What is a Recruitment Source?

Recruitment Source fields, also known as UTM fields, are meant to capture details of how the referral was found. This data is useful for tracking and analyzing the effectiveness of recruitment campaigns, especially across different mediums and platforms.

By including Recruitment Source values in their referral payloads, referral partners can submit data on various aspects of their campaign, such as source, medium, campaign name, and more. This helps referral partners and sponsors to optimize their strategies, improve targeting, and maximize the return on investment.

Types of Recruitment Source Fields

Field	Purpose	Example
sourceLabel	Identifies which source sent the traffic	sourceLabel=advocacygroup
mediumLabel	Identifies what type of medium or method was used in order to connect with potential referrals E.g. email newsletter, television advertisement, or paid search	mediumLabel=paidsearch
campaignLabel	Identifies specific defining characteristics of different campaigns that allows referral partners and sponsors to differentiate between multiple campaigns.	campaignLabel=generalawareness_ad
termLabel	Identifies a search term used by the referral subject when finding the study.	termLabel=clinicaltrials
contentLabel	Identifies specific ad content that brought 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, so performance per ad can be more easily monitored.	contentLabel=bluebutton

Referral Payload Example

A referral payload containing all of these Recruitment Source fields would including this value:

"recruitmentSource": {
  "sourceLabel": "advocacygroup",
  "medium": {
    "mediumLabel": "paidsearch",
    "campaign": {
      "campaignLabel": "generalawareness_ad",
      "term": {
        "termLabel": "clinicaltrials",
        "content": {
          "contentLabel": "bluebutton"
        }
      }
    }
  } 
}

Why are Recruitment Sources Important?

Referrals Partners need to understand where their marketing budget is best spent, in order to continue delivering high quality referrals to sponsors. Sponsors use this information to determine the return on investment of their campaigns and adjust recruitment tactics.

The sourceLabel and mediumLabel fields are usually the most important to the Sponsor, so these should be included at a minimum.

Source Attribution

The Recruitment Source sourceLabel field helps determine where the website traffic originates. This allows you to identify which platforms (e.g., social media sites, email newsletters, search engines, etc.) are driving the most referrals.

Campaign Performance Tracking

The campaignLabel field allows us to measure the success of specific marketing campaigns. By creating and tracking a unique label for each campaign, we can compare the performance of different initiatives and make data-driven decisions.

ROI Analysis

With Recruitment Source data, we can attribute referrals to specific marketing efforts. This information allows sponsors and referral partners to calculate the return on investment (ROI) for different channels or campaigns, guiding future budget allocations.