Close 3 gaps to optimize campaign measurement and performance
Digital managers are often faced with a variety of data, often delivered in disparate formats, without the ability to demonstrate cross-channel influence or impact.
With some updating to your analytics profile and changes to your digital tracking, your web analytics can provide cleaner, better-integrated campaign data — all in one spot.
Analytics data is not always properly attributed or aligned out of the box with other channels you may be employing for your campaigns. Here are a few recommendations to improve your campaign performance tracking.
1.
Clean and centralize your data — it’s easier than you think
The first part of the process involves digging into your analytics program and optimizing your channel attribution data. Filtering options should be used to ensure like traffic is accurately credited to the right source and non-essential data, such as internal and bot traffic, is excluded. It might sound basic, but unless you take the step, you won’t be getting a true picture of your campaign performance.
The next step is to check your UTM parameters. Effective multichannel campaign data starts with architecting your analytics properly. If your campaign didn’t start that way, now’s the time to get it done. Make sure you’ve labeled your campaign elements well using proper UTM parameters to align your campaign data and allow you to drill down to detailed performance metrics on a channel-by-channel basis. It’s the only way to see how all your elements — search, social, programmatic, email, etc. — are delivering results.
Customize your analytics to track the campaign’s KPIs and goals. This is another instance where an “out-of-the-box” install of your analytics will fail you. It’s also important to create goals in your analytics that are attributed to all the channels you’re using. This allows you to both track desired outcomes and see how channels support one another, in a single place. Finally, be sure you’re tracking any desired actions that might not be native to analytics — things like clicks to PDFs or video starts.
2.
Correlate your conclusions
Focusing on a single metric — for example, bounce rate on a landing page — might lead you to conclude that there’s something wrong with the page itself. What other metrics are available that might support or deny a hypothesis? You have to look at the experience as a whole. Are there differences in bounce rates from different sources? By correlating your metrics, you can begin to get a better understanding of actual performance.
3.
Test everything
If you’re not actively A/B testing your campaign elements, you haven’t positioned yourself to optimize the campaigns over time. Generating insights from A/B testing will allow you to continually optimize your campaign toward better-performing metrics. Isolate variables such as messaging, visual assets, subject lines, etc. to help you develop insights worth optimizing toward. All your campaigns should be managed in a continual cycle of testing, hypothesis, and optimization.
It’s not too late to customize your analytics to provide you with more accurate, better aggregated data in a single source that will allow you to develop better insights and optimizations in your campaigns moving forward
