Campaign tracking is a pretty straight-forward concept. By using links with specific parameters, you can track certain behaviors of the users that clicked that link in order to gain insight that is designed to help increase the effectiveness of your campaign.
If done properly, this strategy can greatly increase your leads. If done incorrectly, campaign tracking can feed you with useless information that can be a headache to filter through or it can just give you an error and provide you with nothing at all.
The key is to pay attention to the details and don’t rush into sending out the URLs. Most of the mistakes can be avoided by double-checking your work. The time and effort you put into setting up tracking for your campaign are always worth it if done right.
There are a few common problems that you can come across when setting up tracking for your marketing campaign. In this article, we’ll go over what these challenges are and how you can overcome them and get started on accurate tracking.
1. Failing to Shorten Long, Messy URLs
One of the reasons you might want to avoid having a long URL for your tracking is that it increases the chances of an error when reporting back the data. Most tracking links are case-sensitive and require the exact match to be properly tracked.
Aside from that, a long URL tends to look less professional and often underperforms compared to URLs that have been shortened. The reason this is the case can be as simple as the fact that sorter URLs are easier to read and tend to be trusted more.
To the untrained eye, a never-ending string of strange characters doesn’t look like a legitimate website. Using short clean lines tends to get more clinks.
Luckily you don’t have to limit your parameters to get a shorter link. There are several websites that can provide you with shorter URLs and some that will even allow you to customize the URL to look even more professional.
They also help minimize your chances of errors in your reporting due to inconsistencies.
2. Failing to Use the Campaign Parameter Effectively
When creating campaign parameters you need to be as specific as possible. This will allow you to be able to analyze your marketing efforts better. You will be able to compare it with other campaigns by the specific business objective you’re trying to achieve.
Instead of using the generic parameters that could be too vague later on, provide details that we can recall which campaign we were dealing with when we assessing the data. If you’re too general then you could be missing out on key metrics that affect your data.
Being consistent and detailed is the best strategy when creating a strategy for tracking your campaigns. It can mean the difference between a ton of helpful data or a bunch of useless errors.
2. Confusing Medium and Source Parameters
When creating a Parameter it’s important not to mix these two up. They may seem like the same thing at first, but it can be vital to know the difference.
The source is where the visitor came from to get to your website. It’s more specific than the medium parameter. Usually, this is the website that the tracked link is posted on.
The medium Parameter is how the visitor came to your website. This category is more general than the source. There are a variety of options when it comes to coming the medium, but there are only specific mediums you can choose from. If you create a medium that is not supported then you will receive errors.
It’s important to always use both options when creating parameters. Only using one or the other is not optimizing your data tracking for your campaigns. Lossing data when tracking your campaign will prevent you from achieving your desired metrics.
4. A Lack of Consistency Regarding Spelling, Capitalization, and Naming Conventions
Failing to remain consistent throughout the entire process will always result in errors when tracking. “Email” and “email” are not considered the same word when searching as far as parameters.
This is a common issue that is often overlooked. It can be frustrating to try and figure out where you mistyped a name or if you forgot to capitalize something. Be sure to look over everything with attention to detail.
You don’t want to rush the process of creating tracking links only to have zero data collected because you were off by a number or letter. Take the time so you don’t have to worry about getting errors in the reporting.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of why you are having these tracking issues and where you can look towards in order to solve them. Luckily there is an almost infinite source of information on the internet if you come across something that wasn’t mentioned in this article.
These are just some of the most common challenges that you can come across when setting up the tracking for your campaign. As long as you’re consistent and clear when using tracking data, you should be avoiding most of the mistakes that marketers are making.
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