How to capture UTM parameters in Contact Form 7
Here's how to capture UTM parameters with each submission of your Contact Form 7 forms and send them to your CRM, include them in email notifications, etc.
Use Attributer to capture UTM parameters in Contact Form 7. Simply add hidden fields to your forms, Attributer writes the data into them, and they are captured with each form submission. It even remembers them as user's browse your site (or if they leave and come back later).
Do you know which of your marketing campaigns are actually generating leads and customers?
If not, you could well be wasting your precious marketing budgets on ads that are getting lots of impressiosn and clicks, but not generating real leads and customers.
The good news? There's a solution.
By capturing UTM parameters every time someone submits a form on your website and passing that data into your CRM and other tools, you can run reports that show exactly which campaigns are driving real results.
In this article, we'll show you how to use a tool called Attributer to capture UTM parameters in Contact Form 7. We'll also share some example reports you can create once everything is set up.
4 steps for capturing UTM parameters in Contact Form 7
Using Attributer to capture UTM parameters in Contact Form 7 is easy. Here's how to do it in 4 easy steps:
1. Add the Attributer code to your website
When you sign up for a 14 day free trial of Attributer, you'll receive a small snippet of code to install on your website.
Adding it to WordPress is quick and straightforward. You can paste the code into the Header section of your site using a plugin like WPCode, or add it directly through your theme's settings.
You can also use tools like Google Tag Manager to add it to your site as well.
2. Add hidden fields to your forms
The next step is to add some hidden fields to your lead capture forms. These are the forms you use to collect leads on your site, like your Contact Us form, Request a Quote form, email signup form, and so on.
If you're not familiar with hidden fields, they're basically form fields that are invisible to the visitor but still exist within the form. This means tools like Attributer can use them to pass data along with each form submission without the visitor ever seeing them.
Adding hidden fields in Contact Form 7 is straightforward and you can see full step-by-step instructions here.
The hidden fields you need to add to your forms are:
- Channel
- Channel Drilldown 1
- Channel Drilldown 2
- Channel Drilldown 3
- Landing Page
- Landing Page Group
3. Attributer automatically completes the hidden fields with UTM data
With the Attributer code installed and the hidden fields added to your forms, Attributer will automatically start capturing UTM parameters from your visitors, storing them in the browser, and writing them into the hidden fields when a form is submitted.
To show you how this works, let's say you're a marketer at Dropbox.
Someone searches Google for "ways to share large files" and clicks on one of your ads. They land on the Dropbox homepage, browse around for a bit, then head over to the demo request page and fill out a form.
When they submit that form, Attributer writes the following data into the hidden fields (based on the UTM parameters you used behind your ads):
- Channel = Paid Search
- Channel Drilldown 1 = Google
- Channel Drilldown 2 = Brand Campaign
- Channel Drilldown 3 = Dropbox
On top of that, Attributer also captures the page the visitor originally landed on and fills in those fields as well. Using the same example, those fields would look something like this:
- Landing Page = www.dropbox.com/features/share
- Landing Page Group = Features
4. UTM parameters are captured by Contact Form 7
When the visitor submits your Contact Form 7 form, all the UTM data that Attributer wrote into the hidden fields is captured along with the lead's name, email, and other details.
From there, you can use other plugins or third party tools like Zapier to put that data to work. For example, you can:
- See the data in your WordPress Dashboard (using a form entries plugin)
- Include it in the new lead notification emails that Contact Form 7 sends
- Send it to CRM systems like Salesforce, Pipedrive, Hubspot, Zoho, Microsoft Dynamics, etc.
- Send it to a Google Sheet or Microsoft Excel file
What is Attributer?
Based on the steps above, you can see that Attributer makes it easy to capture UTM parameters in Contact Form 7. But let's take a closer look at how it actually works.
When you sign up for a 14 day free trial, you'll receive a small snippet of code to install on your website. Once that's in place, Attributer starts analyzing technical details about each visitor (including the UTM parameters behind your ads) to figure out where they came from.
Using this information, Attributer categorizes each visitor into standard marketing channels (like Paid Search, Organic Search, Paid Social, and others) and stores the data in the visitor's browser.
Then, when someone fills out a Contact Form 7 form on your site, Attributer automatically writes the UTM parameters and other attribution data into the hidden fields. This information is captured alongside the details the lead entered into the form, like their name, email, and phone number.
From there, you can send the data to your CRM, sync it to a spreadsheet, include it in your new lead notification emails, and more.
Attributer was originally built by a marketing consultant who needed a reliable way to track which channels were actually driving leads and customers for his clients. Today, it's used on thousands of websites around the world and tracks over 8 million visitors every month.
Why using Attributer is better than capturing raw UTM parameters
There are a few different ways to capture UTM parameters in Contact Form 7, so you might be wondering what makes Attributer the best option. Here's what sets it apart:
1. Captures all traffic
Attributer doesn't just capture data from paid campaigns with UTM parameters. It tracks the source of ALL your leads, including those from Organic Search, Organic Social, Direct traffic, Referral, and more.
This means you get the full picture of where your leads are coming from, helping you make smarter decisions about where to invest your marketing budget.
1. Remembers the data across pageviews and sessions
Most other methods for capturing UTM parameters only work if the form is submitted on the same page they originally land on. But that's often not how visitors behave on your site.
For example, say you're running Google Ads that send traffic to your homepage. A visitor browses around, checks out your services, then completes a form on your Contact Us page. With other tools, those UTM parameters would be lost because the form wasn't submitted on the original landing page.
Attributer solves this by storing the UTM parameters in the visitor's browser, ensuring the data is always passed, regardless of which page the form is submitted on.
3. Captures Click ID's
Attributer can also pass through click ID's like the Google Click ID (GCLID), Microsoft Click ID (MSCLKID), and the Facebook Click ID (FBCLID) with each form submission.
You can then send these Click ID's to your CRM and other tools, and at a certain point in your sales process (I.e. when the lead becomes a customer), you can send these back to the ad platform as an offline conversion.
This means that instead of tracking thank you page visits as conversions in your ad platforms, you can track real customers.
4. Captures landing page data as well
On top of capturing UTM parameters, Attributer also tracks the landing page and landing page group for each lead.
So if someone first lands on attributer.io/blog/capture-utm-parameters, Attributer would capture both the full landing page URL and the landing page group (/blog).
This lets you run reports that show which content on your site is actually generating leads and customers.
How Attributer helped Harris Federal Law track which Google Ads are truly generating customers & revenue
Harris Federal Law Firm is a legal practice in Washington D.C. that helps federal employees secure their benefits. They were running Google Ads and could see how many visitors their campaigns were generating in Google Analytics, but they had no way of knowing how many of those visitors were actually turning into leads and customers.
That's when they started using Attributer.
Now, every time someone submits a form on their site, Attributer automatically passes through the attribution details (campaign, ad group, ad, and search term) with each form submission, and the data is sent to the firm's CRM alongside each new lead.
With this data, the team was able to build reports showing which campaigns were driving real leads and customers, not just website traffic that never converted.
They found that some of their display campaigns were bringing in tons of visitors but barely any paying clients. Armed with that insight, they reallocated budget toward the search campaigns that were actually delivering results.
The outcome? More customers, smarter ad spend, and the confidence that every dollar was working as hard as possible.
"With Attributer we can see which campaigns are actually generating customers & revenue, rather than just website visitors. We were able to see that some of our campaigns were driving lots of visitors but few of them converted into leads and customers. Now we’re able to reinvest that budget into other campaigns that we can see are generating revenue."
Nick Child - Director of Marketing, Harris Federal Law Firm
4 example reports you can run when you capture UTM parameters in Contact Form 7
If you are using Attributer to capture UTM parameters in Contact Form 7, then you should be able to send the data into your CRM or a spreadsheet and run reports similar to the following:
1. Leads by Channel
With Attributer, you can capture the source of all your leads, not just the ones from your paid ad campaigns. This means you can create reports like the one above which show the number of leads generated each month grouped by the channel they came from.
This report can help you figure out which channels are driving the most leads and where you should invest more. For instance, if most of your leads are coming from Organic Search, but you're spending most of your budget on paid ads, it might be worth shifting some of that money towards SEO.
2. Leads by Meta Ads Network
If you're running ads across Meta's different networks (like Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, etc.), this report helps you see which network is actually generating the most leads.
With this insight, you can optimize your ad spend by focusing more budget on the networks that are delivering the best results and pulling back on the ones that aren't.
3. Customers by Google Ads campaign
The report above, which shows how many customers you get each month from your various Google Ads campaigns, can help you figure out which campaigns are really bringing in customers, instead of just getting visitors who don't convert.
This can help you get the most out of your Google Ads spending by focusing your budget and optimization efforts on the campaigns that are actually getting you paying customers.
4. Revenue by Keyword
By including the keyword in the UTM parameters behind your Google Ads (which can be easily done with tracking templates), you can identify the keywords your leads use to discover your business.
This not only helps you decide which keywords to increase your bids on in Google Ads but also provides insights on which keywords to prioritize for your SEO strategy, the language to use in your messaging, and other valuable information.
Wrap up
If you're looking for a way to capture UTM parameters in Contact Form 7, Attributer is a great solution.
It captures UTM parameters and stores them as visitors browse around your site (or even if they leave and come back later), so the data is always passed through when they submit a form.
On top of that, it also provides attribution data for leads that come from organic channels where UTM parameters aren't present, like Organic Search, Organic Social, Referral, and more. That means you get the full picture of where all your leads are coming from.
Best of all, it's free to get started with a 14-day free trial.
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About the Author
Aaron Beashel is the founder of Attributer and has over 15 years of experience in marketing & analytics. He is a recognized expert in the subject and has written articles for leading websites such as Hubspot, Zapier, Search Engine Journal, Buffer, Unbounce & more. Learn more about Aaron here.