Tracking online campaign advertising or broader campaign marketing provides better insight where traffic is coming from as well as better understanding of user journeys or user behaviour throughtout a website. This knowledge can be used to further optimize both an ad campaign, site pages or goal areas within a website.

1. Is a web analytics tool already configured to the site to measure campaign performance?

• A configuration for tracking may have already been set up (typically, within the a web analytics solution) where reporting is readily available
  • It's possible the person requesting the tracking might not have known existing tracking was already in place
• If tracking does exist...
  
  • Check whether it can be extended to suit the current situation
  • The client would need to explain the logic for any custom set-up

2. Next step is to find out the type of campaigns that would be running, and where campaign respondents would be pushed to.

Type of campaign (online and offline)...

• Online: Includes a url link that a person would click to arrive at the website.
• Offline: a web address displayed on an ad that you cannot click and would need to type into a browser. For example, a traditional print or broadcast ad.

Online:

• Banner links (both off-site or on-site)
• Affiliate links
• Email links
• Pay Per Click Search - cpc links
• etc.

The url string clicked to arrive at the site contains various information that a web analytics solution or custom tracking script can obtain. Key information would include referral site (where the click or visitor originated from) and any custom parameters that you would like to include in the url string. The parameter is a unique code that relates to the campaign, and contains either text, numbers or both. An example of a parameter within a url string would be http://www.mysite.com/?source=12345678

Offline:
A person that responds to an offline ad would need to type in the url address to arrive at the site. This type of visitor would be recognized by a web analytics solution as direct traffic. Unless they were to type a landing page that is directly related to a campaign, for example, ww.mysite.com/campaign.html. You when then need to create several purpose pages or better one page with a small script that would differentiate between offline channels. The script could register a cookie that would be recognized and further tracked by the web analyics solution.

The drawback of offline campaign tracking is the differentiation between media channels and/or creative by urls. People responding to a campaign might prefer a url that is easy to remember, for example, a short url that includes nothing more than the site domain. Long urls could be typed into browsers incorrectly.

Where campaign respondents are being pushed to...
Sounds obvious but the call to action for a campaign would need to be a web address. Respondents must be pushed to the website where behaviour can be tracked.

3. Tracking campaigns from a publisher site to your website

A typical drill down of information from the publisher site would include the following,

• Publisher site
  • Section or channel
    • Page
      • Position on page
        • Ad size
        • format: for example a link, static ad or rich media, etc.
        • Creative/ copy/ message/ offer

The publisher site or an ad serving tool could provide all this information with stats for impressions and click-thrus but good practice would be to include as much info as a parameter within the url link. As the tracked campaign arrives at the site it can be detected in various ways. Common methods would include,

• Server logs
• A web analtyics solution
• Custom scripts

If the client is using a web analytics solution like WebTrends or Omniture Site Catalyst, all this information may be loaded into the web analytics solution then easily output a parameter code for inclusion into the url. Or, you could use a custom look up table/ document to translate the parameter IDs.

Using a web analytics solution tracking works by detecting the tracked parameter within the url then registering a cookie for continued tracking throughout the site. Depending on the solution, you may need to place additional tracking tags on site pages (for example, if you are tracking conversion funnels, path or scenario analysis). You can then set up custom reports within the web analytics solution to track various KPI performance for user journey's throughout the site.

Example of website KPIs (Key performance indicators)

4. Setting up tracking in WebTrends

Step 1 URL tagging
The WebTrends campaign parameter id is wt.mc_id

• http://www.domain.com/product.htm?wt.mc_id=mycampaignid
• To distinguish between paid and natural search, include the Wt.srch=1 parameter in the url from the referring search engine of all paid searches

Step 2 page tagging
With the wt.mc_id parameter included in the click through url and if using either WebTrends SDC or OnDemand... WebTrends automatically creates a cookie with the wt.mc_id parameter and the visitor campaign is automatically tracked throughout the site

If you don't place wt.mc_id parameter in the click through url then you place the wt.mc_id parameter in the meta tags (of the landing page where you click through to) for example a purpose campaign landing page, and a cookie is created. This would that mean having purpose landing pages for emails/ banners/ affiliates/ etc? So a parameter in the url would be more efficient.

Additional page tagging

• OnDemand or SDC - add it to the page META tags
• Software log files - add it to the page url

Conversions (purchases)

• click throughs wt.mc_id
  • orders/ revenue

Emails.... wt.mc_ev for email opens

Campaign drill-down configuration
Complete the WebTrends csv file template with information about your campaign then upload it to webtrends

• campaign (may include country)
  • source (website- banner/ email etc.)
    • creative/ message/ offer
      • creative type or size (sky, horizontal, overlay, underlay, video, etc.)
        • placement on page
          • page/ section of site

5. Campaign measurement

Basic measurement

• Impressions (this would occur outside of your site, i.e. from a publisher website. Either the publisher would provide impression, click-thru, click-through rate reports, or you might use an ad serving tool like Eyeblaster that would provide advanced or additional  pre-tracking reporting)

• Source traffic (referral)
• Click-through (compare how many people clicked on email/ search/ banner etc.)
• Click-through rate % (the ratio of clicks to ad impressions served)
• Campaign visitors (avg visits - daily/ weekly/ monthly/ qtrly/ yearly)
• Avg page views (popular pages)
• Creative elements (includes A/B testing)
  • which offers/ creative had the most click-throughs or conversions
  • Plus other granular attributes

Conversions (the completion of any type of goal or action)

• Conversion rate % 
  • I.e. registrations, purchases, etc., a critical measurement!
• Purchases
  • Number of orders
  • Avg revenue per order
    • WebTrends: Additional information such as orders/ revenue would need parameters on the page

Path analysis
Taking a look at how visitors respond to campaigns by studying their journey patterns

• Entry paths
• Exist paths 

Scenario analysis
Taking a closer look at the specific page sequences that result in campaign conversions. Campaign scenarios would need to be created to study how well people are completing predetermined sequences. For example,

• Purchases
• Registrations
• Shopping carts

Campaign drill-down reporting

• Campaign
  • Email
  • Advertising partner (affiliate, banner, etc.)
  • Search
    • new/ returning visitors
      • creative/ offer
        • visits
        • page views
        • click throughs
        • orders
        • revenue
        • avg revenue per order

Campaign metrics worksheet