The easiest way to capture UTM Parameters in Fluent Forms
Learn the easiest way to capture UTM parameters in Fluent Forms and send them to your CRM, include them in email notifications, and more.
Attributer makes it easy to capture UTM parameters in Fluent Forms. Simply add hidden fields to your forms, Attributer writes the data into them, and they are captured with the form submission. It even remembers them as visitors browse your site, and gives you information on leads that come from organic channels (like Organic Search, Organic Social, etc) as well.
Do you know how many leads and customers you are getting from your Google Ads? What about your Facebook Ads?
If not, how do you know what's working and what isn't?
Every marketer needs to be able to answer these questions about their campaigns, and the best way to do it is to place UTM parameters behind your campaigns and then capture them in Fluent Forms with each submission.
In this article, we'll show you how to use a tool called Attributer to capture UTM parameters (and other lead source data) in Fluent Forms forms so you can see where all of your leads and customers are coming from.
4 steps for capturing UTM parameters in Fluent Forms
Using Attributer to capture UTM parameters in Fluent Forms 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 free 14 day trial of Attributer, you'll get a small piece of code to place on your website.
Most WordPress users can add this through their theme settings or by using a plugin like Insert Headers and Footers. You can also add it through Google Tag Manager if that's part of your setup.
If you need help, instructions can be found here.
2. Add hidden fields to your forms
The second step is to add hidden fields to your lead capture forms. As the name suggests, hidden fields are form fields that can't be seen by your website visitors but are technically present on your form, meaning tools like Attributer interact with them without visitors’ knowledge.
It is easy to add hidden fields to your Fluent Forms. In the form builder, you simply drag and drop the ‘Hidden Field’ field type into your forms (it can be found under the Advanced tab)
Here are the hidden fields your form should contain:
- 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
Now that you've finished setting everything up, Attributer will track where your visitors are coming from and write that information into the hidden fields each time someone submits a form.
To help you understand exactly how this works, imagine you're part of the team at a company called Olmo Software.
A user conducts a search for your brand name ,clicks one of the ads you have running in Google, and is directed to a landing page on your site where they complete a form to get a demo of your product.
Attributer would then complete the hidden fields with UTM data that might look like this (depending on what UTM parameters you used):
- Channel = Paid Search
- Channel Drilldown 1 = Google
- Channel Drilldown 2 = Brand Campaign
- Channel Drilldown 3 = Olmo Software
As well as the above channel data, Attributer would also track what page they arrived on and pass it through in the hidden fields. Continuing the Olmo Software example from above, it could be:
- Landing Page = www.olmosoftware.com/landing-pages/brand
- Landing Page Group = Landing Pages
4. UTM parameters are captured by Fluent Forms
Finally, when the lead submits the form, the UTM parameters are captured in Fluent Forms alongside the personal information the lead entered into the form (like their name, email, company, etc)
Then, using Fluent Form's built-in integrations, you can send this data to CRM's like Salesforce, Hubspot, Pipedrive, Microsoft Dynamics and more.
Alternatively, because Fluent Forms also integrates with Zapier, you can send the data to over 2,000 other destinations, including Excel and Google Sheets.
And once this information is in your sales & marketing tools, you can use it to generate reports that show things like:
- Number of Leads generated from your ads on Facebook
- Number of Customers you got from running ads on Google
- How much revenue your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts generated
- And much more
What is Attributer?
Attributer is a small piece of code that you install on your website. Once it's up and running, it analyzes a range of technical signals (the same ones that analytics platforms like Google Analytics use) to figure out how each visitor found your site. From there, it sorts every visitor into a specific marketing channel (similar to the channel groupings you'd see in Google Analytics, like Paid Search, Paid Social, Organic Search, and others).
Attributer then stores this data in the visitor's browser. And when the visitor fills out a Fluent Form on your site, Attributer automatically writes UTM parameters and other attribution details into hidden fields you add to your Fluent Forms.
Finally, when the form is submitted, all of that lead source data gets captured right alongside the information the visitor entered (like their name, email, company, etc).
Attributer was built by a marketing consultant who needed a reliable way to show his clients which marketing channels were actually driving leads and customers.
"I originally created it for my own client projects, but it quickly became clear that businesses of all kinds could benefit from it."
Today, Attributer runs on thousands of websites and tracks attribution data for over 15 million visitors every month.
Why using Attributer is the best way to capture UTM parameters in Fluent Forms
Why choose Attributer when there are other options out there? Here's some key reasons:
1. Captures all traffic
Here's the rewrite:
Most other tracking methods only pick up UTM parameters, but Attributer goes further by capturing attribution data on every single lead that comes through your site.
That means you get source information for leads arriving through organic channels (like Organic Search, Organic Social, Direct Traffic, Referral, and others) on top of leads from the paid campaigns where you've added UTM parameters (such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc).
The result? When you pull reports to see where your leads and customers are coming from, you get the full picture across all your channels rather than just a snapshot of your paid advertising.
This is especially valuable when organic efforts are quietly outperforming your paid campaigns. For instance, if your SEO is generating more leads than your Facebook Ads, you'll be able to spot that trend and shift your budget and resources to where they'll have the biggest impact.
2. Remembers the data as visitors browse your site
A common problem with other tools and methods for capturing UTM parameters in Fluent Forms is that they only work if the visitor submits the form on the same page they initially land on.
To see why this is a problem, consider this scenario: A visitor clicks on one of your Google Ads and lands on your homepage. They like what they see, so they click your 'Contact Us" button, which takes them to a separate page with your contact form. Without Attributer, the UTM parameters would disappear during that navigation, and you'd have no idea where that lead originally came from.
Fortunately, Attributer handles things differently.
It stores the UTM parameters in the visitor's browser, so no matter which page they complete the form on, the UTM data always comes through.
3. Provides Click ID's
On top of UTM parameters, Attributer can also capture click identifiers like the Google Click ID (GCLID), Microsoft Click ID (MSCLKID), and Facebook Click ID (FBCLID) with every form submission.
From there, you can send those click IDs to your CRM and other tools. Then, when a lead hits an important milestone in your sales process (like converting into a paying customer), you can pass that click ID back to the ad platform as an offline conversion.
This means you can stop relying on thank you page visits as your conversion metric and start optimizing your campaigns around what really counts: actual paying customers.
4. Captures landing page data as well
Ever wondered how many leads and customers you get from your blog?
Attributer can help you answer this too. On top of the channel data, it also captures a lead's initial landing page (i.e., attributer.io/blog/capture-utm-parameters) and the landing page category (i.e., /blog).
With this data, you can run reports that show certain sections on your site are performing (e.g., your blog) when it comes to generating leads, revenue, and customers.
And since both the landing page and landing page group are captured, you can view your blog’s performance in two ways: as a whole section and as individual blog posts.
How Attributer helped Harris Federal Law track which Google Ads are truly generating customers & revenue
Harris Federal Law Firm is a Washington D.C. based legal practice that specializes in helping federal employees secure their benefits.
The firm was running Google Ads to bring in new clients and could see how much traffic the ads were driving to their website through Google Analytics, but they had no way of knowing how many of those visitors were actually turning into leads and paying customers.
That's when they turned to Attributer.
With Attributer in place, every time someone submits a form on their site, the attribution data (including campaign, ad group, ad, and search term) is automatically written into hidden fields and passed to their CRM alongside each new lead.
Once the data started flowing, the team could build reports in their CRM showing exactly which campaigns were producing real leads and customers (rather than just generating website traffic that never converted).
One of the biggest insights? Several of their display campaigns were driving a ton of visitors but barely producing any paying clients. Armed with that knowledge, they reallocated budget toward the search campaigns that were delivering the strongest results.
The end result? More customers, a more efficient ad budget, and full confidence that their marketing dollars were 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 Fluent Forms
If you're using Attributer to capture UTM parameters in Fluent Forms, you can send that data to your CRM or a spreadsheet and create reports like these:
1. Leads by Channel
This report gives you a month-by-month breakdown of your lead volume, organized by the marketing channel that brought each lead in (think Organic Search, Paid Search, Paid Social, and so on).
With this kind of visibility, you can quickly spot which channels are pulling their weight and which ones deserve more attention.
Say, for example, the bulk of your leads are coming through Organic Search but you've been pouring most of your budget into Paid Search. That's a clear sign you might be overlooking a huge opportunity to double down on what's already working.
2. Leads by Meta Ads Network
When you advertise through Meta, your ads can show up across several different platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and more). This report lets you see exactly how many leads are coming in from each of those networks.
That kind of detail makes it much easier to put your money in the right places. If you notice that Instagram is consistently bringing in more leads than Facebook, for instance, you can redirect more of your budget toward Instagram to get the best possible return.
3. Customers by Google Ads campaign
This report gives you a month by month view of how many customers your Google Ads have generated, organized by the specific campaign each one came from.
It's a good way to see which campaigns are actually delivering paying customers and which ones are falling flat. With that clarity, you can focus your time and budget on scaling campaigns that deliver real results for your business.
4. Revenue by Keyword
If you include the keyword in the UTM parameters on your Google Ads (something you can set up in minutes using tracking templates), you'll be able to see exactly which search terms are bringing in your leads.
Armed with that data, you can raise your bids on the keywords that are generating actual revenue and pull back on the ones that aren't, helping you drive more customers and get a better return from your ad spend.
Wrap up
If you want to capture UTM parameters in Fluent Forms, Attributer is a great way to do it.
Because it saves UTM data in the visitor's browser, you'll never lose that information, even if they click around your site, leave, and come back another day. And since it also captures leads from organic channels like Organic Search and Organic Social, you get the full picture of where every lead and customer is coming from.
Setup takes less than 10 minutes, so start your 14 day free trial today and find out exactly which channels and campaigns are driving your leads and customers!
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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.