UTM-only marketing attribution

decision Sat Jun 20 2026 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) marketingattributionutmanalyticsposthogoriz-kit

UTM-only marketing attribution

Decision

The family's only marketing-attribution mechanism is UTM query parameters on every outbound campaign / share / referral link. UTMs are captured by PostHog (primary) and Cloudflare Web Analytics (secondary). No paid attribution tool, no SaaS click-tracker, no bounce-redirect domain.

@chirag127/oriz-kit ships a <UtmLink> component + buildUtmUrl() helper that enforce the family's naming convention at compile time so attribution data stays clean.

Why

UTM tracking is the universal, free, no-service convention every analytics tool reads. Picking a paid attribution tool (Bitly, Branch.io, Rebrandly) would:

• Add a service to maintain + a card / paid plan once tier limits hit.
• Add a redirect hop that hurts perceived load time.
• Lock attribution data to that vendor (swap cost up).

Skipping attribution entirely is the other option, and it's wrong — it's the only way to know which channels actually move users to the sites. The middle path is the right path: ride the convention every analytics tool already knows.

Naming convention (locked)

Rules:

• Values are kebab-case, lower-case, ASCII only. No spaces. No underscores in values.
• Never PII — never an email or user ID.
• utm_campaign should match the date of the campaign or the feature being launched, so historical reports stay readable.

<UtmLink> helper in oriz-kit

import { UtmLink } from "@chirag127/oriz-kit";

<UtmLink
  href="https://oriz.in/finance"
  source="twitter"
  medium="social"
  campaign="2026-q2-launch"
  content="thread-1"
>
  Try oriz-finance
</UtmLink>;

buildUtmUrl() is the same logic for non-React contexts (CLI scripts, omnipost adapters, Worker-side replies).

Implications

• Every outbound link in family-controlled surfaces (newsletters, social posts, footer cross-promos, omnipost cross-posts) goes through <UtmLink> or buildUtmUrl().
• oriz-omnipost adapters auto-tag cross-posts with utm_source=<platform>&utm_medium=cross-post&utm_campaign=<post-slug> on the way to dev.to / Hashnode / etc. — see cross-post-engine.md.
• PostHog $pageview event captures all utm_* params as event properties; reports group by utm_source / utm_medium / utm_campaign.
• Cloudflare Web Analytics sees the UTMs inline in the URL (CFWA reads the full URL, no special config needed).
• URL-cleanup script in oriz-kit rewrites window.history.replaceState to drop utm_* from the URL bar after the first event, so the canonical path is what's bookmarked / shared next.
• No PII, ever — <UtmLink> rejects values matching obvious PII patterns at type-check time (no @, no UUID-shaped values).
• Swap cost is low — UTM is universal. Any future analytics swap reads the same convention.

Cross-refs

• UTM tracking service
• PostHog service
• Cloudflare Web Analytics service
• Analytics services index
• Cross-post engine — auto-UTMs cross-posts
• — `` lives here
• No card-on-file rule