I can see sources of visits and other related data on my Google Analytics screen. As I read so far, UTM tracking aims to track where the users come from and some other things like what did they do on website.
But as I said, I can see these kind of things on regular Analytics scrren. So why I need UTM then?
Thanks.
Google recognizes some sources automatically (direct, organic, referral and to some extent SEM). However it does not automatically recognize campaign traffic.
E.g. if somebody clicks on a newsletter link in a webmailer this would be counted as referral traffic. By adding campaign parameters you could instead track this in a custom newsletter channel with e.g. one campaign name per newsletter.
Links from other websites would show up as referral, if these are your affiliates you track them as such via UTM parameters. SEM traffic is organized into campaigns by UTM parameters (or the gclid parameter from adwords autotagging, which is more common).
So if you want to know which of your marketing measures are successful you'd use utm parameters in destination urls. If you do not do marketing campaigns you do not need them.
Related
I have 2 websites. (Site A and SIte B)
I am passing UTM codes From Site A to Site B page. (Site A page 1 to Site B page 2)
Site A with UTM tracking info - https://www.SiteA.com/?utm_source=MYsource&utm_medium=MY_web&utm_campaign=MY_Testing
Destination - https://www.SiteB.com/registernow.aspx
I can see my UTM tracking info (utm_medium,utm_source,utm_campaign) on RealTime Data (on 'Traffic Sources',Conversions) in real-time. All required information are there.
I can see my UTM tracking info (utm_medium,utm_source,utm_campaign) on Acquisition Data (on 'Campaigns',Conversions). Everything that I need is there too.
But I can not see my UTM tracking info on Conversions --> Goals.
(I have set up the Goal and the Goal name and the UTM data are tracking on 'RealTime Data' and 'Acquisition Data'. But not on Goals. I am trying this for a week now and checking after 24 hours. But the tracking info is not there. I think I can see source/medium as (direct) / (none).)
I just added the UTM to site B to test. (Not through Site A. The Site B itself with adding UTM codes in the URL)
If we open the Goal URL just manually on Site B through an email or through a browser, then it is tracking on 'Conversions --> Goals' with the UTM tracking code.
The problem is when we pass UTM through Site A.
I tried these 2 examples.
https://www.analyticsmania.com/post/transfer-utm-parameters-google-tag-manager/
https://www.analyticsmania.com/other-posts/transfer-utms-from-one-page-to-another-with-gtm-version-1/
I am not sure where I have missed it.
I want to get my UTM tracking info to 'Conversions --> Goals' when we pass it through Site A page 1 to Site B page 2.
Please, can you help me to sort this issue out? I really appreciate it if you can support me. It has been more than10 days since to figure out the problem.
Thank you!
UTM parameters are automatically deleted from the URL by Google Analytics (Analytics uses them to record their values as source, medium, campaign, ...). You cannot use them as destination Goal, rather enter another parameter to be taken as a reference for the goal on the landing.
UTMs within the same site must not be entered because they generate inconsistent data.
You can see the values you entered in the UTMs in the source / medium report.
EDIT:
If you want to use a trick, however, you can create a script that if it detects the UTM in the URL sends an event to Google Analytics so you can set a goal on that event.
I have people referring traffic to my website using a URL like this:
domain.com?r=1234
Each affiliate has a unique "r" code. How can I detect the query parameter "r" on the pageview of my website and translate it into a set of UTM tags that can be detected by Google Analytics, so that I can see which users are doing what on my Google Analytics reports? The mapping would be something like this:
If URL contains ?r=1234 -> Send to Google Analytics as ?utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=1234
The idea is being able to see the traffic coming thanks to these affiliates together with the rest of the traffic coming from other medium/campaigns (using UTM tags) and have the option to filter by medium or campaign on Google Analytics, so I guess the only way is turning the "r" query parameter into UTM tags. However, I'm open to other solutions. Thanks a lot!
Edit: At the moment, I'm able to capture the "r" query parameter using Google Tag Manager. As I'm tracking the pageviews and other goals using Google Tag Manager, the idea would be attaching the parameter "r" somewhere within the tag, so that Google Analytics detects it. Or something equivalent.
You can use UTM directly and share a short URL generated i.e. with a online service. Anyway you have to add utm_medium because it is mandatory, and referral is medium not source.
You can also override source / medium / campaign value forcing them in page or via GTM.
i.e. based querystring parameter you can configure GA tag similar to this (where variables values will be what you want):
I recently ran an e-mail campaign with a partner, who sent me over a URL with their own UTM parameters so they could track performance on their side.
When I handed the information over to our e-mail team and checked as the campaign went live, it appeared that they, out of habit, had added their own UTM parameters on top of the ones sent over by the partner, resulting in a click-through URL that looked like the following -
http://spirit.cruises.com/?cm_mmc=partner_email-_-sprt-multi_product--20161028--clia_plan_a_cruise_month&utm_medium=partner_email**&utm_source**=sprt-multi_product**&utm_campaign**=20161028&utm_content=clia_plan_a_cruise_month**&utm_source**=responsys**&utm_medium**=email**&utm_campaign**=20161028_50pct__Dual_Cruise_Email
As you can see, there are duplicate source, medium, and campaign parameters.
Does anyone know what happens in this situation? Does Google Analytics count both, or just the first, or just the last, or none? What is best practice when there are two parties that want to track performance of a URL in a campaign, and they may have different naming conventions?
(This is my first question, so please be nice :) Thanks!)
GA counts the last set. The proper way to deal with this is to avoid the situation. Email Software is often set to automatically add utm parameters to links (do you do not have to do it manually), but then all email marketing software I know would allow to override the configured default parameters.
I am not sure how your partner could track performance "on their site" via utm parameters unless they have their own GA code integrated in your website (or do you mean that they have access to your GA ?).
If there are two sets of analytics code that require different campaign attribution you would have use differently named parameters - let's say utm_medium2, utm_source2 and utm_campaign2 - and manually override campaign attribution for the second tracker:
// add this to after your usual tracker
ga('create', 'UA-XXXXX-Y', 'auto', 'partnerTracker');
ga('partnerTracker.set','campaignName',<value of utm_campaign2>)
ga('partnerTracker.set','campaignMedium',<value of utm_medium2>)
ga('partnerTracker.set','campaignSource',<value of utm_source2>)
ga('partnerTracker.send','pageview')
That would send data to a second account and override campaign attribution fields. It seems quite unlikely that you have or want that, but if you want to allow your partner to independently track utm values on your website (and everything else with it) that would the way to go.
Frankly I think you should just remove your partners utm parameters. Utm parameters make only sense for the owner of the respective GA account, and that is probably you, not the partner.
I agree with the first answer except for that last point where has says to remove the partner's UTM parameters.
In your case, the destination for the link provided to you by your partner is NOT your own website. The link goes to your partner's website. Therefore, your GA account has zero relationship with the link he sent you.
The way we're getting around this (without doing anything in analytics) for our many partners that we send links to is by using different email subjects per partner. Most email platforms use the subject line (or the internally defined Campaign "Name") as the value for UTM_Campaign.
So different subjects that include the partner organization in them:
"Special discount for ABC Organization members!"
"Special discount for XYZ Company members"
We can then analyze each unique campaign name in GA.
My team is creating several UTM links and we would like to achieve better understanding of our campaigns through a google spreadsheet.
Our spreadsheet lets us prepare easily new UTM links, but we would also like to gather data related to the activity of those UTM links, that we would otherwise have to get through google analytics and selecting the right parameters
Is it possible to add an extra column(s) that would automatically retrieve such information from Google Analytics ? Maybe a script that we can run once in a while, and that would pull the number of clicks GA has registered for every UTM link ?
Online I have found some scripts to assist UTM link generation, but nothing about actually retrieving/exporting the results automatically to a spreadsheet.
The most straightforward way would be to use the Google Analytics Spreadsheets Add-On and filter (or segment) by your campaign (utm) information. You can configure multiple independent reports for different campaigns and set a trigger to have it updated automatically in regular intervals.
I'm trying to track the success of marketing campaigns through conversion on a portal. The portal is largely JS based and for right now we can't use URL goal tracking. Instead, I'm planning on using event-based goal conversion that can report all the variables I need. The problem is how do I connect marketing campaigns to the eventual conversion? These campaigns span SEM, email, landing pages, partnerships, etc.
My initial idea was to use a URL param to set a session-level custom variable identifying the marketing campaign that funneled the visitor, and then to compare this to goal conversion. However, I'm not sure custom variables can even be compared to goal conversions in Google Analytics -- and I'm worried that I might be over-thinking this.
I'm worried I'm way over-thinking this. If I create a custom campaign using the URL Builder, will that give me everything I want, allowing me to track campaign conversions?
Yes, I think you are over-thinking things. :-)
As long as you properly tag the campaigns using the utm variables in your destination URLs as they show you how to do in URL builder, they should allow you to see your specific goal conversions by source, medium, campaign, etc. in your GA profile. Using the new Multi-Channel funnels features you'll also be able to see how the sources of previous visits influence future conversion behavior as well.
Generate help with campaign conversion tracking here: http://blog.crazyegg.com/2011/12/02/track-conversions-google-analytics-campaigns/
Info on Multi-Channel funnels here: https://www.google.com/analytics/features/multichannel-funnels.html