How campaign tracking works
What this page is — the journey of a campaign tag, from the link a visitor opens to the Source channel and Campaign values on a lead and on a form submission.
What it is for — reading those two values with confidence: knowing when they are filled, when they say Direct / unknown, and what they do not record.
The problem it solves — "this lead came from Facebook" is a claim somebody will spend money on. The values are only trustworthy if you know which visit they describe, what happens when the same person comes back, and which forms never see a tag at all.
Routes: /org/marketing/leads/{id} · /org/marketing/forms/{id}/submissions · Permissions:
View Marketing Suites lead management (leads) · Open Forms Management Page (submissions)
Orbit Pulse has no separate page for forms yet. The columns and details of the Form Submissions screen that relate to campaigns are described here, in section 6.
1. The idea in one table
| Tagged visit | Untagged visit | |
|---|---|---|
| How the visitor arrived | Through a link carrying campaign tags, such as one from Campaign Links | By typing the address, from a bookmark, from a search result, or through a plain link |
| What the form submission records | Channel, campaign, landing page, and the page they came from | Nothing about the campaign |
| Source channel shows | For example facebook (social) | Direct / unknown |
| Campaign shows | For example diwali-offer | Direct / unknown |
Direct / unknown is an honest label. It means no tag arrived. It does not mean the visitor typed the address.
2. From link to lead
What is captured on arrival
When a page of your site opens, it looks at its own address. If the address carries any of these, they are remembered.
| Captured | Meaning | Set by the Campaign Links builder |
|---|---|---|
utm_source | The channel, such as facebook | Yes |
utm_medium | The kind of channel, such as social | Yes |
utm_campaign | The campaign tag, such as diwali-offer | Yes |
utm_content | Which link within the campaign | Optional |
utm_term | A keyword, used by paid search links | No. Read if a link made elsewhere carries it |
| Landing page | The full address the visitor arrived on, tags included | — |
| Referrer | The page the visitor came from, when the browser reports one | — |
An address with none of the five tags changes nothing: whatever was remembered stays remembered.
How long the tags are remembered
The tags are kept in the visitor's browser for the rest of that visit, in the same browser tab.
- They survive moving between pages. A visitor who lands on the home page through a tagged link and fills in the form on the contact page is still tagged.
- They end with the visit. Closing the tab forgets them. A visitor who returns the next day by typing the address is untagged.
- Nothing is kept in your organisation's data until a form is submitted. A visitor who reads and leaves is not recorded.
Which tags win
| Situation | Result |
|---|---|
| First tagged arrival of the visit | Its tags are remembered |
| The visitor opens further pages with no tags | The remembered tags stay |
| The visitor re-opens the same tagged link | Nothing changes |
| The visitor arrives again through a link with different tags | The new tags replace the old ones, together with a new landing page and referrer |
In short: the first tagged visit wins, unless a later visit carries different tags.
3. What is stored, and where
When a form is submitted, the remembered tags travel with it.
| Value | On the form submission | On a newly created lead |
|---|---|---|
| Source, medium, campaign, term, content | Stored, each up to 255 characters | Stored, each shortened to 100 characters if longer |
| Landing page | Stored, up to 1,000 characters | Stored as the lead's Landing Page |
| Referrer | Stored, up to 1,000 characters | Not stored on the lead |
| Shown as | Source channel, Campaign, Landing page, Referrer | Source channel, Campaign, and the editable tag fields below them |
The submission is the full record. The lead holds a working copy that can be edited afterwards.
Campaign tags are kept apart from what the visitor typed. They do not show up as extra fields in the submission and they are not part of the form's design.
4. How the two values are worded
Source channel and Campaign are put together from the tags.
| Tags present | Source channel | Campaign |
|---|---|---|
| Source and medium | source (medium), for example facebook (social) | The campaign tag |
| Source only | The source, for example facebook | The campaign tag |
| Medium only | The medium, for example social | The campaign tag |
| Some tags, and neither source nor medium | Unknown channel | The campaign tag |
| Some tags, and no campaign | As above | No campaign name |
| No tags at all | Direct / unknown | Direct / unknown |
Values are shown as they arrived: lower case, with hyphens. They are tags, not display names.
5. Where you see it — the lead record
Open a lead. In the right-hand column, below Custom Fields, is the Marketing card.
The grey block at the top of the card, marked 1, is the summary: Source channel and Campaign. It is read-only and is worked out from the tag fields underneath it.
Below the summary, the card lists the fields the summary is built from.
| Field | Holds |
|---|---|
| Source | The lead's lead source, with a free-text detail line under it. Not set by campaign tracking |
| Landing Page | The address the visitor arrived on |
| Campaign (UTM) | The campaign tag |
| UTM Source | The channel |
| Medium | The kind of channel |
| Term | The keyword, if any |
| Content | The content tag, if any |
Greyed italic text such as keyword or content is a prompt for an empty field, not a value.
A lead that arrived untagged shows this instead:
Editing the tags on a lead
The fields under the summary are edited in place, like every other field of the lead record, by anybody who holds Edit Existing Leads. Change UTM Source and the Source channel above it changes with it.
That is useful for a lead you know came from a campaign and arrived untagged, for instance one typed in by hand after a phone call. It also means the summary on a lead is only as reliable as the people who can edit it. The form submission keeps the original values and cannot be edited.
6. Where you see it — form submissions
Open Manage Forms, find the form, and press Submissions.
| Column | Holds |
|---|---|
| Submitted At | Date and time of the submission |
| The form's first three fields | For example Full Name, Email Address, Phone Number |
| Source channel | Worded as in section 4. Grey when Direct / unknown |
| Campaign | The campaign tag. Grey when Direct / unknown |
| IP Address | The address the submission came from |
| Actions | Lead opens the lead linked to the submission, when there is one. View opens the details |
Submission details
View opens Submission Details.
| Line | Shown |
|---|---|
| Submitted At, IP Address | Always |
| Source channel, Campaign | Always. Direct / unknown when untagged |
| Landing page | Only when one was recorded |
| Referrer | Only when the browser reported one |
| View Associated Lead | When the submission is linked to a lead |
| The form's answers | Always, under the line |
The landing page address includes the tags exactly as the visitor's link carried them, so it is the place to check what a link really said.
Search submissions… looks through the form's answers only. It does not find a channel or a campaign.
The export
Export CSV downloads every submission of the form. After the submission's own columns and the form's answers, the file ends with seven campaign columns, in this order.
| Column in the file | Holds |
|---|---|
Source Channel | The source tag on its own, for example facebook |
Medium | The medium tag, for example social |
Campaign | The campaign tag |
Term | The keyword tag, if any |
Content | The content tag, if any |
Referrer | The page the visitor came from, if the browser reported one |
Landing Page | The full address the visitor arrived on, tags included |
Two differences from the screen are worth knowing before you open the file in a spreadsheet:
- On screen, Source channel reads facebook (social). In the file the two parts are separate:
facebookunderSource ChannelandsocialunderMedium. - An untagged submission reads Direct / unknown on screen. In the file its seven cells are empty.
7. What is not updated
A lead that already exists
When a form is submitted with an email address or a phone number that already belongs to a lead in the project, no second lead is made. The submission is saved with its own tags and linked to the existing lead, and the lead's tags stay as they were.
| First submission by a person | A later submission by the same person | |
|---|---|---|
| Submission | Saved with its tags | Saved with its tags |
| Lead | Created with those tags | Left unchanged |
| The lead's Source channel | The first campaign | Still the first campaign |
So a lead's Source channel answers "what first brought this person in?". To see what brought them back, read the later submission.
Forms shown inside another website
A form can be placed on a website that is not hosted by Optima Orbit, in a frame or in a window that opens from a button. There, the form only sees its own address. Tags on the address of the surrounding website are not visible to it, so the submission arrives as Direct / unknown even though the visitor came through a campaign link.
Some browsers also prevent a page inside a frame from remembering anything. In that case the form still submits, without tags.
Everything that came before
Leads and submissions recorded before campaign tracking was available have no tags and show Direct / unknown. They are not filled in afterwards.
Leads that do not come from a form
A lead created by hand, by import or through the inbound webhook is not given campaign tags by tracking. Its tag fields hold whatever was entered or sent for it.
8. Field reference
| Field | Where | Control | Editable | Where the value comes from |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Source channel | Lead, submission | Read-only text | No | Built from source and medium |
| Campaign | Lead, submission | Read-only text | No | The campaign tag |
| Campaign (UTM) | Lead | Inline text field | Yes | The visitor's link, or typed |
| UTM Source | Lead | Inline text field | Yes | The visitor's link, or typed |
| Medium | Lead | Inline text field | Yes | The visitor's link, or typed |
| Term | Lead | Inline text field | Yes | The visitor's link, or typed |
| Content | Lead | Inline text field | Yes | The visitor's link, or typed |
| Landing Page | Lead | Inline text field | Yes | The address the visitor arrived on |
| Landing page | Submission details | Read-only text | No | The address the visitor arrived on |
| Referrer | Submission details | Read-only text | No | The page the visitor came from |
Limits: each tag on a lead holds up to 100 characters; a longer tag is shortened on the lead and kept in full on the submission.
9. Why you would use it
It answers "which advertising works" from your own records. Every tagged lead names its channel and campaign on the screen where your team already works, so a salesperson opening a lead sees facebook (social) · diwali-offer before the first call, and a manager can compare what two campaigns brought in.
It is also honest about its limits. Direct / unknown tells you where tagging is missing: if most of your leads read that way, the fix is more tagged links, not a different report.
10. Worked example
A training company shares a link tagged facebook, social, diwali-offer.
- Priya taps the link in a Facebook post and lands on the home page. The tags are remembered.
- She reads the courses page, then opens the contact page and submits the form with her email address.
- Form Submissions shows a new row: Source channel facebook (social), Campaign diwali-offer. View shows the Landing page as the home page address with the three tags on it.
- A new lead is created. Its Marketing card shows the same two values, and UTM Source
facebook, Mediumsocial, Campaign (UTM)diwali-offer. - A fortnight later Priya clicks a link in an email, tagged
email,email,new-year, and submits the form again with the same email address. - Form Submissions shows a second row: email (email), new-year. Its Lead button opens the same lead as before.
- The lead still reads facebook (social) and diwali-offer. Facebook brought her in; the email brought her back, and that is recorded on the second submission.
The same afternoon, Daniel types the address of the site from a printed flyer and submits the form. His submission and his new lead both read Direct / unknown.
11. Before this works — what an administrator sets up
| Needed | Without it |
|---|---|
| A form on a page published from Optima Orbit | There is nothing to submit |
| On the form, Lead Integration with Automatically create leads from form submissions switched on and its fields mapped | Submissions are saved with their tags and no lead receives them |
| An email address or a phone number among the mapped fields | No lead can be created from the submission |
| Tagged links in use, from Campaign Links or made elsewhere with the same tag names | Everything reads Direct / unknown |
| Open Forms Management Page | The Form Submissions screen cannot be opened |
| View Marketing Suites lead management | The lead record cannot be opened |
| Export Form Submission | No Export CSV button, and so no file with the campaign columns |
12. Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Cause |
|---|---|
| A lead reads Direct / unknown and the visitor used a tagged link | The form is shown inside another website, the visitor returned in a new tab without the link, or the lead existed before and kept its earlier values |
| The submission shows a campaign and its lead shows a different one | The lead already existed. It keeps the campaign of its first submission |
| The submission shows a campaign and its lead shows Direct / unknown | The lead already existed and was untagged. Or the form creates leads without the field mapping of Lead Integration; switch on automatic lead creation there and map the fields |
| Campaign reads No campaign name | The link carried a source or a medium and no campaign tag |
| Source channel reads Unknown channel | The link carried a campaign tag and neither a source nor a medium |
| Source channel on a lead changed | Somebody edited UTM Source or Medium on the lead. The submission still holds the original |
| A campaign tag is cut short on the lead | It was longer than 100 characters. The submission holds it in full |
| Searching the submissions for a campaign finds nothing | The search covers the form's answers only |
The exported CSV shows facebook where the screen shows facebook (social) | The file keeps source and medium in two columns, Source Channel and Medium |
| The exported CSV has empty campaign cells for some rows | Those submissions arrived untagged. The screen shows them as Direct / unknown |
| There is no Referrer line | The browser did not report where the visitor came from, which is common |
13. Don't confuse this with…
| This | Is not | Because |
|---|---|---|
| Source channel | The lead's Source | Source is picked from your configured lead sources by a person or a rule. Source channel comes from a link's tags |
| Campaign | A campaign in Orbit Vox | Here it is a tag in a link. Nothing is scheduled or sent |
| The tags on a lead | The tags on its submission | The lead's can be edited and describe the first visit. The submission's are fixed and describe that submission |
| Direct / unknown | "Typed the address" | It means no tag arrived. The visitor may well have come from an advert that used a plain link |
| Campaign tracking | The Acquisition report | The report counts many leads by source and by their campaign fields. Campaign tracking is what fills those fields on a lead that comes from a form |
14. Related
| Building the links | Campaign Links |
| The rest of the lead record | The lead record |
| Leads that arrive without a form | Inbound webhook API · Lead import and export |