This post will focus on using merge fields as part of a link. You can use merge fields as part of a custom link that incorporates user information. This way your marketing department gets highly specific tracking results.
Here’s how:
Set up a custom google analytics tracking link (you’ll find instructions here). You can set the source and campaign information to be practically anything. Generally, this kind of link might look something like this:
https://www.domain.com/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=septembernews
Instead of using this basic text information (source = newsletter, medium = email, campaign = septembernews), I’d like to track personalized / custom subscriber information from this campaign. My subscriber list contains company names, so I’d like to see how many visits (and what kind of visits) come from individual companies.
To track traffic based on company name:
I’ll take the [COMPANY_NAME] tag (the name of the field I have stored my subscribers company names in) and insert it into my link:
https://www.domain.com/?utm_source=[COMPANY_NAME]&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=septembernews
When this campaign gets sent, the URL will look like:
https://www.domain.com/?utm_source=MyCompanyName&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=septembernews
If you want to see site traffic sources by individual email address:
https://www.domain.com/?utm_source=[email]&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=septembernews
When this campaign gets sent, the URL will look like:
https://www.domain.com/?utm_source=hi@myemail.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=septembernews
This data will show up in your Google Analytics account under “Traffic Sources.” To learn how to create custom Google Analytics URLs you can read more here.
