Sources and campaigns

The Sources and campaigns page answers a question every site owner asks: where do my visitors come from? Some people find you through a search engine. Some click a link on another website. Some click your post on social media. Some type your address straight in. This page sorts all of them into a few clear groups, called channels, so you can see at a glance which ways of reaching people are actually working.

Think of it like asking everyone who walks into a shop, “how did you hear about us?”. One by one the answer is just a story. But when you tally them into a few buckets, a pattern appears, and you learn which sign, which flyer, and which friend’s recommendation is really bringing people in. That is what this page does for your website.

What you see

The page has two connected views: the channels view, and the campaigns view.

The channels view groups acquisition sessions by how each session began. The common channels are:

• Search. People who found you through a search engine and clicked a result.
• Social. People who came from a social media app or site, for example from a post or a profile link.
• Referral. People who clicked a link to you on some other website that is not a search engine or social. Think of a blog that mentioned you, or a partner site.
• Direct. People with no source attached, usually because they typed your address straight in or opened a bookmark. Direct is also where visits land when the source simply could not be read.
• Email. People who clicked a link in an email you sent, such as a newsletter, when that link is tagged so leadmaps can tell.
• Paid. People who arrived by clicking a paid ad, when the ad link is tagged so leadmaps can tell it apart from a free, organic visit.

For each channel you see acquisition sessions, distinct visitors, and the channel’s share of acquisition sessions, ranked from the biggest source down. Sessions are additive across rows. Visitors are distinct within each row and can overlap when the same visitor returns through another source.

The campaigns view goes one level finer. It reads the tags you add to a link (the small labels like utm_campaign that you attach to a link before you share it) and breaks your traffic down by those tags. It keeps two grains separate: acquisition sessions show which campaign started a session, while activity pageviews show tagged activity that happened later. These numbers answer different questions and are never added together.

When a visitor later becomes a known lead, the same campaign context follows that person into the Leads workspace. leadmaps keeps their ordered sessions, not only the first visit, so the team can see which campaign started the relationship and which campaign brought the person back most recently. A form submission can carry the same context. Major ad click ids are preserved when the browser supplies them, without limiting you to one ad network.

A “channel” is a broad bucket for how people arrive. A “campaign” is one specific tagged link or push you want to measure on its own.

How to read it

Start with channels to see the big picture, then open campaigns to study one push in detail.

Here is a worked example. Say you pick “Last 30 days” and the channels view shows:

• Search: 7,000 acquisition sessions, 47 percent.
• Direct: 3,500 acquisition sessions, 23 percent.
• Social: 2,200 acquisition sessions, 15 percent.
• Referral: 1,300 acquisition sessions, 9 percent.
• Email: 600 acquisition sessions, 4 percent.
• Paid: 400 acquisition sessions, 2 percent.

What does this tell you? Almost half your sessions start from search, which is a strong, steady base that you did not have to pay for. A healthy slice starts direct. Social is doing real work. Paid is small, which is fine if you are not spending much, but it also means a paid campaign has room to grow if you choose to invest.

Now open the campaigns view to go deeper on one push. Say last month you ran two email newsletters and tagged each link. The campaigns view might show your “march-product-launch” campaign started 900 sessions while “march-weekly-tips” started only 150. The activity column can then show how much later tagged browsing each campaign produced. Without the tags, both would have been hidden inside one Email source and you would not be able to compare them.

Tag a link so the campaigns view can see it

The campaigns view is fed by tags you add to a link before you share it. You add them to the end of the link as small utm_ labels. The three most useful are:

• utm_source, the specific place the link is shared, for example newsletter or twitter.
• utm_medium, the broad type of channel, for example email, social, or cpc for a paid ad.
• utm_campaign, the name of the push, for example spring-sale.
• utm_term and utm_content, optional details for the audience, keyword, or creative variant you want to compare.

For example, a link in your spring sale newsletter would look like this:

https://yoursite.com/spring?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=spring-sale

You start the tags with a ?, join each label with &, and keep the values short and consistent. When someone clicks that tagged link, leadmaps reads the labels and files the visit under the right channel and campaign automatically. Use the same spelling every time (spring-sale, not Spring Sale one day and springsale the next) so a single campaign does not split into several.

Customize it

You shape the page with the controls at the top. Here is each one and when to use it.

• Switch between channel grouping and campaigns. Move between the broad channels view and the detailed campaigns view. Use channels when you want the big picture of how people find you. Use campaigns when you want to compare specific tagged pushes, or separate paid from organic.
• Set the date range. Use the calendar to pick the period the page covers, such as the last 7, 30, or 90 days, or a custom start and end day. Every number updates to match. Use a short range to measure a campaign you just launched, and a longer range to see your steady mix of channels once daily noise is smoothed out.
• Show or hide the URL parameters. Choose whether to display the raw tag values (the utm_ labels on each link) or keep them tucked away for a cleaner view. Show them when you are checking that your links are tagged correctly, or when two campaigns look the same and you need the exact labels to tell them apart. Hide them when you just want a clean, readable list of names.
• Scope to one website. If you track more than one website, narrow the page to a single site so its sources are not mixed with the others. Use this when a campaign or a referral only applies to one of your sites, or when you simply want one site’s sources on their own.

Use cases

• Find which channel starts valuable journeys. Open the channels view for a longer range like “Last 90 days” and read the acquisition-session ranking. Then pair it with Funnels or Attribution to see which sources lead to action. Action: if a source starts many sessions but few conversions, while a smaller source converts well, put more effort into the quality source rather than chasing raw volume.
• Measure a specific campaign. Tag every link in the campaign with the same utm_campaign name, then open the campaigns view after it goes out. Find your campaign by name and read how many sessions it started and how many activity pageviews followed. Action: if it starts fewer sessions than expected, the message, audience, or timing may need work. If it starts sessions but produces little later activity, inspect the landing experience.
• Compare paid versus organic acquisition. Make sure your paid ad links are tagged as paid, then look at the Paid channel next to free channels such as Search and Social. Action: compare the session mix here, then use Attribution for the spend and revenue decision.
• Give sales the campaign story. Use the same UTM values on every link and let permitted visitors identify themselves or submit a form. Action: open the resulting lead to see first and latest campaign context before deciding what follow-up is relevant.

Tips

• Tag your links, or the campaigns view stays empty. Untagged links fall into broad buckets like Direct or Referral, where one campaign cannot be told from another. A minute spent tagging a link is what makes the campaigns view useful later.
• Keep your tag names consistent. The same campaign typed three different ways becomes three separate rows that each look small. Pick one spelling for each source, medium, and campaign and reuse it exactly every time.
• Direct is not always people typing your name. Visits also land in Direct when the source could not be read, for example from some apps or secure links. A big Direct channel is normal and is not proof that everyone knows you by name.
• More acquisition sessions are not the same as better outcomes. The channel that starts the most sessions is not always the one that leads to purchases or return visits. Read this page next to Funnels and Attribution before you decide where to spend.
• A brand new site or a campaign that just went out can look empty here. Visitors have to actually arrive and, for campaigns, click your tagged links before numbers appear. An empty page on a fresh site or right after sending is expected, not a fault.