Learn more about cross domain tracking and see how it can help you with your marketing initiatives.

1. Why Every Higher Ed Marketer Needs to
Understand and Use Cross Domain Tracking
Slide 1
Why Every Higher Ed Marketer
Needs to Understand and
Use Cross Domain Tracking

2. Why Every Higher Ed Marketer Needs to
Understand and Use Cross Domain Tracking
Slide 2
1) Multiple Domains
2) Cross Domain Tracking
Overview
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Why Every Higher Ed Marketer Needs to Understand and Use Cross Domain Tracking

3. Why Every Higher Ed Marketer Needs to
Understand and Use Cross Domain Tracking
Slide 3
 Higher education web ecosystems are generally pretty
complicated and include multiple domains, sub-domains,
microsites, payment gateways, CRM systems and external
promotions, etc.
 To understand the visitor traffic patterns across all these sites and
the effectiveness of your related marketing efforts you need to be
able to track visitors through this labyrinth and determine which
content and pathways are leading the most visitors to the most
conversions that meet your business goals.
 Once you determine that, you can invest in and optimize these
pathways to improve the visitor experience and improve your
marketing effectiveness.
 Cross domain tracking allows you to do this.
1. Multiple Domains
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Why Every Higher Ed Marketer Needs to Understand and Use Cross Domain Tracking

4. Why Every Higher Ed Marketer Needs to
Understand and Use Cross Domain Tracking
Slide 4
 So here’s a classic higher ed marketing example of how this
works. It starts with a Facebook promotion that leads a
prospective student to the college’s prospective student site,
and then ultimately to the college’s main .edu site, where the
student would register into the promoted program.
2. Cross Domain Tracking
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Why Every Higher Ed Marketer Needs to Understand and Use Cross Domain Tracking

5. Why Every Higher Ed Marketer Needs to
Understand and Use Cross Domain Tracking
Slide 5
 In the Google Analytics account for the prospective student
microsite, (we’ll call it GA Account 1), the referring source of
the student is the Facebook promotion. That’s nice and clear
so far.
2. Cross Domain Tracking
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Why Every Higher Ed Marketer Needs to Understand and Use Cross Domain Tracking

6. Why Every Higher Ed Marketer Needs to
Understand and Use Cross Domain Tracking
Slide 6
 In the Google Analytics account for the main college website
(we’ll call it GA Account 2), the referring source of the
student is the perspective student microsite.
 That’s, of course, accurate but without cross domain tracking GA
Account 2 does not know that the visitor originally came from the
Facebook promotion.
 It will also not know if a conversion or if a registration resulted from
the Facebook generated visit.
2. Cross Domain Tracking
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Why Every Higher Ed Marketer Needs to Understand and Use Cross Domain Tracking

7. Why Every Higher Ed Marketer Needs to
Understand and Use Cross Domain Tracking
Slide 7
 In very practical terms, this means that in your monthly
marketing meeting with your boss, when she asks, “How
many registrations did we get from the Facebook
campaign?”, you have no idea.
 You do not know how many visitors it pushed through to the main
site, how many of them took an action that you measure as a Goal
completion, nor how many of them registered into the program being
promoted.
 Not a great way to forward your promising marketing career, right?
 Cross domain tracking is your solution.
 Set up your analytics to track the visitor across the two domains, (
GA Account 1 & 2), and now you can provide all the answers you
need to measure the effectiveness of the original Facebook
campaign.
2. Cross Domain Tracking
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Why Every Higher Ed Marketer Needs to Understand and Use Cross Domain Tracking

8. Why Every Higher Ed Marketer Needs to
Understand and Use Cross Domain Tracking
Slide 8
 For those of you who are interested in learning more about
cross domain tracking, here is an example of the actual code
used.
 For more info on this you can check out an earlier HEM blog
post posted on the more technical elements of cross domain
tracking.
 And for the real coders, here's the link to Google's resource
page for developers, on cross domain tracking.
2. Cross Domain Tracking
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Why Every Higher Ed Marketer Needs to Understand and Use Cross Domain Tracking

9. Why Every Higher Ed Marketer Needs to
Understand and Use Cross Domain Tracking
Slide 9
Questions?
1.514.312.3968
info@higher-education-marketing.com
Visit our Website: Higher Education Marketing
FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK
FOLLOW US ON LINKEDIN
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER
FOLLOW US ON PINTEREST
FOLLOW US ON GOOGLE+