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Can I associate online appointment bookings with marketing efforts?

Send URL parameters to NexHealth to understand the source of your online bookings and measure ad campaign performance.

Updated this week

If you are spending money on marketing platforms like Google or Facebook ads, its natural to want to understand how that spend converts into real patient bookings.

For use with NexHealth Scheduling

Overview

NexHealth and UTM Parameters

A UTM parameter is a piece of text after the main part of a URL to help know where a user came from.

UTM parameters are used by every website and you can read more about UTM parameters as a technology, and below is a table of the data included in UTM parameters that NexHealth is only able to receive:

Parameter

Purpose

Example

utm_campaign

Identifies a specific product promotion or strategic campaign.

utm_campaign=abc123

utm_source

Identifies which site sent the traffic, and is a required parameter.

utm_source=google

utm_medium

Identifies what type of link was used, such as email or pay-per-click advertising.

utm_medium=ppc

utm_content

Identifies what type of ad format was clicked to bring the user to the site, such as a banner ad or a text link. It is often used for A/B testing and content-targeted ads.

utm_content=logolink or utm_content=textlink

You can also read more about finding and decorating these variables for Google and Facebook.

Sample UTM redirect usage

And here's how that would look in the CSV you would download from NexHealth Analytics.

Use redirect links to track UTMs

When a patient completes a booking through NexHealth, they typically land on a confirmation page from NexHealth. However, marketing teams sometimes wish to utilize a thank you page to pass data back to their Google analytics. We're happy to help you set up these redirect links.

1. Ask your marketing team to generate the redirect URL(s)

Ask your marketing team to generate the URL(s) you'd like NexHealth to set up as redirect links from bookings. We can set up redirect URLs for the entire practice, a specific location, or a specific provider.

The redirect URL should not include any UTM information yet.

2. Ask support to set up the redirect URL(s).

Contact support and ask them to set up the redirect URL(s).

3. A patient clicks a marketing link.

A patient arrives at your website from a source like a Google Ad or an email campaign. The URL for your website will contain UTM parameters (e.g., utm_source=google).

4. UTMs are added to the booking link.

A script on your website automatically finds any NexHealth booking links and adds the UTM parameters from your website's URL to them.

5. UTMs are saved with the appointment.

When the patient clicks the booking link and completes their appointment, these UTMs are saved along with the appointment details.

6. UTMs are passed to your redirect URL.

When the patient is redirected, the system automatically appends the same UTM parameters from before to your custom redirect URL, which can then be used to track conversion.

Analyze conversion with NexHealth

  1. Use the NexHealth branded button configured to send NexHealth UTM parameters. The script is provided in your institutions online booking links page (Go to Settings -> Online booking links).

  2. In NexHealth, go to Analytics -> Appointment → Booked Online → Select requested date filter; you'll be able to export a CSV of appointments with available UTM parameters.

  3. You can then use this CSV to do further conversion analytics.

Keep UTM information non-descriptive

For privacy, you should always keep UTM parameters non-descriptive. For example, do not configure a utm_campaign or utm_id to say anything understandable, such as “sale,” “promotion,” or “cure”. You can later internally associate these UTM parameters after downloading this information from our product.

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