5. Campaign Variable Basics The Source is where the visitor was sent from. Examples: google, nytimes.com, facebook.com The Keyword is the search term that you bid on (search engines only) The Ad Content should indicate the ad name, copy, or other helpful information to identify the type of ad that was clicked. Required Tags Optional Tags The Medium is the channel in which this URL is promoted. Examples: cpc, display, social, organic The Campaign should either indicate the overarching name for the marketing effort or just the specific ad campaign in which the ad lives.
9. How to tag … Display Ads Dimension URL Tag Recommendation Tips Source &utm_source= Actual placement name “ category” (if category-targeting) nytimes.com Exclude http://www Always use lowercase Medium &utm_medium= display content-text (non-search text ads) Always use lowercase Campaign &utm_campaign= campaign-name campaign-name-flight-dates Keyword &utm_term= don’t use Ad Content &utm_content= ad-copy-ad-format-size internal-ad-identifier ad-copy-target-audience Include good identification clues, image ads don’t appear in reports
Good afternoon everyone! My name is Rachit Dayal – I run a Google Analytics consulting company in Singapore called Happy Marketer - and I like to measure things. In fact, I‘m obsessed with measuring everything about everything! When you are and you spend too much time looking at the details, they call you weird and ask you to go out and play more. When you‘re old and you bury yourself in details, they‘ll call this OCD and give you pills for that. But right now, while we‘re working, being obsessed with measurement and details is is an awesome skill that companies want – being able to track things like marketing campaigns, can be crucial to a company‘s success
For example, you probably do a lot of marketing around your website. Between the offline marketing, the email promos, the social media efforts, the paid advertising and search marketing – your time, money and effort goes into a lot of different tasks. But do you know exactly how much ROI these channels bring in? Google Analytics CAN measure all these things for you …
… in fact, it can measure entire funnels from the first point of introduction to the final sale. And with the new Cross-channel reports, you can even see assist paths … so that even if email marketing didn’t bring in the sale for you, we can see cases in which it assisted the sale. Multi-channel funnels and measuring your marketing channels should be your big goal for 2012. And for this to work properly, all your URLs that go out into the world HAVE to be tagged properly.
And we can do this tagging through something called CAMPAIGN VARIABLES. Just by tweaking and tagging certain codes at the end of your URLs you can get all this data and more! Here’s all you have to do – when you drive some traffic to your site through Yahoo, use a slightly different URL that has information about the Yahoo campaign in it. When you drive some traffic through Twitter, use a slightly different URL And when you drive traffic through email marketing, use slightly different URLs These tagged URLs are simple to implement and provide a wealth of knowledge. And I know these URLs look pretty confusing, so here’s a breakdown of all the different arguments in these URLs
There are five campaign variables used to fill out information about a URL, and I’ll tell you how to use them in the minute. First, let’s list them all out. There are three compulsory variables. Source – is the place the visitors was sent from. Examples of this include “google”, “yahoo”, “facebook”, “nytimes” and any other site, or property the traffic was sent from. Medium – is the category of the source, or the marketing channel. Examples of this include “email”, “display ads”, “social media”, “search engines” etc Campaign – is the name if the campaign that sent this traffic. So, if you were doing a lot of promotions for your Christmas promotions, the tags should indicate “Christmas” There are also two optional tags that don’t always need to be used, only when it’s very appropriate Keyword – if you’re sending traffic from a search engine, you can use this tag to track that keyword Ad Content – if you’re sending out multiple versions of your ads, you can use this tag to separately track different traffic from different ads
Now, here’s the fun part … here’s how all these variables are used. Let’s say you run a Cat food site called catfoodsite.com … Okay, I know, not very original, but go with me. And you’re running a campaign where a cute kitten is eating ice cream and it looks adorable on your site. When you post this video out to Twitter, here’s what you do … Take your original URL … catfoodsite.com/cutevideos … and add these three variables to it. The source is “twitter”, the medium is “social” … and the campaign is “ice cream” … That’s it If you do this much, you’ll find the data neatly categorized in your reports to indicate exactly how much traffic came through this “ice cream” campaign! So now, let me run through some real world instructions … on how to use this tagging in different scenarios …
Let’s talk about the first medium of “Search Advertising” First off, organic, natural traffic is already tracked by analytics. For all search engines And Google AdWords traffic can also be set up to track automatically. So, what we’re talking about here is cost per click traffic from Yahoo, Google, Facebook and other paid traffic from other search engines. So for paid search traffic, the “Source” will be the relevant site – yahoo, bing or facebook. Just make sure to exclude the dub dub dub and dot com And the “Medium” should be “cpc” For the “Campaign” variable, you should use the campaign names from the actual campaign. For example in Yahoo, you can use {YSMCAMPGID} to pull in the actual campaign name For the “Keyword” field, you can use the variable {YSMKEY} And for the “Ad Content” field, use the variable {YSMADID}.
And when all those variables are tagged properly, and these new URLs are used in your ads … in your Google Analytics results, you’ll see this traffic properly categorized.
Next up, Display Ads. When tagging Display Ads, for “Source” it’s best to use the name of the site you’ll be driving traffic from. Otherwise, if you’re buying media from a particular category of sites like “parenting sites” For “Medium”, just use the phrase “display” to categorize it For “Campaign”, use the strategic Campaign Name And if you like, for “Ad Content”, you can use the a name for the specific ad graphic or identifier.
And here’s a screenshot of what that looks like in Google Analytics. This is from one of our clients … all the traffic is broken down by different sources.
Next up, Social Media tracking. Social Media is a subject with a lot of buzz … and we need to track these correctly to justify the efforts spent in it. For the “Source” variable, use the name of the network on which this link is being put. For Facebook, the variable should be “facebook” … “Twitter” for Twitter campaigns – you get the idea For medium, it’s best to use use the phrase “social” And for the campaign variable, use the strategic name of the campaign.
In this screenshot, Fairmont hotels used this same strategy to tag their different campaign URLs. And here’s the really cool thing, if you look at the middle screenshot. Because of the tagging, you can separate out the Twitter traffic that’s sent out because of their own Tweets … and Twitter traffic that’s naturally generated by Tweeters.
Now, the tagging the URL for one campaign isn’t too complicated, is it? The real complications come around when it comes to implementing this across multiple campaigns. So, here are some simple tips to get this done quick and smooth. Assign just one URL manager. Doing this will keep URL tags consistent, your data clean, and having that one evangelist in your organization (that means you), will really get the adoption rate of this up. Educate the different marketing teams. As the analytics and tagging guru in your organization, you can lead the charge in education, inspiring and encouraging URL tagging across your entire organization. Finally, fill out as many variables as you can. In the beginning, it’s great practice for seeing where data is showing up. And eventually, you’ll find some awesome pieces of data and insight because of your extensive tagging!
You don’t need to be a techie or webmaster to do this work. And being a Tagging Superhero is fun! I love doing this job for all our clients, and if you take on this role in your organization – you’ll see tremendous data coming out from your work.