One of the many challenges when using any web analytics application is making sure that it meets your business needs. Many different sales cycles exist in the online market - some opt for a direct-to-sales approach, while others employ a model that takes advantage of autoresponders, teleseminars, webinars, and all sorts of creative methods for drawing potential and return customers back to the website.

Most web analytics applications allow you to track your marketing campaigns using a variety of different methods, usually involving adding some query parameters to your campaign URLs. The problem with this method is that most of these systems will allow you to measure the success of your original sources (like the AdWords ad that first caught a users eye), but lack the ability to simultaneously track the effectiveness of your secondary methods like email blasts, teleseminars and their siblings.

Google Analytics is no different. Out-of-the-box, it is a system designed to match each visit to a single source - the most recent source, so that it's very easy to lose sight of what brought the visitor to the website in the first place. In short, you could easily track either the effectiveness of your keywords to the final goal or your autoresponders to the ultimate goal, but not both.

That's not to say there haven't been attempts to get around this. One method was to make sure that each secondary source brought the user to a unique landing page. For example, teleseminars would use www.site.com/offera, while an online webinar would use www.site.com/offerb. Email autoresponders would also follow this system, with each email in the sequence using its own unique landing page.

If this seems like a lot of work, it is. Making a unique landing page for each type of secondary source can be time-consuming, confusing, and downright impossible to maintain. Adding a simple email to a sequence can turn into a real pain. To top it all off, finding the information you are looking for based on landing pages can get a little sticky if you're not a Google Analytics expert. Other existing methods use the User Defined variable creatively (which I like to reserve for Michael's awesome exact keyword tool), or get creative with custom tracking codes, neither of which is a particularly easy method to implement.

Why am I telling you this? Because I believe we've found a way out of this particular quagmire.

Continue reading "Tracking Secondary Sources and Autoresponders Using Site Search" »

There's an interesting chart in the June issue of Direct magazine about the best sources for building your email list; and the #1 list-growth tactic email marketer's use is *not* online marketing/search!

Wanna guess what it is?

According to a recent poll of 321 online marketers (including B-to-B and B-to-C companies) by email marketing firm Silverpop, old-fashion offline media rules for the most utilized list growth strategies. Check it out:

Asked to name their list-growth tactics, almost two-thirds of the e-mail marketers surveyed cited offline advertising and direct marketing. More than half mentioned trade shows or online marketing and search. Viral marketing was third.

This proves "some of the most successful channels are the traditional ones [including catalogs and direct mail]," said Elaine O'Gorman, Silverpop's vice president of strategy.

But isn't direct mail, the workhorse of the direct marketing world, largely a dead/dying medium?

Not according to an article on B-to-B customer acquisition strategies written Ruth P. Stevens (in the same issue of Direct Magazine) where she says "Reports of direct mail's demise are greatly exaggerated. The ol' reliable medium still delivers."

Marketing copywriter/agitator/guru Dan Kennedy says that the one commonality in his highest earning clients (spanning 156 product, service, business and profession categories) is their "constant, frequent, aggressive, innovative and masterful use of direct mail. Neglect it at your peril."

But how to track the success or failure of your next direct mail campaign on your website using Google Analytics?

Actually, it's quite easy.

Either purchase an unique URL, and have it redirect to a specific page on your site and insert the Google Analytics tracking codes, or write a redirect script from a sub-directory on your site.

For more details on the mechanics, see our article entitled "How to track offline ads with Google Analytics" or hire us to help you with this and much, much more.

NOTE: Please see the UPDATE at the bottom of the article.

If you've ever sent out a mass email newsletter to your clients, you've probably found yourself pausing before clicking "Send" and wondering just how many people will actually open the thing, and of those, how many will find their way onto your site.

Google Analytics can help answer those questions, and a number of others, with its easy email tracking features. Open rate, click-through rate, and conversions can all be tracked within Google Analytics. You can even measure the effectiveness of your email campaign against your CPC, banner, and print campaigns.

Continue reading "Tracking Email Campaigns with Google Analytics" »