The easiest way to capture UTM parameters in Unbounce
Learn how to capture UTM parameters on your Unbounce landing pages so you can see exactly which marketing campaigns are driving your leads, customers & revenue.
Capturing UTM parameters in Unbounce is straightforward with Attributer. You add a few hidden fields to your forms, Attributer automatically populates them with the UTM data each time someone fills out a form, and the values come through alongside the lead's name and email. As a bonus, it also captures attribution data for leads from organic channels like Organic Search and Organic Social, where UTM parameters aren't present.
Do you know which marketing channels and campaigns are actually generating the leads and customers for your business? If you don't, it's likely you're investing in the wrong things and missing easy chances to grow.
The good news? There's a solution. By capturing UTM parameters on your Unbounce landing pages and passing them into your CRM with each new lead, you can run reports that show exactly which channels, campaigns, and ads are driving real revenue (not just clicks).
In this article, we'll show you how to use Attributer to capture UTM parameters in Unbounce. We'll also share some example reports you can run once it's all set up.
4 steps for capturing UTM parameters in Unbounce
Attributer makes it easy to capture UTM parameters on your Unbounce landing pages. Here's how to set it up in 4 simple steps:
1. Add the Attributer code to your website
The first step is to sign up for a 14-day free trial of Attributer. Once you do, you'll get a small snippet of code to add to your website.
Adding the code to an Unbounce landing page is easy. In your Unbounce builder, go to the page's Script Manager, add a new script targeting all pages, and paste the snippet into the head of the page. If you're using Google Tag Manager on your Unbounce pages, you can also add it through there.
2. Add hidden fields to your forms
Next, you need to add some hidden fields to your Unbounce forms. These hidden fields aren't visible to your visitors, but Attributer uses them to write the UTM data into when a form is submitted.
Unbounce makes it easy to add hidden fields. Open the form in the Unbounce builder, drag in a new "Hidden Field" from the form fields menu, and set its name to match one of the six values below.
The six 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 parameters
With everything in place, Attributer will start tracking where each visitor on your Unbounce pages came from and writing that information into the hidden fields on your forms.
To make this concrete, imagine you're the marketing manager at a custom packaging manufacturer. You're running Google Ads to attract businesses looking for branded packaging.
If a potential customer searches Google for "custom packaging manufacturer", clicks one of your ads, and fills out the quote-request form on your Unbounce landing page, Attributer would write the following details into the hidden fields:
- Channel = Paid Search
- Channel Drilldown 1 = Google
- Channel Drilldown 2 = Custom Packaging Solutions Campaign
- Channel Drilldown 3 = Custom Packaging Manufacturer
On top of that, Attributer also captures the visitor's first landing page and the landing page group:
- Landing Page = www.yourpackaging.com/services/custom-design
- Landing Page Group = /services
4. UTM parameters are passed into your CRM
Finally, when the visitor submits the form, the UTM data Attributer wrote into the hidden fields is captured by Unbounce alongside the lead's name, email, phone number, and any other details they entered.
From there, you can do a few different things with the data:
- See it in the Unbounce leads view for each form submission
- Include it in the new-lead notification emails Unbounce sends, so you instantly see where each lead came from
- Use Unbounce's native integrations to send the data to Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, or others
- Use Zapier or Make to push the data into a spreadsheet, your email marketing platform, or any other tool
What is Attributer?
Essentially, Attributer is a small piece of code that lives on your website. When a visitor lands on your site, it analyses some technical details (similar to what Google Analytics looks at) to determine where they came from.
Based on that data, Attributer categorises each visitor into a series of channels (like Paid Search, Organic Search, Paid Social, etc.) and stores the information as a cookie in their browser.
Then, when that visitor fills out a form on your Unbounce landing page, Attributer automatically writes the channel data into the hidden fields. So when Unbounce captures the submission, the attribution information comes through alongside the lead's name, email, and any other details.
Attributer was originally built by a B2B marketing consultant who saw his clients constantly struggling to figure out which channels were actually generating leads and customers (as opposed to just driving website visitors, which Google Analytics already shows).
Why using Attributer is better than capturing raw UTM parameters
Unbounce has a built-in way to pass UTM parameters into your forms, so why use Attributer?
The short answer is that it does a lot more than just capture raw UTM parameters. Let's take a closer look at the key things that set it apart:
1. Captures all traffic
Attributer captures attribution data for every lead that completes a form on your website, not just the ones from your paid advertising campaigns.
That means if a visitor arrives on your site via Organic Search, Organic Social, Direct, Referral, or any other channel where UTM parameters aren't present, Attributer will still capture and pass through information about where they came from.
So you'll know where every lead comes from, not just the ones from your paid campaigns.
Most other methods for capturing UTM parameters only work if the visitor fills out a form on the same page they originally landed on. That's a problem, because in the real world that's rarely how people behave.
Imagine someone clicks one of your Google Ads and lands on a campaign-specific landing page. Once they've decided you might be a good fit, they navigate over to another page on your site to fill out a form. Because the form page wasn't the page they landed on, the UTM parameters from the ad would be lost.
Attributer solves this by storing the UTM parameters as a cookie in the visitor's browser as soon as they land on your site. So no matter how many pages they browse (or even if they leave and come back later), the original UTM data still gets passed through when they eventually submit a form.
2. Remembers the data as visitors browse your site
3. Works on your entire website
Unbounce's built-in UTM tracking only works on Unbounce landing pages. If a visitor lands on your main website first (your company's home page, a blog post, an integration page, etc.) and then clicks through to an Unbounce landing page, the original UTM parameters from the ad they clicked are typically lost.
Attributer works differently. Because the code installs across your entire website (not just on Unbounce pages), it captures the UTM parameters from the very first page the visitor lands on and remembers them no matter where they go.
That means you get accurate attribution data whether the visitor fills out a form on an Unbounce landing page or anywhere else on your site.
4. Captures Click ID's
In addition to UTM parameters, Attributer also captures the click IDs that ad platforms attach to each visit. That's the Google Click ID (GCLID), the Microsoft Click ID (MSCLKID), and the Facebook Click ID (FBCLID).
Once those click IDs are flowing into your CRM, you can send them back to the ad platform at key moments in your sales pipeline (like when a lead becomes a paying customer). The ad platform then sees the conversion against the original click and can optimise toward generating more of those.
This is far more useful than just tracking thank-you-page visits as conversions, because you're optimising toward actual paying customers rather than form submissions that might never convert.
5. Captures landing page data as well
Beyond channel data, Attributer also captures the specific landing page each visitor first arrived on, plus the landing page group (the subdirectory).
For example, if a visitor lands on yoursite.com/blog/packaging-design-tips, Attributer would capture both the full URL and the landing page group (/blog).
This means you can run reports that show exactly which sections of your site (and even which individual blog posts) are driving leads and customers. Useful when you're trying to figure out what content is worth doubling down on.
4 example reports you can run when you capture UTM parameters in Unbounce
With Attributer capturing UTM parameters on your Unbounce landing pages and passing them into your CRM, you can run reports like the ones below to understand what's actually driving leads and revenue:
1. Leads by Channel
Because Attributer captures attribution data for every lead (not just those from paid campaigns), you can run reports that break down how many leads you got each month by channel.
This gives you a clear view of where your leads are actually coming from. It also helps you spot which channels are worth investing more in vs. which ones are underperforming.
2. Leads by Facebook Ads Network
If you're running ads across Meta's various networks (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, etc.), this report helps you see which network is generating the most leads.
That visibility lets you fine-tune your ad spend, putting more budget into the networks that are working and pulling back from the ones that aren't.
3. Customers by Google Ads campaign
This report shows how many actual paying customers you're acquiring each month from each of your Google Ads campaigns.
It's a powerful one because it goes beyond just measuring clicks or form fills. It tells you which campaigns are bringing in customers who actually convert, so you can shift budget into what's truly working.
4. Revenue by Keyword
If you include the keyword in the UTM parameters of your Google Ads (which you can easily do with tracking templates), you can run a report showing exactly how much revenue each keyword has generated.
That's useful in two ways. It tells you which keywords are worth bidding higher on in Google Ads, and it gives you a strong signal for which keywords to prioritise in your SEO efforts too.
How Harris Federal Law uses Attributer to know which Google Ads are actually winning new clients
Harris Federal Law Firm is a Washington D.C. legal practice that helps federal employees secure their benefits. They were running Google Ads to attract new clients and could see how many website visitors each campaign was generating in Google Analytics, but they had no way to tell how many of those visitors actually became paying clients.
That changed when they installed Attributer. Now whenever someone fills out a form on their website, Attributer writes all the campaign details (like campaign name, ad group, ad, and search term) into hidden fields, and that data is sent to their CRM with each new lead.
They quickly discovered that some of their display campaigns were generating lots of website visitors but very few paying clients. With that insight, they shifted budget into the search campaigns that were performing best. The result was more clients, better use of their ad spend, and confidence that every dollar was going 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
Wrap up
If you've been wanting to know which marketing channels and campaigns are actually generating leads and customers for your business, capturing UTM parameters on your Unbounce landing pages with Attributer is a great way to do it.
It will pass the UTM data from your campaigns into Unbounce (and on to your CRM, email tools, and more) so you can run reports that show what's truly working. As a bonus, it also captures attribution data for leads coming from organic channels like Organic Search and Organic Social, where UTM parameters aren't present.
Best of all, it's free to get started, and setup usually takes less than 10 minutes.
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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.