Tagging and Attribution
How Quotient tags your links so website activity can be traced back to the marketing that drove it
When Quotient publishes content, such as social posts and email broadcasts, it automatically appends URL parameters to every link. Quotient's tracking tag then detects these parameters and records them when it tracks activity on your website, such as sessions and page views.
This process, often called "URL tagging," makes it possible to connect activity on your website to the marketing content that led each person there.
For example, suppose someone sees a LinkedIn post published by Quotient, clicks a link in the post, and lands on your website. URL tagging lets Quotient give credit to that LinkedIn post for their page views. If the person keeps browsing and eventually converts (whatever that means for your business), Quotient can go one step further and attribute the conversion to the LinkedIn post, too.
URL tagging makes this possible by providing a record of which piece of content led the person to your website. There's nothing to set up. The links in your drafts stay clean, and the tags are added when the content actually goes out: each social post as it's published, and each email as it's sent, so every recipient's copy carries its own tags.
What a Tagged Link Looks Like
Suppose your newsletter links to https://www.yourwebsite.com/pricing. When
Quotient sends the email, it replaces that link with something like this (line
breaks added for readability):
https://www.yourwebsite.com/pricing
?utm_source=qt_email_broadcast
&utm_medium=email
&utm_campaign=product_launch_vff1xea7
&utm_content=june_newsletter_abcd1234
&qt_business_id=...
&qt_src_content_type=email_broadcast
&qt_src_content_id=...
&qt_campaign_id=...
&qt_person_id=...
&qt_email_id=...
The visitor still lands on your pricing page exactly as before. The extra parameters don't change what the page does, but now the link itself records where the visitor came from.
URL Tag Glossary
Quotient tags every link with two sets of tags:
- UTM tags (short for Urchin Tracking Module) are an open standard that marketing analytics tools have used for over two decades.
- Quotient native tags capture extra detail that UTM tags alone can't. They identify the specific records in Quotient (the campaign, the email, the person) behind each click, which lets Quotient paint a much more detailed picture of each person's journey.
| Tag | Type | Definition |
|---|---|---|
utm_source | UTM | Where the traffic came from. See Source and Medium for the values Quotient uses |
utm_medium | UTM | The broader channel the source belongs to: email or social |
utm_campaign | UTM | The campaign the content belongs to, as a human-readable name generated by Quotient. Left off when the content isn't part of a campaign |
utm_content | UTM | The specific piece of content (email broadcast, flow, or social post) the link was in, as a human-readable name generated by Quotient |
qt_business_id | Quotient | The ID of your business in Quotient |
qt_src_content_type | Quotient | The type of content the link was in: email_broadcast, flow, or social_post |
qt_src_content_id | Quotient | The ID of that piece of content in Quotient |
qt_campaign_id | Quotient | The ID of the campaign the content belongs to. Left off when the content isn't part of a campaign |
qt_person_id | Quotient | The ID of the person the email was sent to. Only present on links in emails |
qt_email_id | Quotient | The ID of the individual email message sent to that person. Only present on links in emails |
A tag is either present with a value or left off entirely. Social posts never
carry qt_person_id or qt_email_id, because a post isn't sent to one specific
person.
Source and Medium
Quotient sets utm_source and utm_medium automatically based on the kind of
content being published:
| Content type | utm_source | utm_medium |
|---|---|---|
| Email broadcast | qt_email_broadcast | email |
| Flow email | qt_flow | email |
| Social post | the platform: linkedin, twitter, instagram, facebook, or tiktok | social |
Readable Campaign and Content Names
The utm_campaign and utm_content values identify which campaign and
which piece of content a click came from. Quotient builds them from the
record's name plus a short unique suffix, so they stay readable:
- A campaign named "Product Launch" becomes
product_launch_vff1xea7 - An email broadcast named "June Newsletter" becomes
june_newsletter_abcd1234
These names are set when the campaign or content is created, and they don't change if you rename it later. That's deliberate. If renaming a campaign changed its tag, links already sitting in sent emails would report the old name while new links reported the new one, and your reporting for that campaign would split in two.
UTM and GA4 Compatibility
Because UTM is an open standard, links published by Quotient are automatically
compatible with other marketing tools, including Google Analytics 4. Any GA4
report that breaks traffic down by utm_campaign, utm_medium, or utm_source
works with Quotient-published links, with no setup on your part.
Quotient also keeps every UTM tag consistent and legible, so you don't have to worry about inconsistent casing or spacing, which often causes problems in hand-built UTM links.
If you paste a link that already carries UTM parameters, Quotient replaces the
ones it manages with its own values so your reporting stays consistent.
Everything else about the link is preserved: other query parameters, #section
anchors, and the destination itself are never touched.
Sessions and Attribution
When someone clicks through to your site, Quotient's tracking tag reads these tags off the URL. That data (the content ID, content type, campaign ID, and so on) is the visitor's attribution. It tells Quotient exactly which piece of content the person most recently clicked and which campaign it was part of.
Attribution lasts for the duration of a session. A session starts when the person first visits your website and ends after 30 minutes without any activity. Every page view and event in that session is credited to the content that brought them there.
Identification
URL tags can also reveal the identity of the visitor. When someone clicks a
link in an email sent by Quotient, the qt_person_id tag tells Quotient exactly
who they are, because Quotient knows who it sent the email to.
Unlike attribution, which resets when the session expires, identity is kept indefinitely. All future activity in that browser is attributed to that person until they clear their browser's cookies and site data.
Tagged links aren't the only way to learn who someone is. A person can also identify themselves explicitly by entering their email address on your website: signing up for a newsletter, registering for a webinar, booking a demo, or logging into your app. You can learn how to capture these identities with Quotient's JavaScript library in Identifying Users.
How Clicks Are Counted
Email and social links both carry the same tags, but Quotient counts clicks on them differently.
Quotient tracks every email from the moment it's sent, through delivery and opens, without any links involved. Clicks are where URL tagging comes in, and email handles them specially: links pass through Quotient on the way to their destination. When a recipient clicks, the link briefly touches Quotient's servers, the click is recorded, and the recipient is immediately forwarded to the page they asked for.
Because Quotient itself records the click, email clicks are counted no matter where the link points. A link to a YouTube video, a partner's website, or a PDF has no tracking of its own, but the click is still recorded and attributed to the exact campaign, email, and recipient.
The destination URL still carries the full set of tags, so when the visitor lands on your own site, the visit is attributed there too, in both Google Analytics and Quotient.
Social
Social posts don't pass through Quotient. The tags are added directly to the links in the post. Social platforms report clicks through their own analytics, and when a click lands on your site, the tags tell your site's analytics where the visit came from. Links in a LinkedIn post's first comment and in X thread replies are tagged too.
A couple of platform quirks are worth knowing:
- X counts every link as exactly 23 characters regardless of its real length, so tagging never eats into your character limit.
- Instagram and TikTok don't make links in captions clickable. Links only work in your bio or in stickers. Quotient still tags these posts like any other, so wherever a link can be clicked, attribution works.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Do you support more complex attribution models, like time decay?
A: Currently Quotient uses last-touch attribution: credit goes to the most recent piece of content the person clicked. In the future, we plan to add more attribution models, such as first-touch, time decay, and U-shaped.
Q: Are there any links Quotient doesn't tag?
A: Yes, two kinds. The first is links in your blog posts. Your blog lives on your own website, so a link from a blog post to your pricing page is an internal link. The visitor is already on your site. Tagging internal links is a well-known analytics mistake: UTM parameters signal the start of a new visit, so Google Analytics would end the visitor's current session and credit your blog instead of the real source. If someone arrives from a LinkedIn post and clicks through your blog to your pricing page, the credit should stay with LinkedIn.
The second is test sends and previews. Links in editor previews and test emails are left untagged, so your own test clicks never pollute your real analytics.
Q: What happens if someone clicks one link, starts a session, then clicks another link halfway through that session?
A: The second click overwrites the existing attribution, but it doesn't start a new session. That means any activity after the second click is credited to the second piece of content, while activity before it stays credited to the first.
Q: If someone identifies themselves halfway through a session, will Quotient attribute their earlier, anonymous activity to them?
A: Currently, no. Activity is only attributed to a person once they have been identified. In the future, we plan to add identity resolution, which will attribute previously anonymous activity to newly identified people.