Accurate attribution has one unglamorous prerequisite that trips up more brands than any dashboard ever will. Your marketing links have to be tagged so the system can tell where a click came from. Without proper UTM tracking on your links, even the best attribution tool is guessing. The good news is that Wicked Reports builds these links for you, so you never have to hand-write a UTM string or worry about getting the format wrong. Here is how to do it, and why it matters.
A UTM tracking link is a normal URL with a few tags added that tell Wicked Reports where the click originated, the source, the medium, the campaign, and so on. Those tags are what connect a click to the marketing that produced it. Without them, a sale cannot be traced back to the email, ad, or post that drove it, and your attribution has a hole in it.
This is the piece people skip, and skipping it undermines everything downstream. You can integrate every platform and install every report, but if your links are not tagged, the data underneath is incomplete. Getting your tracking links right is the unglamorous work that makes accurate ROI possible.
A useful thing to know up front, some of Wicked Reports' integrations tag your links automatically and need no further work, while others require you to add UTMs to your email and marketing links manually. The Link Builder is for the manual cases, and it makes them simple.
You will find the Link Builder in the Wicked Link Builder menu. Open it and you get three options depending on what you are tagging.
For one-off email sends. This creates default UTMs with a source of email-broadcast and a medium of email.
For automated or drip email sequences. This sets default UTMs with a source of email-automated and a medium of email.
For everything else, social posts, partner links, non-native ad platforms, and so on. This gives no defaults, so you set the values however you choose.
After you pick an option you fill in a few fields, starting with the destination URL, which is simply the page the link points to, such as your sales page. You then set the source, which is where the link is coming from, whether that is email, Facebook, Pinterest, a partner site, or anything else. Fill in the remaining values, save, and Wicked generates the encoded link for you to drop into your email or post. There is no need to be a UTM expert, the builder handles the format.
One time-saver worth knowing, when you save your UTM values they become available to select again later, so building your next link is even faster and your naming stays consistent.
Tagged links are only half of the setup. For Wicked Reports to actually record the clicks, the Wicked tracking script has to be installed everywhere on your marketing stack, all landing pages, opt-in forms, checkout pages, blogs, and pop-ups. A tagged link that lands on a page without the script cannot be tracked. Install the script across your whole site, then your tagged links have somewhere to register.
Sometimes a link needs to point somewhere you cannot install the tracking script, like a PDF, a YouTube channel, or an Instagram profile. For those cases Wicked Redirect Links let you capture and track the click even though the destination is not scriptable. This closes a common gap, so clicks to off-site destinations are not lost.
UTM tracking also lets you measure platforms Wicked does not integrate with natively, such as Bing, Taboola, Outbrain, or programmatic ads. As long as you can add UTM parameters to the links in those ads and send the traffic to a page carrying the Wicked tracking script, the clicks get tracked. Note that for non-native platforms you will import ad costs manually, since Wicked cannot pull spend automatically without a direct integration, but the click and conversion tracking works the same way.
THE POINT OF ALL THIS
Tagged links plus the tracking script are what turn Wicked Reports from a dashboard into an accurate attribution system. Once your links carry proper UTMs and your script is installed everywhere, Wicked can trace each sale back to the exact email, ad, or post that earned it, across the full customer journey. It is the foundation every other report is built on. See how it all fits together in the platform overview, or book a demo to get your tracking set up right.
A UTM tracking link is a normal URL with tags added that identify where a click came from, such as the source, medium, and campaign. Those tags let Wicked Reports connect a click, and any sale that follows, back to the marketing that produced it. Without them, sales cannot be traced to the email, ad, or post that drove them, leaving gaps in your attribution.
Open the Link Builder in the Wicked Link Builder menu and choose Email Broadcast, Email Automated Sequence, or Other depending on what you are tagging. Enter the destination URL and the source and other values, then save, and Wicked generates the encoded link for you. Saved UTM values become reusable, so future links are faster to build and stay consistent.
Some Wicked Reports integrations tag your links automatically and need no extra work, while others require you to add UTMs manually. The Link Builder handles the manual cases. Whichever applies, the Wicked tracking script must be installed across your site for the tagged links to actually register clicks.
Yes. For destinations where you cannot install the tracking script, such as PDFs, YouTube channels, or Instagram profiles, Wicked Redirect Links let you capture and track the click anyway. This prevents clicks to off-site destinations from going untracked.