Hold Your Emarketing Campaigns Responsible with Google URL Builderby Matt Madden
In today’s online marketing world return on investment (ROI) has never been more important. You continue to try new and innovative online channels to promote products and services.
Most Emarketing activities (social media, email marketing, online media buys, etc.) are designed to drive significant traffic to your website. After all your hard work, how do you attribute your converted customers back to specific activities? Knowing which efforts help you achieve your goals and which don’t will save you money and time.
Give More Weight to Your Emarketing Efforts
A great way to track Emarketing traffic from start to finish is with Google URL Builder. Essentially, this tool appends a unique identifier to any URL before using it within your Emarketing activities. The URL can then be tracked in your Google Analytics reporting.
As an example: on its own you can track who and how many clicked on a link from a particular email. When tagged with Google URL Builder you can continue to follow that link all through your website and even an online shopping cart. This allows you to learn vital intelligence such as, "email subscribers purchase 127% more than other visitors."
How to Use Google URL Builder
The basic form allows you to enter your identifiers into a set of fields and then click 'Generate URL'. This allows Google Analytics to track the link as a traffic source and report on its quality in terms of your pre-established marketing goals.
Creating the Campaign URL
Step 1
Website URL – Copy and paste the actual URL of the particular landing page targeted by the Emarketing campaign.
Step 2
Campaign Source - Used to identify the referrer for ex. Yahoo, newsletter name, or other source.
Campaign Medium - The type of medium such as CPC, banner ad or social media channel.
Campaign Term - Used to monitor paid campaigns and easily identify the paid keywords driving traffic to your URL.
Campaign Content - Used for A/B testing or for content-targeted ads. This allows users the ability to differentiate ads or links that point to the same URL.
Campaign Name - Used for keyword analysis. This section will identify a specific product promotion or strategic campaign.
Step 3
The Generate URL button will provide you with a unique URL to copy and paste into your emails or microsites, or Facebook links - for easy tracking and attribution of all Emarketing activities.
If you take the time to properly track your Emarketing campaigns with Google URL Builder, you will have a greater understanding of which efforts are working for you. Knowing what efforts lead to conversions enable you to spend your budget on what works and stop paying for what doesn't - which will ultimately add to your bottom line.