After spending all that time and effort setting up marketing campaigns, if you don't track their effectiveness, you might as well not have bothered. Without tracking, you are flying blind and are likely to waste a lot of money on campaigns that don't produce results for your business objectives.
Fortunately, tracking campaigns is easier than ever before. With the right tools and techniques, you can gather a wealth of campaign tracking data, including which ones are producing the most website traffic, and optimize your strategies accordingly. And this post will walk you through all the basic information you need to know. So don't let your hard work go to waste – it’s time to track your campaigns!
What is campaign tracking?
Campaign tracking is a key component of any effective marketing strategy. It involves tracking all of your marketing campaigns – for instance, social media posts and SMS or email campaigns – so you can determine which channels are most effective at bringing people to your site. By monitoring and measuring these campaigns, you can gain valuable insights into how your customers interact with your brand.
Tracking also lets you figure out which marketing tactics are most valuable and where you can make improvements to increase conversion rates and drive more sales. There are various different methods for tracking, including tracking links, tracking pixels, and cookies.
Why does campaign tracking matter?
Ecommerce brands rely heavily on digital marketing channels to reach and engage their target audience, so it is essential that they track the performance of their marketing campaigns closely. Campaign tracking allows you to measure and monitor key metrics such as conversion rates, click-through rates, and ROI. By tracking these metrics, you gain valuable insights into your customers' behavior and can make strategic changes to your marketing in order to maximize ROI.
In addition to tracking campaign performance, tracking is also an important component of A/B testing. Through A/B testing, brands can test different campaign elements such as copy, images, subject lines, and CTAs to determine what resonates best with their target audience. For instance, tracking campaign results may reveal that one image performed better than another or that a particular subject line led to higher click-through rates and conversions.
What are link parameters?
Tracking links is one way of tracking marketing campaigns. Link parameters are tracking codes that are added to links in order to measure the performance of different campaigns. Adding different parameters to the links makes them unique. When you place unique campaign URLs in different locations, you can track activity from each specific link, so you can see exactly which ad or piece of content your site visitors clicked on to reach you.
Let's say you're running an email marketing campaign, and you want to track which emails are driving the most traffic back to your website. Create a custom campaign URL for each email and then add a tracking parameter, such as "utmcampaign=email-launch-1" or "utmcampaign=email-launch-2". When people click on these tracking links, you will be able to see which email led to the most traffic and conversions.
Link tracking is an essential part of any digital marketing campaign, but in order to track clicks accurately, it is important to use standardized tracking parameters. When tracking parameters are not standardized, brands can end up with inaccurate campaign data and make misguided decisions about their marketing strategy.
Read about how to track campaigns with UTMs and our UTM best practices
Best practices for campaign tracking
There are several key steps that you can take in order to track your marketing campaigns more effectively.
Use a tracking tool like Google Analytics
Tracking tools such as Google Analytics make it easy to track and analyze the performance of your campaigns. Google Analytics is a popular tracking tool because it's easy to set up and provides a wealth of data about your website traffic. You can use it to track everything from how many people are visiting your site to where they are coming from and what pages they are viewing. Other popular tracking tools include Mixpanel and Kissmetrics.
Regularly review and analyze tracking data
It is important to look at tracking data on a regular basis so that you can make changes or tweak your marketing strategy as needed. You may find that certain types of ads are performing well while others need to be optimized or scaled back.
Track conversions from your marketing campaigns
When tracking marketing campaigns, it's important to track conversions as well. This means tracking how many people clicked on your link or ad and then went on to make a purchase or complete another desired action on your website. Tracking conversions allows you to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns and determine which ones are driving the most traffic and conversions.
Consider using multi-channel attribution modeling
Multi-channel tracking software can help you understand the various touchpoints that lead to conversions and give you a complete picture of how your marketing campaigns are performing. This can help you optimize your budget and gain more effective insights into what types of ads or content resonate with your target audience.
Read more about marketing attribution
Conduct A/B tests
A/B testing is a method of campaign tracking that involves testing two or more versions of a campaign to identify which one performs the best in terms of driving traffic and conversions. Using tracking and A/B testing tools can help you gain valuable insights into what types of content, ads, and other elements are most effective for your target audience. With that information, you can adjust your marketing to make it even more effective.
How to analyze campaign results
Once you have been tracking your marketing campaigns using standardized tracking parameters, tracking pixels, or cookies, it is important to analyze the results of your campaign in order to identify any areas for improvement. To do this effectively, you should start by breaking down your data into different dimensions, such as traffic source, conversion rate, cost per acquisition (CPA), and more.
Next, you should take a close look at the data in each of these dimensions to identify any patterns or trends. For example, if your traffic sources are showing a high level of engagement with your marketing campaigns, but your conversion rates are relatively low, this could indicate that you need to make changes to your website or marketing messaging in order to improve conversion rates.
Ultimately, the key to effective campaign analysis is to identify areas of opportunity and focus your efforts on optimizing those areas in order to drive better results. With the right data-driven insights, you can make strategic changes that will help improve the ROI of your marketing campaigns over time.
Improve ROAS and boost your results
After tracking your marketing campaigns, you may be wondering how you can make your marketing more effective. Focusing on improving your return on ad spend (ROAS) will improve the efficiency of your paid ads and have a knock-on, positive effect across all your marketing efforts. Check out our post: 8 Strategies For Boosting Your Return On Ad Spend