Your owned media sites are important in your marketing mix because you can control the messages and can also analyse how specific content is performing. However, in many instances you cannot fully view initiative results and understand the true user journey between mediums. For example if you post a piece of content on facebook, or in your newsletter, how is this converting back to sales or bookings? This is where campaign tracking can help to provide greater insights into the total user journey on assets that you own.
Why use it?
Campaign tracking allows you to measure the source and conversions of external sources pointing back to your website. When users click one of the custom links, the unique parameters are sent to your Google Analytics account, so you can identify the URLs that are most effective in attracting users to your content.
The code is generated at the end of the link (see example below)
When you login to your Google Analytics account, you can go to “Acquisition sources” and under campaigns you can see the tracking by individual campaign. Over time the campaigns that you tagged can be tracked and specific conversion metrics included.
When you should use it.
You should use campaign tracking any time you want to track traffic going back to your website. This includes enewsletter links, social media links.
How do I generate the tracking code?
You can use the google URL builder to generate the campaign tracking
However building the links through the URL builder generates a long code that is often too long to include when posting online.
Alternatively, given that the Google URL builder does not give you short codes to use, the Analytics Campaign Creator that Loves Data has built is a better option because it generates tagged campaign long and short codes that are ready to use. See example below.
If you have multiple places that you are putting the link and need a different short code, you just change the campaign source in the builder.
Examples of when you should use campaign tracking include:
- When you have link from your enewsletter back to your website to book for an event or to view new menu– then we can track goals around conversions from the source
- When you post on social media and drive people back to your website for more information – eg upcoming dinners etc. Will allow you to track properly the role social media has in generating main goals.
Note – if you are sending emails via Campaign Monitor or Mail Chimp, there is a setting that you can enable and configure to ensure that the tracking comes through automatically in the reporting. If you have a different email provider, it’s worth checking if this functionality exists to save you from manually generating these codes.
What’s the difference between Campaign Tracking and Bit.ly tracking?
Bit.ly tracking allows you to measure how many people clicking on a certain link (eg if you put out link for a broadsheet article where the publisher might have been talking about your venue) and you can then see how many people are interacting. It should be used when you are linking consumers to properties that you don’t own because you can’t track the goals.
