Usecase - UTM Marketing Trackers for Promotion Test
About UTM Marketing
Applies to: All ONTRAPORT accounts. Marketing ROI Tracking in Campaigns is limited to Pro and above accounts.
Every business owner wants to know what marketing ventures are bringing the most leads and converting the most sales. ONTRAPORT has a powerful marketing tracking tool called UTM Tracking that allows you to know where your leads and sales are coming from so you can do more of what's working and less of what's not. ONTRAPORT displays data on page visits, opt-ins, conversions, sales and much more.
This article is a usecase for a fictitious ONTRAPORT user, Sally, who wants to run a test to see if offering a free month or 10% off of her membership product will convert more sales. Sally plans to promote her site via Facebook, YouTube and emails to her existing leads in the Spring of 2018. She’ll use UTM parameters in order to see which social media platform and which offer gets more leads and sales, and which ads are the most successful.
What Are UTM Parameters
UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module. It’s a simple code that you append to the end of a URL so you can track specific parameters. These parameters are keywords attached in the URL, and in short they provide data on leads and conversions immediately upon someone clicking the UTM link. You can customize your UTM parameters to tell you what want to know about what's working and what's not in terms of your online marketing efforts.
An example UTM parameter URL might look like this:
- Campaign Name (utm_campaign) - Required Google parameter used to identify a specific product promotion or strategic campaign such as Black Friday or Spring Sale.
- Source (utm_source) - Required Google parameter that identifies where your traffic came from such as social media, search engine or other referral.
- Medium (utm_medium) - Required Google parameter used to identify the type of promotion that was used such as Instagram, email, CPC or other method of sharing.
- Content (utm_content) - Optional Google parameter used for other details such as what ad was used, A/B testing or content specific targeted ads.
- Term (utm_term) - Optional Google parameter identifies keywords for your ads.
Here’s the breakdown of the above URL using ONTRAPORT's tracking URL Builder:
You can find more information and FAQ's on how to set up UTM Tracking within ONTRAPORT here.
Usecase - Setup UTM Marketing in ONTRAPORT
In this section we’ll demonstrate how Sally, a motivational speaker who has a membership site plans to promote her site via Facebook and YouTube in the Spring of 2018. She wants to test whether offering a 10 percent discount or a free month will encourage more sales. Sally is going to use UTM parameters in order to see which social media platform and offer gets more leads, so that in future promotions she can target the winner and have a better chance of getting more sales right off the bat.
Here are sample UTM parameters she will use (the “|” character separates the choices she can use for that parameter):
Campaign: Spring2018
Lead Source: Facebook | YouTube
Content: 10off | freemonth
NOTE: She doesn’t need to use Medium or Term because all the information she needs can be captured using just Campaign, Lead Source and Content. When you’re setting this up, just realize that Medium or Term are optional.
To begin, she will create two Order Forms, one that gives 10 percent off and one that gives a free month upon sign up. They will be hosted at sallyswebsite.com/10%off and sallyswebsite.com/freemonth. (Click here to learn how to create Order Forms within ONTRAPORT)
Then, she'll follow the steps below:
- Navigate to Administration > Advanced Features tab > Tracking and toggle the feature on.
- A Tracking tab should appear in your primary navigation. Select By Campaign from the Tracking menu.
- Click New Tracking URL button.
- Enter a Destination URL. The ONTRAPORT tracking script must be installed on the page. Tracking scripts are automatically installed on ONTRApages and WordPress sites integrated with PilotPress.
- Select the marketing channels.
- Click Create URL.
Sally will repeat the above steps to create each additional UTM parameter needed until she has 4 UTM parameter URL's that look like this:
- http://sallyswebsite.com/10%off?utm_campaign=Spring2018&utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=10off
- http://sallyswebsite.com/10%off?utm_campaign=Spring2018&utm_source=Youtube&utm_medium=10off
- http://sallyswebsite.com/10%off?utm_campaign=Spring2018&utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=freemonth
- http://sallyswebsite.com/10%off?utm_campaign=Spring2018&utm_source=Youtube&utm_medium=freemonth
Now Sally simply needs to add each UTM parameter into either Facebook or YouTube ads and wait to see which source and offer performs the best!
How to Track the Results of UTM Parameters
After the UTM Variables have been sent out and people have been clicking and buying, we'll want to see the results. To get to the Tracking Page:
- Hover over Tracking.
- There will be an option for each type of Variable. Choose the one that you want to see the results on, such as By Lead Source.
- Click on any of the Tracking Channels, and you'll be able to drill into various metrics for the individual variable.
Below you'll find the name of each Metric and a short description of what it means:
Name - Name of the Campaign
# Visits (Unique) - How many unique visits to the URL from a UTM-powered link
# Visits (Total) - How many total visits to this URL from a UTM-powered link
# Sales (% of Leads) - The number of sales by the percentage of leads (unique visits)
$ Sales - Total dollar amount for sales
# New Clients - Number of contacts that purchase a product after using this Marketing Tracker, even if the purchase comes at a later time.
Days to First Purchase - The number of days a lead is on a campaign before their first purchase.
Life Time Value - Life time value of this Marketing Tracker. This metric compares sales to leads in the amount of time the campaign ran.
Put it all Together
Sally found out that she received much more traffic through YouTube, and more people were interested in signing up when they were offered a free month!
So now Sally should put all of her money into advertising on YouTube and offer everyone a free month, right? Not quite. While this information is very valuable, it doesn't necessarily mean that offering a free month via YouTube will ALWAYS garner the most leads or sales. Knowing where leads are coming from and what brings them in is always changing. Perhaps Sally’s next step is to create four different ads. Then, she would make four more UTM parameters that are based on each ad, and add them to YouTube. Sally can run these four ads on another channel like Vimeo to see if she’ll get better results.
There isn’t always a cookie cutter approach to successful advertising. Smart marketers constantly adapt to the data driven results and continuously optimize. Even ultra-successful businesses (Coca-Cola, Nike, etc.) adjust their advertisements based upon what’s working and what’s not. This is why ONTRAPORT provides you the tools on gathering the data and the results, so you can make sure you’re making decisions based on data instead of hunches!
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