Multi-channel marketing is great, you may be combining Social Marketing campaigns with paid Google advertising whilst also sending email campaigns and running print ads. The question is…
How do you know what is really working for you?
The website hits might be up as a result of your efforts but what’s giving the best ROI (return on investment)
As a marketing professional this is even more difficult, because for clients running multiple campaigns, I am ultimately responsible for showing results to my clients. One fantastic way to track the results is to use UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) codes.
This simple technique can link your marketing practices to Google Analytics and give me the data I need to support a campaign or the data I need to switch to something else.
Ok, so what is this little Urchin thingy?
A UTM code is a simple code that you can attach to a custom URL in order to track a source, medium, and campaign name. This enables Google Analytics to tell me where searchers came from as well as what campaign directed them to your website.
How would that work with print ads then?
Good question… A common use of UTM code is to create a vanity URL for each offline campaign, and then redirect that URL to whatever forwarding address you assign to it — most likely your main domain. This will give you the ability to track how an ad is running.
By creating a separate UTM code for radio commercials and print ads, for example, you can get data on which generates more traffic, conversions, etc. Furthermore, you can track not only the source and the medium (radio, newspaper, coupon, etc.), but even individual campaign names like “Black Friday Sale.”
Here is what the UTM generator looks like…
Generating UTM Codes is simple.
You can generate a UTM for your campaign here https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
There is even a builder for Android Apps https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/android/v3/campaigns#google-play-url-builder
And of course iOS https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/ios/v3/campaigns#ios-url-builder
So now has never been a better time to run multiple channel campaigns.