How ConvertFlow’s redirect popup broke campaign UTMs and the destination URL rewrite that preserved tracking integrity

by

Imagine you’ve crafted the perfect ad campaign. You’ve set up your landing page, attached some juicy UTM parameters, and hit launch. Traffic starts flowing and you’re pumped to see the results. But then—uh oh—your analytics are total chaos. What happened? One little redirect popup from ConvertFlow decided to go rogue!

TL;DR

ConvertFlow’s redirect popup was breaking campaign URL tracking by stripping out UTM parameters. This caused marketers to lose valuable attribution data. Thankfully, a smart URL rewrite on the destination side saved the day. This fix ensured tracking stayed intact and reports made sense again.

What are UTMs anyway?

UTM parameters are little tags you add to your URLs. They help tools like Google Analytics understand where visitors are coming from. For example:

https://example.com?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=spring_sale

Looks messy, but it’s super helpful. UTMs tell you which ad people clicked and where they came from. That helps marketers make better decisions. So when those UTM tags vanish, it’s a big problem.

Enter ConvertFlow (and its sneaky popup)

ConvertFlow is a cool tool. It helps marketers show popups, forms, and redirects without touching code. One of its features is a “redirect popup.” That’s when someone clicks a button or link, and instead of going straight to the destination, they see a popup first (maybe with a message or a quick yes/no check).

Sounds harmless, right? But here’s what was happening:

  1. A user clicked an ad with UTM parameters.
  2. They were redirected through a ConvertFlow popup link.
  3. The final URL stripped out the UTM tags.

The result? Marketing data was toast.

Why did this happen?

Every time someone clicked the popup CTA, ConvertFlow acted as a middleman. But it didn’t preserve the original URL in full. Instead of passing along the entire URL including UTM parameters, it only forwarded the base link. It was like mailing a letter with part of the address missing—it ended up in the wrong place, or worse, nowhere useful.

This confused a lot of marketers. Ad platforms said traffic was being delivered. But platforms like Google Analytics said otherwise. 🤯

Campaigns went blind

Without UTMs, you can’t track:

  • Which ad people clicked
  • Which platform brought visitors (Facebook, Google, TikTok?)
  • Which targeting worked best
  • Where your money was actually going

That’s like driving a car with your eyes closed. You’re moving, but you have no idea where or how well.

The fix: Destination URL rewrite

Once the issue was spotted, the solution came down to this: if the redirect popup was dropping the UTM data, what if we could attach that data back on the other end?

Enter the star of our show—destination URL rewrite.

This clever trick involves grabbing the original UTM parameters and stitching them back onto the destination link before anyone lands there. So even if the popup messes with the URL, the final webpage gets the full set of UTMs. Tracking restored. Victory dance!

How they did it

Here’s a simplified version of what the fix looked like in practice:

  1. You create a landing page for your campaign.
  2. You build a ConvertFlow popup with a redirect button.
  3. In the popup action settings, you use a script or custom function that appends current UTM parameters to the redirected URL.

Something like this in JavaScript:

let currentUrlParams = window.location.search;
let baseDestination = "https://example.com";
window.location.href = baseDestination + currentUrlParams;

So if someone clicked a Facebook ad with this URL:

https://yourpage.com?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=fall_launch

… they’d get redirected to:

https://example.com?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=fall_launch

And voilà—you’ve preserved your beautiful tracking data.

The real heroes

This fix wasn’t just about writing code. It was about understanding the journey of a link. It took some marketer-techie brainpower to figure it all out. A few test campaigns, lots of browser tabs, and maybe a mild panic attack or two.

Why this matters

Broken UTMs don’t scream for attention. Campaigns still run. People still visit pages. But your insights will be junk. You’ll start guessing instead of knowing. You might pause winning ads or scale losers. All because your UTMs were silently left behind.

This popup problem taught a powerful lesson—always test your redirects, especially when using third-party tools. Tracking is fragile. One crack, and the whole picture falls apart.

Tips to protect your tracking

Want to ensure your campaigns are airtight moving forward? Here are some simple steps:

  • Click-test every link—including popups and buttons.
  • Use browser tools to inspect network requests and URLs.
  • Log yourself as a visitor and see if the UTMs reach your analytics.
  • Avoid excessive redirects. Keep things clean and direct when possible.
  • Use consistent naming for UTM parameters to avoid confusion.

Bonus: Automate the fix

If this all still sounds tricky, good news—there are solutions. Some platforms now let you set persistent UTM tracking. That means once someone lands with a UTM, it follows them around on your site until they convert.

You can also create small JavaScript snippets to always grab and pass UTM data when people click links or submit forms. If you’re not into coding, a friendly developer can help you whip it up in an afternoon.

What we learned

The ConvertFlow redirect popup wasn’t evil. It just wasn’t built for UTM-savvy marketers. Sometimes tech assumes a straight path, while marketing lives in zigzags. This was a case where simplicity (a redirect button) had to learn to speak ‘UTM’ properly.

With a little problem-solving and a rewritten destination URL, clarity was restored. Analytics made sense again. Decisions could be data-driven. And marketers everywhere breathed a sigh of relief. 🙌

Final thoughts

In the world of digital marketing, tiny things make a big difference. A missing query string here. A silent redirect there. And boom—your whole campaign becomes a mystery.

But with awareness, testing, and a sprinkle of cleverness, you can keep those links behaving. Learn from ConvertFlow’s popup mishap. And always remember: never trust a redirect with your UTMs unless you’ve double-checked!