What is utm_medium=referral?

Who adds it

Marketers and tools set it for links placed on other websites. beehiiv uses referral for clicks from the web version of a newsletter.

What it means

Someone followed a link from another site or app. GA4 files referral, app and link mediums under the Referral channel.

What to do with it

Untagged visits with a referrer from another site also count as referrals, so the tag mostly helps when the referrer is missing.

How Vireo shows it

Vireo Pro's UTM campaigns card lists tagged visits by Source, Medium and Campaign, with visitors and pageviews. The tags are read from the first page of each visit, and the same tags feed revenue by source.

In the free plugin, Vireo drops the query string from page addresses, keeping only a few WordPress ones such as p and page_id, so a tagged URL counts as the same page as the untagged one. The visit is counted under the referrer it arrived with.

UTM campaigns are part of Vireo Pro. See UTM campaigns in the docs.

Sources

Referral Medium is one of ("referral", "app", or "link")

Default channel group - Analytics Help

UTM Medium: 'Email' if the user is receiving the newsletter via email, or 'Referral' if they are viewing it online.

Using UTM parameter tracking with beehiiv - beehiiv Help