Each email marketing software has a different way of implementing Google Analytics UTM codes. Some don't implement at all, and some give full customization.

When it comes to Active Campaign, I'm not a fan of how this tool automatically adds a UTM tracking integration because they do not implement it correctly or give you the option to update URLs. For this reason, I decided to rather manually tag links with UTMs when I was using Active Campaign.

You can add your own UTMs to any URL you link in an email to make them more meaningful than the default settings. It's a lot of work, but it gets you what you need.

To accomplish this, I had my team use the Google Analytics URL builder and put Data Driven as the source, email as the medium, and campaign_name as campaign and adding those links in the emails.

When comparing manual URLs to a native integration from email marketing software, all that the native integrations do differently is put in the tags for you. But for convenience, you sacrifice flexibility.

Learn more about the URL builder here: https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/