Since so many of our clients are sending out emails and wanting to track the performance of them, I thought I would put together a short “How To” on using the Google URL Builder.

So let me begin with saying, EVERY link in your email should be tagged so you can see which links people clicked on and came to your website. So let’s get started on the tool. Use the image shown below as a reference for each step.

Begin with Step 1 in the image above and paste in the Website address your sending people too. Since we want to track visits to your site, this link should be your website address, not someone else s. As you can see above I used http://www.barnesandnoble.com/.

For Step 2, you’ll want to fill in Source, Medium, Content, and Campaign Name. Each of these fields will correlate to a report in Google Analytics.

• Source – This should be the name of the Email. As you can see above, I used “My Lunatic Life Book” as the source since this email is about that particular book.
• Medium – Since we’re talking about an email the medium is “email.” This will change depending on what the campaign is your putting together. If the campaign is a banner on another site then the medium is “banner”, basically this refers to how the person is getting to your site.
• Content – Content should be used when your tracking more then 1 link in 1 source. Since I’m using an email as an example, content would refer to every place clickable in the email. So if you have banners, text links, images, etc. As you can see from the example above I used “Book Image.”
• Campaign Name – Here I used “Nook Daily Find Emails” as awhole instead of doing a campaign for each product. This way we can look in GA and see how these emails did as a whole and then dig deeper by Source to see which product (since I used book title) generated the most visits.

For Step 3, click on generate URL and then copy the new URL shown in the box.

So now let’s fast forward and say you’ve sent out the email and people are coming to the site after clicking on the links. Well here’s what you would see in Google Analytics.

(NOTE: The above is just an example and not actual figures from Barnes and Nobles.)

Looking at the image above, you can see the campaign and beside it the source. Looking at this we can determine two emails were sent out that generated visits to the site, for the Nook Daily Find Emails. We can see My Lunatic life generated the most visits followed by Hunger Games Book 1. Now let’s dig a little deeper and just look at My Lunatic Life to see what most of the visitors clicked on to come to the site.

(NOTE: The above is just an example and not actual figures from Barnes and Nobles.)

Looking at the image above, you can see we’re only seeing data for the My Lunatic Life Book and what links were clicked on. This information let’s you know what drew people’s attention and got them to click and come to the site. As you can see, Buy Now button had the most appeal followed by the Book Image. This information is helpful for sending out future emails and deciding what content to use and not use based off of visits generated.

That sums up my lesson on How To Use the Google URL Builder to Tag Email Links. Hopefully you found this helpful and will be able to reference it when tagging URL links in the future. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave them in the comment section below and I’ll be sure to answer them as quickly as possible.

We are excited to attend the upcoming IRCE Conference in Chicago. The 8^th annual Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibitions is expected to bring in more than 7,500 e-retailing executives who are going to learn the latest practices and tools for connecting with the 21^st Century consumer. There will be over 175 speakers and 100 separate sessions all talking about such topics as boosting conversions and profitability, e-marketing, social media, mobile commerce, web merchandising, improving back-end operations, and much more.

Beacon will be exhibiting in booth #313 at the conference and offering free 20 minute one-on-one consults with Brad Henry, Beacon’s Director of Digital Strategy. If you are experiencing declining or stalling results, are seeing your search engine rankings slip, want more conversions from your website, feel your PPC is getting to expensive to justify or not sure what to do with social media, we’d like to help answer your questions using our proven SMAART approach for digital marketing.

Please register here to reserve your spot today! Once we receive your request, we’ll be in touch with your confirmed time and location for your consultation. We will also include instructions on how you can prepare so you can get the most out of your meeting.

Brad Henry is a 10-year veteran of web marketing and drives Beacon Technologies’ unique SMAART Approach in providing ROI-based digital marketing strategies and consultation to corporations across the country. He directs a large team of marketing specialists to grow businesses via custom developed strategic plans and by leveraging Beacon’s other in-house IT strengths (development, hosting). Brad holds a B.S. in Business Administration (Marketing) from the University of North Carolina – Charlotte. He also speaks at conferences and is one of the most active contributors on the Google Analytics Partner Forum over the last 6 years.

Brad’s primary objective is to help you get more from your website and web marketing initiatives by giving you actionable takeaways. To make best use of this time, he will initially focus on your main areas of concern before providing insights and feedback relative to Analytics, SEO, PPC, Social Media and/or email – as time permits.

I was fortunate enough to attend the 2012 Bronto Summit in Chapel Hill with Rick Boccard, one of Beacon’s Account Executives. Bronto is an innovative email service provider that I have worked with since 2008. Although I am familiar with the company, there are so many amazing new features and capabilities added each year that my time at the summit was well worth it. In addition to their cutting edge product, Bronto is full of wonderfully friendly and fun-loving people. I had a blast!

Bronto stampede at Bronto headquarters

I attended a handful of seminars on email marketing and wish I could have gone to every last one. I’d like to share just a little of the great information I took back with me and plan to utilize. If you’d like more details, here is a link to all the wonderful Bronto Presentations.

10 Ways to Boost Revenue Through Email Marketing • Season Specific Sales • One Day/Flash Sales • Friends & Family Discounts • Lapsed Purchaser Messages • Post Purchase Bounceback • Birthday Coupons • Shopping Cart Abandonment • Transactional Messages • Welcome Message/Series

Testing – Keynote Speech given by Anne Holland from Which Test Won? • A/B Test your opt-in form for email • Test overlays (light boxes) or try using them if you haven’t • Take advatage of short attention spans by testing shorter content in emails, one focus per email, and timing. • Reoptimize your email templates • Try social proof for products • Always test landing pages • Start using mobile and start testing what works with your customers • iPad Optimization • Always track beyond the click in your emails (sales, order value, leads, email captures, revenue, etc.)

The summit was full of inflatable brontosauruses, some twice as large as myself!

Bronto Love!

April was a busy month here at Beacon.  We came into the month off of a real strong first quarter with lots of exciting new projects kicking off with existing and new clients.  The momentum continued into April with over a dozen project kickoffs and the addition of seven new clients, including:

• eCommerce Development 
  • Tufenkian Carpets
  • Dale Pro Audio
• Managed Hosting
  • Hanes Brands
• Web Marketing Services
  • Boston College’s Center for Corporate Citizenship
  • RenewLife
  • Hunting Top Ten
• Custom Application Development
  • MathMoose

In addition to forming new relationships and strengthening existing partnerships, we were out on the road at The Bronto Summit and North Carolina Technology Association’s State of Technology Conference.  It was awesome to participate in these fun yet informative conferences without having to spend anytime in an airport or hotel.

The Bronto Summit was a great event.  The conference had such a friendly vibe and was one of the realist conferences I had been to in awhile.  There was awesome camaraderie across the board and really unique opportunities for networking.  As a partner, my favorite was their game of CLUE (Marketing Style) which was an excellent way for clients to get to know Bronto’s network of partners.  The key notes were top notch, from Joe Colopy’s (Bronto’s CEO) spin off of Coach Brooks’ pregame pep talk in the ‘Miracle’ to Ken Magill’s (The Magill Report) blunt take on the importance of relevancy.  You can check out all the presentations, by clicking here.

Joe Colopy dressed in his Coach Brooks’ digs for the opening keynote.

NCTA’s State of Technology event is a perennial favorite.  It is a short, high impact event that always excites me about what is going on with technology in North Carolina and beyond.  This year was no different.  ‘Big Data’ was the theme of the day and it was amazing to see how local organizations are utilizing big data or empowering others to leverage its power.  So many awesome use cases were discussed across a wide range of businesses, including: Public Safety, Healthcare, Finance, Non-Profits and many others.  It was amazing to hear about the awesome ways folks are using predictive analytics to increase revenues, decrease crime rates, lower mortality rates and increase revenues.

Looking ahead – we have a full calendar and pipeline so stay tuned.  Over the next few weeks, we’ll be at NCTA’s ET&T Breakfast on Analytics, The Triad Showcase and the Internet Retailer Conference.  Any chance we’ll see you at these events?  Let us know in the comments section below.