As an email marketer, it’s always a good habit to keep a constant eye on your metrics. But, as anyone who is deeply familiar with the subject will know, sometimes the numbers reported from your ESP and the numbers you see in Google Analytics don’t match up.
There are a number factors — some controllable, some not — for these differences. Today, email strategy and deliverability expert Jonathon Willis breaks these factors down for you in part one of his two part tutorial for using Google Analytics properly.
Some areas we want to consider when it comes to understanding differences in our metrics:
- UTM parameters
- Accurate syntax
- Safe characters
- Consistent case (upper/lower)
- Sessions -vs- Clicks
- a “Session” per Google Analytics
- a “Click” per (most) Email Service Providers
- Google Analytics Reporting
- Accurate filtering (to capture traffic data)
- Server Redirects & Cross-Domain tracking
- Accurately passing UTM parameters
- Other Considerations
- Unintended clicks
- Ad blockers (and script blockers)
- MIME protocols (quoted-printable, base64)
An important starting point is understanding that a “session” as defined by Google Analytics IS NOT equivalent to a “click” as reported by most email service providers (ESP). Our next post will dive deeper into this. Nevertheless, it’s possible to minimize significant variances differences between these two (different) metrics by ensuring UTM parameters are created following this summary of best practices.
A Quick Refresher On UTM Parameters
UTM parameters are (text) variables that help identify an advertising initiative and various characteristics about that initiative — an email campaign, in this case. When an email recipient clicks a link that includes UTMs, the destination website will be able to pull the variable information from the UTMs (for analytics tracking and reporting through Google Analytics).
There are a total of five parameters available:
- utm_source (required): Who sent the email (e.g. “whatcounts”)
- utm_medium (required): The marketing channel/tactic used (e.g. “email”)
- utm_campaign: The campaign/program name (e.g. “wearables_summer_sales_promo”)
- utm_term: Optional field typically used to identify keywords for SEM campaigns
- utm_content: Optional field typically used to identify A/B content (e.g. “discount_offer”, “bogo_offer”, etc.)
Both the utm_term and utm_content fields provide a great way to include more granular information; which can then be used as a way to filter data for reporting purposes. However, more granularity can make reporting more prone to error. Determine what data you need to be able to report out, and then decide how to populate those fields (or whether to include them, at all).
Creating a UTM Query String
Use Google Analytics’ online URL Builder to create your UTM query string. This will help ensure syntax accuracy and identify characters to avoid (i.e., those that need to be encoded).
When using the builder, make sure to keep the following in mind:
Avoid lengthy values and unnecessary characters.
It’s important the values you use for a parameter are understandable to whomever will be reading/analyzing the tracking data in Google Analytics. Keep values short and abbreviate if possible (but not to the extent someone wouldn’t understand what it means).
Avoid characters that need to be encoded.
You can determine what characters need to be encoded — and therefore avoided — by using the online URL Builder.
Enter the values for each of the UTM parameters and click “Generate URL”. Any risky character will appear encoded in the URL that gets generated. Examples:
%20 for the space ” ” character
%2B for the plus “+” character
In place of these characters, it’s recommended that you eliminate them or replace them with characters from the standard subset of:
the underscore “_” character (e.g. “wearables_summer_sales_promo”)
the hyphen/dash “-” character (e.g. “buy-one-get-one-offer”)
alphabetic characters: a-z A-Z
numeric characters: 0-9
(NOTE: Avoid using the period “.” character. Although it’s technically permissible and does not need encoding, it can cause issues with URLs breaking.)
UTM parameters are case sensitive.
Google Analytics is case sensitive. Inconsistencies between (upper/lower) case will inadvertently cause issues when trying to report on results for the same email initiative; therefore, reduce your chance of error by sticking with lowercase. Examples:
These would appear as TWO DIFFERENT SOURCES:
utm_source=WhatCounts
utm_source=whatcounts
These would appear as TWO DIFFERENT MEDIUMS:
utm_medium=Email
utm_medium=email
These would appear as TWO DIFFERENT CAMPAIGNS:
utm_campaign=Wearables_Summer_Sales_Promo
utm_campaign=wearables_summer_sales_promo
To close out, there are a lot of little things that an email marketer can do to achieve the most accurate reporting possible. Take the time to learn how to maximize the power behind these tools, and help elevate your email program.
Part two will drop next week and be a more in-depth look at Sessions vs. Clicks. In the meantime, feel free to comment and ask Jonathon questions on this subject.