When we carry out campaigns (email, social media, paid, etc.), it is important to add ‘tracked ‘ links. With this type of link, we know everything! How many people have clicked, where they come from… etc. This way, Google Analytics can measure the impact of marketing actions to increase sales, increase leads or get more notoriety.
In the contrary case, i.e. when the link is not “tracked”, it is more complicated to measure the impact of the campaign on the sites visited and the achievement of our objectives. The campaign will be included under the referrers and all results of all campaigns will be grouped together and not detailed. In the case of links in newsletters, we can only note if the traffic comes from the newsletter in general, and not a specific link.
Moreover, in an ideal world, the links we share on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn should be ‘tracked’ as this would facilitate the verification of the return on investment (ROI) and thus calculate whether the time invested in social media is profitable.
So, to ‘track’ links in your communications, UTM (or Urchin Traffic Monitor) settings should be used. It’s a code established in previous versions of Google Analytics, Urchin 4 and so on. When using Google, there is a page that helps create ‘tracked ‘ URLs.
Tracking variables in Google Analytics
Here is a list of variables that can be used for ‘tracking’ your URL:
- utm_source : is used to designate which campaign (Google, Bing, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.)
- utm_medium : is used to designate which channel is airing the campaign (email, social, organic search, etc.)
- utm_campaign : is used to designate the name of the marketing campaign
- utm_term : keywords used in the campaign
- utm_content : is used to describe the campaign (may be used in the case of an A/B test)
I hope that this post will help you when creating your future marketing campaigns. If not, write to me! We could exchange ideas on the subject.
