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“We spent $25,000 on a blue widgets campaign, what was the return?” It’s a seemingly simple question, but if you don’t track your marketing properly, you may never get the answer.
What I’m talking about is campaign tagging - the ability of your web analytics program to associate activity (and revenue) with different sources of visitors.
In this post, I’m focusing only on campaign tagging with Google Analytics. I’ve seen campaign tracking butchered so many times that I wanted to set the record straight once and for all.
There are 3 areas that matter for campaign tagging with Google Analytics (or Urchin):
- Parameters
- Parameter values
- Destination URLs
#1 - Parameters for Google Analytics
Parameter is a geeky word for a part of the URL after the question mark (?) or ampersand (&). Take this example:
http://www.alexlcohen.com/?utm_medium=example
If you have multiple parameters, any ones past the first are separated by “&”:
www.alexlcohen.com/?utm_medium=example&utm_source=second-url
In that URL, utm_source is the parameter. Google Analytics recognizes 5 specific parameters for measuring campaigns:
- utm_medium
- utm_source
- utm_campaign
- utm_content
- utm_term
Parameters exist to track campaigns. Each parameter has a different purpose and requires different values (more on that later).
utm_medium is used to designate the channel of this particular marketing. This includes large sources of visitors like:
- Paid search
- Affiliate
- Offline Ads
utm_source should differentiate sources of traffic within a given channel. If you have an affiliate program, you could separate out traffic from Linkshare from Commission Junction. In paid search, you’d want to distinguish Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Continue reading ‘Campaign Tagging with Google Analytics’
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Sometimes text and pictures are just not enough to persuade your visitors. They’re flat and one-way.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that investing in expensive media or similar tactics will pay off. I’ve gathered 3 free ways to connect with your customers, so you can begin experimenting.
#1 - Product Demos with Jing
Helping people understand the “look and feel” of your product is harder online. But, video can help you bridge the presentation gap.
Video is great for highlighting product features, doing value add demonstrations (ex: how to carve a turkey with an expensive knife), and explaining difficult concepts.
The folks at Camtasia have a project called Jing that lets you capture, host and share video all for $0.
#2 - Webinars/Screenshare with Yugma
Sometimes a more interactive presentation that lets your visitors ask questions is a better way to connect. This is especially true if:
- Your product involves training (such as software)
- Education about your value is important (such as services) or
- You have a noteworthy spokesperson (Rachel Ray excluded)
In this case, a webinar is simple and inexpensive way to tell as story about your business. It’s usually in the for of a slide presentation (which you can create free with Google Presentation, part of Google Docs), product demo (see above) or a simple screen share.
Regardless of the content, Yugma is a good way to get started. Presentations with a small audience (up to 10) are free and you get 15 days of full access when you join for the first time.
(Thanks for the tip Drew!)
Continue reading ‘Stop Yelling: 3 Free Ways to Connect with Your Customers’
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One tool may not be enough to fully measure paid search. This is especially true if you’re trying to track paid search ad variation performance and rely on Google Analytics.
As I mentioned in my previous post, 3 Ways Google Analytics Fails Paid Search Marketers, Google Analytics only shows you the ad title of your ad variation. This doesn’t tell you much if you’re testing the other lines or display URL.
You’ll have to supplement your web analytics program with the Google AdWords conversion tracking. Full documentation about AdWords conversion tracking and the place to get the code are here (you need to be logged into AdWords).
Unfortunately, Google AdWords conversion tracking and your analytics tools won’t always report the same results. You’ll never get them to match exactly but here are:
5 Tips to Improve the Accuracy of AdWords Conversion Tracking
1. Put The Codes on the Same Page - I know this one is fairly obvious. Your AdWords and Google Analytics code need to be on the same page.
2. Users First, Conversion Second - The generally accepted standard is that you place web analytics code at the bottom of a page. That way, the page code that matters most to the user loads first. Even Google agrees:
The code snippet should be placed between the <body> tags, closer to the </body> tag so that the image appears further down the page. You should NOT place the code in the header or footer of your page. This could overstate your conversion statistics and defeat the purpose of tracking.
3. Place The Codes Near Each Other - Just as both tracking codes, both Google AdWords and Google Analytics conversion code should be as close to each other as possible. Any distance between them could jar the count.
4. Pick the Right Code - AdWords gives you a variety of choices of code. Make sure you pick the one that’s right for your site goals. In particular, remember that secure pages require that you select the secure (https) code snippet from AdWords.
5. See No Image, Get No Tracking - Google AdWords conversion tracking produces as small image on your conversion page. Make sure the verification image is showing up.
Read One of These Similar Posts:If you believe the research, targeted email advertising is hot:
83% of surveyed marketing executives worldwide used email, ahead of display ads, paid search and online video. - The McKinsey Quarterly (2007)
80% of Marketers Report Email Is Strongest Performing Media Buy Ahead of Search and Display. - Datran Media, “Marketing & Media Survey” (2008)
If you want to get the biggest bang for your email advertising bucks, you have to avoid the pitfalls.
If you want to make the most of your email marketing, here’s a simple checklist of ways to boost your results. It covers:
- Rendering
- Landing Pages
- Tracking
- Creative/Merchandising
- Deliverability/Sender Reputation Management
- User Experience
- Testing
Each section is designed you can print it out or bookmark this page and review it before you send out an email.
Checklist for Better Email Marketing
Rendering
If people can’t see or read what you’re trying to say, you’re emails will be ineffective. Popular email programs like Hotmail and Gmail turn off images by default. Even if images render, they may appear distorted in one program vs. another.
__ Renders properly in different programs - Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, Thunderbird, etc.
__ Images render as expected in different providers - AOL, Hotmail, etc.
__ Copy is visible without images
__ Calls to action appear in text
__ Includes a link to view the email online, e.g. “Can see this email? Click here to view it online.”
Landing pages
Make the email to website transition seamless. It seems like an obvious recommendation, but by verifying that what people see when they get to your site is what they expect, you can avoid careless mistakes.
__ All product image and text links go to product pages
__ “Click here to see…” links go to relevant category and subcategory pages
__ Header and other navigational links function (ex: Men’s Tops, etc.)
__ Theme or landing pages work as expected and match the look and feel of the email.
Continue reading ‘A Checklist for Targeted Email Advertising’
Read One of These Similar Posts:Is Your Website Too Fat?
Measurement is like exercise. People often only think about it after they have a problem. And by then, it might be too late.If you don’t want flabby marketing and and out-of-shape website, then you need to plan your website analysis.
Here are 4 quick tips to keep all of your internet marketing healthy:
- Question (Almost) Everything
- Know Your Limits
- Identify The Moving Pieces
- Separate Needs from Wants
1. Question (Almost) Everything
The purpose of site analysis is to answer questions, such as:
- How many people are viewing our videos?
- Is this the best landing page for paid search?
- How many questions should I ask on this lead generation form?
Getting the actionable data you need means you have to start your website analysis plan by asking yourself:
What do I need to know about my site and marketing to run my business?
I’ve found that business questions about website analysis usually fall into one of four camps:
Continue reading ‘Is Your Website Too Fat?’
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Taking your site from good to great isn’t easy. Fortunately, there are experts willing to teach you how to accelerate your website and marketing to great faster.
There’s no bigger collection of experts than at the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit.
Read on for the top 7 most informative and applicable tips that I picked up from the summit to help you measure and improve your website.
7. Understand Your Market and Competition Better
6. Integrate Industry Trends
5. Listen To Your Customers More (and With Better Tools)
4. Testing Is Required to Kick Butt
3. Use Technology to Save Time
2. Be More Persuasive
1. Process Produces Better Websites
7. Understand Your Market and Competition Better
“All of your problems will be solved if you buy this web analytics package.” It’s a phrase not explicitly said by any web analytics company.
However, the implicit message is that web analytics tools are a turn-key solution that provide you with the exact data you want in a conveniently arranged dashboard.
The reality is anything but that. As every major web analytics guru will tell you, you need to explore other tools and methods for getting the data you need to develop real insight and improve your site.
Incorporate non-traditional sources to improve your website analysis. Mike Grehan pointed to Google Webmaster Central as a source of data related to your SEO efforts.
Several presenters highlighted the importance of incorporating competitive data and industry trends in a dashboard on a quarterly basis.
7 Competitive Intelligence Tools
For business with a big bank account, there are tools like:
If you’re looking for competitive data on the cheap, you’ll have to turn to the likes of
The goal integrating these data is to help you benchmark:
Continue reading ‘7 Ways To Measure and Improve Your Website’
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I can instantly double your conversion rate.
How? Is it through better user experience? A/B and multivariate testing? Those annoying talking avatars I see everywhere?
Nope. It’s simple math.
Why Does Conversion Rate Matter?
If you haven’t noticed, there’s been some buzz going around the blogosphere (and Commerce360) about improving your conversion rate. Nielsen/Netratings released a list of the internet retailers with the top 10 conversion rates on the web.
Conversion rate is obviously an alluring metric, because it is one way of representing how well your site is persuading people to take the actions you want them to take, usually purchase. The usual wisdom is: the bigger your conversion rate, the better.
Generally, that’s true. However, it’s also one of the easiest metrics to miscalculate or misinterpret.
Calculating Conversion Rate… Maybe
Calculating conversion rate should be simple–just divide the number of orders (or desired actions) by the number of people who came to your site in a given time period. That is: orders / people.
The problem when it comes to calculating your conversion rate is the denominator. Web analytics are very imperfect and no one metric truly measures “people” accurately. Instead, you end up substituting some other number to represent “people”.
You basically have 3 basic choices of metrics to substitute for “people”:
- Visits - As defined by the Web Analytics Association, this is, “an interaction, by an individual, with a website consisting of one or more requests for an analyst-definable unit of content (i.e. “page view”). If an individual has not taken another action (typically additional page views) on the site within a specified time period, the visit session will terminate.”
- Unique Visitors - The WAA’s standard definition of this metric is, “The number of inferred individual people (filtered for spiders and robots), within a designated reporting timeframe, with activity consisting of one or more visits to a site. Each individual is counted only once in the unique visitor measure for the reporting period.”
- Clicks - Sadly, there is no standard for measuring clicks. Typically, this is reported by another tool (such as Google’s AdWords or Linkshare’s affiliate management tool). Clicks are the number of times a person clicks on a link, usually an advertisement, as measured by the front-end tool. This will likely vary from the count of visits from that sort, because of click fraud and people click away before your analytics code loads, among other things.
The difference can be significant. Let’s take some fictional numbers:
Continue reading ‘Instantly Double Your Conversion Rate!’
Read One of These Similar Posts:When Should You Invest in SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a necessary part of any website strategy. The potential traffic is simply too big to ignore.
The question isn’t “Should I do SEO?” it’s “When should I do SEO?”
As a site owner, you have to make hard decisions about how to spend your always-not-enough budget and when. In this post, I’m going to talk about some of things your should consider when trying to determine…
When Should I Invest in SEO?
SEO is not direct marketing. Just because you put a dollar in today does not mean you’re going to get a $1.50 out tomorrow.
Fundamentally, natural search optimization is a long-term investment. With the right strategy and the right implementation, I do believe you will get the return on that investment and, possibly, a sustained competitive advantage.
Of course, this presents a problem: you have to spend the money now, but you might not see it for a while.
Fundamentals to Make the Most of SEO
Search engines don’t buy from you, people do. There a few things you need to have in place in any site to make the most of SEO:
- Functioning Site - There’s no point in bringing people to your site if it doesn’t work. People don’t like it and neither do the search engines. Getting your site to work properly is as important as getting people there.
- Great Product - You can optimize your site till you’re blue in the face, but if you’re product stinks, you’re fighting an uphill battle. They say the quickest way to kill a bad product is to advertise it…
- Measurement (Web Analytics) - Spending money without any way to track it is pointless. What’s more, you need analytics in place to help you refine the SEO you do execute.
The Resources You Need to Execute SEO
There are 2 paths to SEO: do-it-yourself or hiring an SEO consultant.
The choice between the two could fill several blog posts. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to assume you are looking for professional help.
A good organic search optimization agency will:
- Do your keyword research
- Make recommendations about your platform and information architecture
- Address on-page code elements
- Conduct a competitive and market analysis
- Make specific content recommendations
- Build and, possibly, execute a link strategy
You then have to execute that advice you paid so much for.
Continue reading ‘When Should You Invest in SEO?’
Read One of These Similar Posts:I got an email from an entrepreneur contact of mine. He’s smack in the middle of the process of due diligence for the acquisition of an internet marketing property.
He wanted to include a web analytics as part of his due diligence questionnaire and asked if I had a checklist.
Having not gone through the process, I wrote up a few quick bullet points that I thought I’d share with you.
3 Web Analytics Questions to Ask Before Buying a Company
1.) What tool(s) are you using to measure and optimize your site? What process and personnel are you dedicating to use data to grow your business?
The goal here is to understand their relative dedication or lack thereof to continuous improvement.
There is a range of 7 possible responses here:
- The analytics ignorant won’t have or know what tool they’re using. Be afraid, be very afraid.
- The vendor-dependent might simply have reports from their partners, but not invest in site-side tools. That’s can be a problem when you switch vendors or consider campaign attribution.
- Some might be relying on something in-house or what’s baked into their ecommerce platform or content management system. Tread lightly here, as these will vary wildly in sophistication.
- An internet unsavvy organization might have slapped up one of the free or inexpensive, but have done little to act on the data.
- A business with an average level of sophistication will have one or more tools and 1 person for whom part of their job is to use web analytics data.
- More sophisticated marketers will actually dedicate 0.5+ full-time employees to analysis and likely be using a suite of tools, including one core web analytics package.
- The most advanced will have great talent, good tools and a process for regularly analyzing and optimizing their site and marketing.
Continue reading ‘3 Web Analytics Questions to Ask Before Buying a Company’
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