The secret history of the UTM

How a Scrappy San Diego Web Dev Shop Got Bought by Google and Changed Marketing Forever

Marketers today don’t know how good we have it.

There was a time when you couldn’t track a campaign. Couldn’t see who clicked, where they came from, or what they did next.

It was the Wild West and you better hope a customer filled out your post-purchase survey or you were up a creek *whose name I shall not repeat* with no paddle. 

But, like all great Marketing breakthroughs, salvation came from the unlikeliest of places: engineers.

This is the story of the UTM and how a couple of coders out of San Diego changed Marketing FOREVER…

Now without Googling (hey, they’re today’s parner!), can you tell me what the U in UTM stands for?

Universal? Nope.
Unilateral? Double nope.
Underwear? Get serious. 

It stands for URCHIN as in Urchin Tracking Module.

So where does Urchin come from?

Marketing Bestie, I’m glad you asked.

The year is 1995 and in sunny San Diego, 4 friends, Paul Muret, Jack Ancone, and brothers Brett and Scott Crosby are about to start a business.

What would the business do?

At 1st, they weren’t totally sure, but they knew 1 thing: this whole internet thing was blowing up, and most businesses had no clue what to do with it.

So, they decided to build websites for local businesses and got to work.

Armed with some startup cash from their buddy Chuck, a $10,000 Sun SPARC 20 server, and an office not too far from the Rockin’ Baja Lobster, they were off to the races.

Their business model was pretty simple. Go after bigger and bigger clients but keep the lights on with small businesses paying a monthly hosting fee.

To accurately bill these smaller customers for the bandwidth they consumed (because bandwidth used to be expensive), Paul wrote a simple program that would keep track of the bytes, where the traffic was being referred from, and page views. 

And, just like that Sex and the City vibe, the 1st version of Urchin was born and the clients LOVED IT. Word started spreading of this small startup’s product that could help you ACTUALLY understand what’s happening with your website. 

So much so, that a friend of a friend got them in the room with Honda and the team was able to close a deal. 

But with big names came big burnout. The team was drowning in custom work, and eventually, they realized they had to step away from the consultancy model.

Still, the traction was real. And, for a small but mighty internet company, it was a HUGE step forward.

So in 1998, they raised $1 MILLION DOLLARS from friends, family, and a firm called Green Thumb Capital.

The stakes were higher, the vision was bigger, and Urchin was just getting started.

Now, it was time to capture the market. 

But, instead of chasing big contracts or buttoned-up enterprise sales, they went full dot-com.

Give the software away for free, slap banner ads on it and win on volume.

Thus was the birth of Urchin ASAP, a stripped-down, ad-supported version of the product designed for hosting providers.

1 of their first big “wins”? A quirky little platform called Nettaxi.

Never heard of it? That’s fair. Nettaxi was like Geocities’ weirder cousin. But at the time, they claimed to host over 100,000 sites, which was total untapped potential.

They couldn’t afford analytics so Urchin cut them a deal: use Urchin ASAP for free, and the banner ad revenue would cover it.

How much did they actually make from all those banners? Somewhere around 4 cents.

But, they weren’t really focused on the money (this was pre-dotcom crash after all). They just wanted eyeballs and from that moment on, Urchin could say “we power 100,000 websites.”

That social proof is as good as GOLD and helped get them into rooms with big names of the time like Earthlink, Cable & Wireless, and…. Google. 

PUT IT IN PRACTICE Get a number. Scroll to the bottom of this email and scroll back up. Did you see it? No, I’m not talking about my smiling face. I’m talking about the “Get your brand in front of ____ Marketing leaders” number That number does a lot of heavy lifting. Here’s your homework: Add your number. Whether it’s site traffic, newsletter readers, customers served, or total downloads, start tracking it, start showing it, and start owning it, even if it’s small now. Because 100,000 websites didn’t mean money for Urchin, but it meant momentum. And, momentum gets you in the room with the money.

Urchin had managed to survive the dot-com crash and not just survive, but emerge with a defensible position as the internet’s premier analytics software.

A big reason why?

The release of Urchin 2, which introduced something that would change marketing forever: the UTM.

For the 1st time, websites could track exactly where their traffic came from no matter what campaign, what source, or what medium.

It was simple. It was powerful. And, it made Urchin to any website on the world wide web. 

And, when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, one of them is going to acquire the other.

In 2004, Google’s Corporate Development team (led by David Friedberg of All-In Fame), came knocking.

They didn’t just want to use Urchin. Instead, they wanted Urchin to become a PART OF Google.

And, it was a match made in heaven.

Urchin was bought out by Google and became what we now know as Google Analytics, the most widely used analytics platform IN THE WORLD.

And to me, that’s pretty dang cool for a scrappy little startup from my hometown. 

MARKETING CHEAT SHEET (WHAT TO LEARN FROM THIS STORY):

1️⃣. Get a number and make it visible: Marketers love to talk about brand, but credibility still runs on metrics. Even a rough number builds perceived authority. Start showcasing your subscriber counts, user totals, conversion rates, whatever proves people are paying attention. Round numbers aren’t the best here – exact counts. They are real, and they feel real. 

2️⃣. Sell the signal, not just the product: Urchin didn’t sell analytics software. They sold understanding in a confusing new world. Your product is important, but the real win comes from Marketing the feeling your product unlocks (confidence, clarity, belonging, etc.). STORYTELLING!!!!

3️⃣. Pivot your Go-to-Market before the market pivots on you: Urchin bailed on consulting before it crushed them. Marketers: If a growth channel, campaign style, or pricing model feels like it’s dragging you underwater, change faster than you’re comfortable changing. And, there’s such a thing as bad clients. Get rid of them. 

4️⃣. Have fun: You’ve seen the Google Doodle but it actually traces back to Urchin’s “Urchin of the Day” daily custom artwork baked into their dashboard. Little touches of humanity and playfulness inside the product give people reasons to LOVE you, not just use you. AFFINITY!!

MEME OF THE WEEK