Google Analytics allows you to track trends in visits to your site as well as how users arrive at your site. The Google Analytics Integration allows you to determine which email campaigns are cost effective by how contacts interact with your site.
Use Google Analytics to learn which online marketing initiatives are cost effective and to see how visitors actually interact with their site. This information allows them to make informed website design improvements and drive targeted traffic, thus making it easy to improve their online results, write better ads, strengthen their marketing initiatives, and create higher converting websites. Google Analytics also provides assistance in creating targeted ROI-driven marketing campaigns and improving their site design and content.
Sign Up with Google
To use the Google Analytics integration, you must first sign up for Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics). Add the Google supplied Javascript to the HTML of each website page that you would like tracked. Google Analytics will then be able to correlate website activity to email campaigns.
Integration Within Messages
Once the integration is enabled for your Realm, Google-recognizable tags are automatically appended to all tracked URLs within your content. You may customize which URLs are tracked or which tags are used by customizing your content or defining exclusions.*
By default, the Realm is set to use three Google Analytics tags, and each fills with a standard value. When the campaign is deployed, the following default details are appended to each URL:
- Source: WhatCounts Email
- Medium: List Name plus Segmentation Rule Name deployed
- Campaign: Template Name deployed
http://[siteURL]/index.html?utm_source=[SOURCE]&utm_medium=[LIST_NAME]&utm_campaign=[TEMPLATE_NAME]
When a user clicks a link from a campaign message, both the platform and Google Analytics tracking are performed. For example, a link is converted to:
http://mydomain.com/index.html?utm_source=WhatCounts+mail&utm_medium=myList+All&utm_campaign=myTemplate
You can customize the Google Analytics tags in Realm Settings. This will override the default settings, including two additional tags, Content and Term*.
Reporting
There is no Google Analytics reporting within the platform, as all reporting is accessed within Google. Google Analytics is updated every 24 hours. After you deploy your campaign, you must wait 24 hours for results to appear. Tracking is aggregated by the Source, and you can drill down to view data by the other tags. See the Google Analytics help for more information about using the Google Analytics dashboard.
Reportable events include:
- Visits to the website
- Number of resulting transactions
- Total revenue
- Average value of each visit
- Per-visitor value
- Ecommerce conversion rate
The Google Analytics dashboard provides a single page view of website activity with a flexible, customer configurable, drag-and-drop graphical layout of charts, graphs, and maps; all with mouse over, detail pop-ups and most with drilldown capabilities. In addition, you can use Google Analytics login to access the Website Optimizer, which will help you determine which page designs, headlines, and graphics convert the most visitors.
*New Content and Term tags added in v11.10.0 release. The ability to customize links with Template Tags and exclude certain URLs from Google Analytics tracking also added in v11.10.0.