Best way to capture UTM parameters in Formidable Forms
Learn how to capture UTM parameters in Formidable Forms and send them to your CRM, include them in email notifications, and more.
Attributer makes it easy to capture UTM parameters in Formidable Forms. It writes the data into hidden fields on your forms and it is captured with each submission. It even tracks leads from organic channels like Organic Search and Organic Social.
Do you actually know which marketing channels and campaigns are generating your leads and customers?
If not, you're likely wasting budget and flying blind when it comes to growing your business.
The good news? There's a fix.
In this article, we'll show you how to use Attributer to capture UTM parameters with every Formidable Forms submission and send that data to your CRM and other tools, so you can finally make smarter decisions about where to invest your marketing budget.
4 steps for capturing UTM parameters in Formidable Forms
Using Attributer to capture UTM parameters in Formidable 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 14-day free trial of Attributer, you'll get a small snippet of code to install on your website.
If your site runs on WordPress, you can usually add it through your theme's settings or via a plugin like Insert Headers and Footers.
You can also drop it in through Google Tag Manager if that's part of your setup.
2. Add hidden fields to your forms
Next, you need to add some hidden fields to your Formidable Forms so Attributer has somewhere to write the tracking data.
Hidden fields are invisible to anyone filling out your form, so nothing changes from the visitor's perspective. A form with a name field, an email field, and 6 hidden fields still just shows name and email to the user.
You'll need to add 6 hidden fields in total. Just add a hidden field type to your form and label each one as follows:
- 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 everything in place, Attributer will start capturing UTM parameters and writing them into the hidden fields on your Formidable Forms.
To see how it works in practice, imagine you're a marketer at Dropbox. A potential customer searches Google for "ways to share large files," sees one of your paid search ads, clicks through to the homepage, then navigates to your Demo Request page and fills out the form.
Depending on the UTM parameters behind the ad, Attributer would write the following into the hidden fields:
- Channel = Paid Search
- Channel Drilldown 1 = Google
- Channel Drilldown 2 = Brand Campaign
- Channel Drilldown 3 = Dropbox
It would also capture where the visitor first landed on your site:
- Landing Page = www.dropbox.com/features/share
- Landing Page Group = Features
4. UTM parameters are captured by Formidable Forms
Finally, when the user submits a form with their details (name, email, number, etc.), the UTM parameters are captured in Formidable Forms.
You can then use Formidable Forms native integrations or Zapier to send that user data to a CRM systems like Salesforce, Hubspot, ActiveCampaign, and more.
Alternatively, if you don't use a CRM, you can send it to a spreadsheet, email marketing software, or other tools.
What is Attributer?
The steps above give you a pretty good picture of how Attributer works, but here's a bit more detail if you're curious.
Attributer is a small snippet of code that sits on your website and looks at technical signals like UTM parameters, HTTP referrer data, and device information to figure out where each visitor came from.
It then uses that information to categorize visitors into channels like Paid Search, Organic Search, and Paid Social. It then stores that data in their browser.
When the visitor completes a form, Attributer writes those values into the hidden fields, and Formidable Forms captures them alongside whatever information the lead entered into the form (their name, email, phone number, etc).
You can then see the data in your WordPress Dashboard, include it in email notifications, send it to your CRM, and more.
Why using Attributer is better than capturing raw UTM parameters
There are other ways to capture UTM parameters in Formidable Forms, so why use Attributer? Here are 4 reasons it's the better choice:
1. Captures all traffic
Attributer captures attribution data for every lead, not just the ones coming from paid campaigns.
So if a lead finds you through Organic Search, Organic Social, Referral, or Direct traffic, you'll know about it.
This means you can see where all your leads are coming from and make smarter decisions about where to spend your marketing budget.
2. Provides cleaner data
Most other methods for capturing UTM parameters only work if the visitor fills out a form on the exact page they landed on.
This is a problem, because if someone clicks one of your Google Ads, lands on your homepage, and then navigates over to your Contact Us page and completes a form there, the UTM Parameters won't be captured.
Attributer solves this by storing the UTM data in the visitor's browser. So no matter how many pages they browse on your site (or even if they leave and come back later), the attribution data always comes through.
3. Captures Click IDs
Attributer also captures click IDs like the Google Click ID (GCLID), Microsoft Click ID (MSCLKID), and Facebook Click ID (FBCLID) with each form submission.
Once those click IDs are in your CRM, you can send them back to the ad platform at a key moment in your sales process, like when a lead converts to a paying customer. This is called an offline conversion, and it means your ad platforms are optimizing based on actual customers rather than just thank you page visits.
3. Captures landing page data as well
Attributer also captures the landing page (like attributer.io/blog/capture-utm-parameters) and landing page group (like /blog) for each lead, not just the channel data.
This means you can see which sections of your site are driving the most leads and customers. For instance, uou can look at how your blog is performing overall, then drill down to see which individual posts are doing the heavy lifting.
How Attributer helped Harris Federal Law track which Google Ads are truly generating customers & revenue
Harris Federal Law Firm is a legal firm in Washington D.C that helps federal employees secure their benefits.
They use Google Ads to attract new customers and were tracking how many website visitors their ads were generating in Google Analytics, but they weren't able to determine how many leads and customers were coming from the ads.
That’s when they decided to use Attributer.
Now, whenever someone fills out a form, Attributer automatically writes all the attribution details (like campaign, ad group, ad, and search term) into hidden fields on their form, and it is sent to their CRM with each new lead.
With the data coming, the team was able to run reports in their CRM that showed which campaigns were driving actual leads and customers (as opposed to just website visitors that never converted).
They discovered that some of their display campaigns, which were sending heaps of website visitors, were actually producing very few paying clients. With that knowledge, they shifted budget into the search campaigns that were performing best.
The result was more customers, better use of ad spend, and the confidence that every dollar was being put to work in the right place.
"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 Formidable Forms
Once Attributer is capturing UTM parameters in your Formidable Forms, you can send that data to your CRM or a spreadsheet and start running reports like these:
1. Leads by Channel
This report breaks down how many leads you got each month by the channel they came from, whether that's Organic Search, Paid Search, Paid Social, or something else.
It's only possible because Attributer tracks the source of every lead, not just the ones from paid campaigns. And it can be pretty eye opening. If most of your leads are coming from Organic Search but you're pouring your budget into Paid Search, that's a signal you might be missing a big growth opportunity.
2. Leads by Meta Ads Network
When you run Meta Ads, your campaigns can show up across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and more. This report shows you how many leads each of those networks is actually generating.
It's a handy one for budget decisions. If Instagram is consistently driving more leads than Facebook, that's a pretty clear signal about where to shift more of your spend.
3. Customers by Google Ads campaign
This report shows how many customers you acquired each month from Google Ads, broken down by campaign.
It's one of the most useful reports you can run if you're spending money on Google Ads, because it shows you which campaigns are actually generating customers rather than just clicks.
With this information, you can double down on what's working and stop wasting budget on what isn't.
4. Revenue by Keyword
If you include the keyword in the UTM parameters behind your Google Ads (easy to do with tracking templates), Attributer will capture which keyword each lead came from.
That means you can see exactly which keywords are driving real revenue, and increase your bids on those ones to get even more customers from them.
Wrap up
If you want to know which channels and campaigns are actually driving your leads and customers, Attributer is a great place to start.
It goes beyond just capturing UTM parameters. It tracks organic channels too, so you get a complete picture of where every single lead is coming from.
Best of all, it's free to get started. Sign up for a 14-day free trial and you could have it up and running on your site today.
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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.