Closed loop marketing is essentially a process of using customer data as a means to personalise marketing campaigns and drive up sales and performance.

1. CLOSED LOOP MARKETING:
Today, marketers must meet the demands of the more educated, self-reliant and social
buyer. And be prepared to meet them where they are…on the internet.
The easiest way to close the loop is to make our website the central hub for all our
marketing. Search engines, social media, email marketing, referral links, paid search,
even offline campaigns should get filtered to our website. Once someone visits our
website, we can cookie them and start tracking their activity.
This is the entry point of our closed-loop system. As the lead progresses through our sales
and marketing stages, we’ll be able to attribute them back to the proper channel. If they
came into our site through a link from a trade show, an email marketing campaign or a
search term, for example, we’ll be able to trace them back to that original source. We'll
know which are our most valuable sources of traffic and can work on optimizing the rest
through conversion optimization.
Most web analytics systems will allow us to track sources of traffic like search term or
referring website like blogs,classifieds,etc., but we’ll need to go a step further than this in
order to make sure that we’re accurately assigning our leads to the right marketing
initiative. To create a tracking URL, we just need to add a parameter to the end of our
website’s link that our analytics system can identify and associate with a particular
campaign or initiative. This will enable us to more accurately track visitors who
otherwise look like they are coming from direct search.
The tracking token is added to the end of a link, allowing our analytics tool to pool a
certain group of traffic. Different tools employ different tokens, but here is an example of
what a visit from Twitter could look like: /?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
By attaching this to our URL anyone who clicks that link is signaling to our analytics tool
that they are coming from Twitter. The same type of tracking tokens apply to different
channels, such as email, paid media and referral traffic. Investigate with our marketing or
analytics software to make sure we have tracking tokens in place and our data gets
assigned to the right categories.
As we attract traffic and identify where that traffic is coming from, we need to track the
behavior of our visitors. Which pages are they viewing? What is their trajectory of
actions? Such intelligence will illustrate a path that can, down the road, help us optimize
for faster visitor-to-lead or even visitor-to-customer conversions.
This is the trickiest part of closed-loop reporting: making sure that we can connect a
visitor’s session with their lead information once they convert on a form. Without this
piece, we’ll have two separate databases, one with anonymous visitor history and one
with lead information. As a result, we won’t be able to connect those leads back to their
respective marketing source.

2. In order to make this work for us, either we have to do something very technical on the
back end of our analytics platform or we have to start using some software that does this.
In order to monetize the traffic we are getting and send qualified prospects to our sales
team, we need to convert visitors into leads. We can make this happen by sending
incoming traffic to landing pages which are going to make an information exchange
possible and collect more insights from our visitors. More than just knowing where our
visitors are coming from, we’ll need to know who they are. This is crucial to closing the
loop and being able to associate closed customers back to their entry source.
The way to capture this information is to direct website visitors to a landing page with a
submission form (or also known as a lead capture form). Once visitors fill out this from,
we’ll have whatever contact information we asked them for: name, email, phone number,
etc. As a best practice, we should be sending most of your traffic to landing pages and
forms so that we can grow our leads database.
How Closed Loop Marketing Works?
Consider this Scenario:
The scenario created below describes how Closed Loop Marketing works in the virtual
world.
There may be a company called Anonymous Widgets. On their website they have an
option to subscribe to their newsletter by simply signing up with name and email address.
There is a guy called John who Googles ‘all weather widgets’ and subsequently lands on
Anonymous Widgets homepage.
On Anonymous website John visits pages featuring least expensive Anonymous All
Weather Widgets. Upon reviewing the featured widgets he decides to sign up for the
newsletter. Anonymous Widgets keeps constant track of John’s behavior and activity like
the search term he used to reach their website and the pages visited. Anonymous Widgets
ties up this activity with the name and email address John uses to sign up for the
newsletter. This information is then used to design a newsletter that would help John
mature his decision. The company also includes helpful links to different related
accessories as well as a link to a white paper which other users with similar related
activity had earlier shown interest in. And when John clicks on link to the white paper he
is taken to a landing page that requests him to enter basic demographic information like
whether he uses these widgets professionally or recreationally. And other information like
how many similar widgets he currently owns and so on. Once he has provided the
information he is able to download the whitepaper.
Anonymous Widgets utilizes this information to improve their future marketing
communications such as sending an email notification about their iPhone application to
be launched soon, since they already know that the prospect used an iPhone to access
their website at least once. So instead of taking an aggressive way of converting a lead
into prospect with very little information at hand and bleak chances of success, you
should take a gradual path for closing the deal with high rate of success.

3. This is the way Closed Loop Marketing works and targets leads in a precise manner.
Start using UTM parameters for custom campaigns in Google Analytics 5
What Are UTM Parameters
UTM parameters are simply tags that you add to a URL. When someone clicks on a URL
with UTM parameters, those tags are sent back to your Google Analytics for tracking.
How to Create UTM Parameters for Your URL’s
The simplest way to create UTM parameters for your links is by using the Google
Analytics URL Builder. Using the above example, you would enter the following and
click on the Generate URL button to get your link.
You can learn more about how to tag your links in Google Analytics Help.
How to View Custom Campaigns in Google Analytics 5
How you use your UTM parameters boils down to how you want to see your information
displayed in Google Analytics. To view your campaigns in Google Analytics 5, you will
go to your website profile and click on Traffic Sources > Sources > Campaigns. Here you
will see an overview of your various campaigns as tagged using the utm_campaign UTM
parameter on your links.
Google Analytics URL Builder:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en§
Tagging Your AdWords Destination URLs:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033981?hl=en§
As an optimizer who is regularly looking to learn more about how my recipients are
interacting with content?
To implement a UTM tracking code simply add your desired parameters to the end of the
URL you want to track insights for, like this:
http://www.YourWebsite.com/your-CRO-landing-page-article?
utm_source=blog&utm_medium=viral&utm_campaign=CRO-0513-JThompson
UTM tracking codes can help you analyze traffic from banner ads, email newsletters,
social media content, and any other campaign that links people to a property that you own
(such as your website or your blog). You cannot use UTM tracking to analyze clicks to
external websites, like YouTube or Link-To-Related-Content.com. To track click activity
on links that send people to properties you don’t own, Bitly ( https://bitly.com ) is a great

4. free resource that provides custom short URLs and offers an enterprise analytics platform
that helps web publishers and brands grow their social media traffic.
Reference :
http://www.ppchero.com/guide-to-url-tracking-in-google-analytics/§
http://www.webanalyticsworld.net/video-guides/tracking-on-site-campaigns-with-google-
analytics-the-pros-and-cons-of-internal-url-referral-parameters§
http://econsultancy.com/in/blog/62534-11-valuable-google-analytics-advanced-
segments§
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2268458/16-Secret-Google-Analytics-Advanced-
Segments-Worth-Their-Weight-in-Gold§
http://blog.kissmetrics.com/how-to-use-utm-parameters/§
How To Put Together a Google Analytics Tracking Code :
There are five possible parameters you can set for each UTM tracking code: Source,
Medium, Campaign, Content and Term. You don’t have to use all of them. For this blog
post I am going to show you show to create a UTM tracking code for a link that directs
people from a blog post to a page on my website. To keep it simple, I am only going to
discuss the parameters needed for this scenario — Source, Medium and Campaign.
Note: When and how to use Term and Content parameters is really a whole separate blog
post; leave a comment if you are interested in seeing us write about it.
The Medium (&utm_Medium) is the most broad parameter and tells Google Analytics —
big picture — how to classify the medium by which your link was presented to the user.
For example, was the link presented in a Facebook wall post? Then the Medium might be
“viral” because the link you posted to your Facebook wall is now spreading virally all
over the Internet and, accordingly, was delivered via a “viral” medium. (If viral is too
abstract for you, “social” could also work.) Was the link transmitted to the end user via an
email newsletter? Then your Medium might be “email,” or even more specifically,
“ConstantContact” or “CheetahMail” to identify the service that delivered your
newsletter. In our example above, our link was a blog post, so we used
&utm_medium=viral.
Getting one step more specific from Medium, the Source (&utm_Source=) tells Google
Analytics where the click came from, where the person was when they clicked the link. In
our example above (utm_source=blog) the person clicked on a link that was posted to my
blog (so the Medium is “viral,” and the Source is “blog.”). Other Source options might
include Twitter, Facebook or newsletter (Medium equals “email” and Source equals
“newsletter”).

5. The Campaign parameter (&utm_Campaign=) is one step even more specific than
Source, and the parameter where you can really start to get granular with your tracking.
The Campaign is how you identify the specifics of a link, from the details of where it
goes all the way down to the color and size of the call to action. In the example above I
used &utm_campaign=CRO-JThompson-image because I wanted to identify which of
my silos encouraged the most clicks, the longest time on site, and — at the other end of
the spectrum — the most site exits. I also wanted to collect data to help me determine
which of my authors are being read the most, and if an image call-to-action perform
better than a text call to action. If this link was a banner ad I might have included the
dimensions of the banner (for instance 320 or 160) to help determine which banner size
encourages more clicks. If I wanted to test how well a link to free content performs
versus how well a link to paid content performs I might have included “free” or “paid” as
Campaign parameters.
Six Essential Google Analytics Tracking Code Details:
Every UTM tracking code starts with a question mark. For example: ?utm_. This
question mark tells Google Analytics where your link URL ends and your tracking starts.
If you don’t include the question mark Google will think your link is
http://www.YourWebsite.com/your-CRO-landing-page-articleutm_source
which, as an alteration of the URL permalink, will result in a 404 error. The question
mark is important.
There are five possible parameters you can set for each UTM tracking code:
Source, Medium, Campaign, Content and Term. The parameters you choose to use are
strung together in one sentence (no spaces) and separated by ampersands (&). It doesn’t
matter what order you list your parameters in, but your first parameter must start with a
question mark and all the following parameters must start with ampersands. The & tells
Google Analytics where one parameter ends and the next begins. If you forget the
ampersand and write your code like &utm_medium=viralutm_campaign= Google
Analytics will think that your Medium is “viralutm_campaign=” which, as you can
imagine, will skew your Medium and Campaign data pretty badly.
Since the Google Analytics URL builder makes it easy for any of your team members to
create and assign UTM tracking codes it is critical to have a discussion about UTM
parameter conventions before anyone on your team starts creating UTM codes willy-
nilly. I highly recommend creating a spreadsheet or other living document (a Google
Drive spreadsheet works great) that clearly outlines conventions for Source, Medium, and
Campaign. (If you are using Content and Term parameters regularly, make sure to add
conventions for those parameters as well.) You may even consider taking your
spreadsheet to the next level to establish a record of every link posted and its associated
Campaign allocations. While a spreadsheet that documents every link your company
pushes out is a larger commitment, these resources become invaluable as associates join

6. and leave your team.
Note: If you’re crafty you’ve noticed the links in this blog post have not been amended to
include Google Analytics UTMs. This is because the Bruce Clay, Inc. content team is
currently developing our analysis goals and tracking conventions. Since I am a data-
hungry Johnny Number 5 monster I have been using Bitly as my personal one-man-band
interim tracking convention because I can’t survive a minute without data. I do not
recommend this as it’s not scalable long-term.
UTM codes are case sensitive so Google Analytics will collect data for potatoes and
Potatoes as two separate reports. This means, since Google Analytics does not have the
human sensibility to tell you that there is a capitalized version of your Campaign floating
around somewhere in your referral traffic data, you may be analyzing incomplete data if
your team isn’t careful about capitalization.
Hyphens allow Google Analytics to understand each word individually; underscores are
considered alphanumeric characters and connect words to make phrases (see dashes vs.
underscores for more detail). For instance: sandals-coupon versus sandals_coupon. If you
are building UTM codes for a newsletter send it might make sense to use an underscore
to connect your newsletter identifier with the release date of the newsletter — for
instance, DealerUpdates_2013July09-colorado. In this example you will be able to find
data in Google Analytics for the specific term “DealerUpdates_2013July09” which will
tell you exactly how that specific dealer updates newsletter that was sent out on July 9,
2013 performed. You are also able to analyze how every email sent to your Colorado
demographic performed, but because “DealerUpdates_2013July09”and “Colorado” are
separated by a hyphen the Colorado data will not be exclusive to the July 9 email.
Worth noting again, you must own a URL in order to attach UTM tracking to it. In other
words, you can only use UTM tracking to assigned parameters to links that go to your
properties — your website, your blog, your app, etc. You cannot use UTM tracking to
analyze clicks that go to external properties like Facebook.com or Other-Website.com.
Why Use Tracking Codes?
I consistently use Google Analytics tracking codes to measure where my referral traffic is
coming from, which of my initiatives are meeting traffic goals, how my target markets
prefer to receive communication, and the ebb and flow of industry based on seasonality.
They give you a granular snapshot of your referral traffic, how your consumers (and
potential-consumers) are interacting with the calls to action you’re putting out there, and
they are a great way to quench an unrelenting need for specific ROI data.

7. and leave your team.
Note: If you’re crafty you’ve noticed the links in this blog post have not been amended to
include Google Analytics UTMs. This is because the Bruce Clay, Inc. content team is
currently developing our analysis goals and tracking conventions. Since I am a data-
hungry Johnny Number 5 monster I have been using Bitly as my personal one-man-band
interim tracking convention because I can’t survive a minute without data. I do not
recommend this as it’s not scalable long-term.
UTM codes are case sensitive so Google Analytics will collect data for potatoes and
Potatoes as two separate reports. This means, since Google Analytics does not have the
human sensibility to tell you that there is a capitalized version of your Campaign floating
around somewhere in your referral traffic data, you may be analyzing incomplete data if
your team isn’t careful about capitalization.
Hyphens allow Google Analytics to understand each word individually; underscores are
considered alphanumeric characters and connect words to make phrases (see dashes vs.
underscores for more detail). For instance: sandals-coupon versus sandals_coupon. If you
are building UTM codes for a newsletter send it might make sense to use an underscore
to connect your newsletter identifier with the release date of the newsletter — for
instance, DealerUpdates_2013July09-colorado. In this example you will be able to find
data in Google Analytics for the specific term “DealerUpdates_2013July09” which will
tell you exactly how that specific dealer updates newsletter that was sent out on July 9,
2013 performed. You are also able to analyze how every email sent to your Colorado
demographic performed, but because “DealerUpdates_2013July09”and “Colorado” are
separated by a hyphen the Colorado data will not be exclusive to the July 9 email.
Worth noting again, you must own a URL in order to attach UTM tracking to it. In other
words, you can only use UTM tracking to assigned parameters to links that go to your
properties — your website, your blog, your app, etc. You cannot use UTM tracking to
analyze clicks that go to external properties like Facebook.com or Other-Website.com.
Why Use Tracking Codes?
I consistently use Google Analytics tracking codes to measure where my referral traffic is
coming from, which of my initiatives are meeting traffic goals, how my target markets
prefer to receive communication, and the ebb and flow of industry based on seasonality.
They give you a granular snapshot of your referral traffic, how your consumers (and
potential-consumers) are interacting with the calls to action you’re putting out there, and
they are a great way to quench an unrelenting need for specific ROI data.