What Is A Tracking Parameter?

A tracking parameter is information appended to a URL that provides additional data about the visitor in your preferred web analytics tool. For example, here’s a tagged landing page for a Yahoo Search Marketing campaign.

Original URL:
www.xyz.com

Tagged URL:
www.xyz.com/?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=blue%2Bwidget &utm_content=warranty&utm_campaign=widget%2Bcolors

What does this string of data mean?

Campaign Source (utm_source):

In the example the visitor source is from Yahoo. This parameter is supposed to distinguish different sources from the same channel. For paid search it might be Google, Yahoo & Adcenter. A newsletter might separate sources by segment (b2b vs consumer) or websites where you’ve placed the same banner ad.

Campaign Medium (utm_medium):

In the example the visitor arrived from a Yahoo paid search ad (cpc). This parameter designates channels, such as email, banner, blog, affiliates, etc.

Campaign Term (utm_term):

In the example Blue Widget is the keyword being bid on in Yahoo Search Marketing, not to be confused with the visitors actual search query.

Campaign Content (utm_content):

In the example, warranty is a reference to the specific text ad the visitor clicked to arrive at the site. It could also be set to adgroup if you’re not looking for that level of granularity in your pay per click campaign. For an email, you could use this parameter to distinguish the performance of individual links in the message.

Campaign Name (utm_campaign):

In the example, Widget Colors is the campaign that contains the warranty text ad and keyword blue widget. A campaign is the only parameter that can be common among different sources and mediums. A sale on blue widgets might be promoted in an email, a dedicated pay per click campaign, and by your affiliates. You’d then be able to view the aggregate performance of the campaign under the Google Analytics Traffic sources tab.

While I’ve listed all the campaign variables here as a demonstration, you don’t have to use them all when tagging your links. At a minimum you can use Source and Medium to track your campaigns. To prevent typing errors, and quickly build out tagged links for your campaigns you can make use of Google URL Builder.

Issues With Tracking Parameters

Capitalization

When naming sources and mediums always use the same letter casing. If you tag two newsletters with mediums “email” and “Email” these will show up as two separate mediums in analytics. Choose a letter case and stick with it for sources and mediums.

Length

You probably noticed that adding tracking tags to a URL makes it really long, and ugly to look at. This poses a potential click through problem for plain text emails, or messages on Twitter with the 140 character limit. A way around this is to use one of the many URL shortening services.

Duplicate Content

Google views the original URL, and tagged URL as separate pieces of content. So when you use tracking parameters extensively, and people start linking to both URLS it dilutes the power of your link equity and search engine rankings. To avoid this issue change your query parameter from a question mark (?) to a hash tag (#). However, this will require modifying your Google Analytics tracking tag to pick up the hash tags.

301 Redirects

A 301 redirect of your landing page will strip all your tracking parameters. To prevent this from occurring the URL should point to the final destination page after the redirect. Or the server will have to be modified to pass tracking parameters.

Photo credit The Cosmic Cat

The foot dragging is understandable. It’s shockingly hard to accept that your gut instinct, honed by years of experience, is about as accurate at predicting outcomes as the shake of a magic eight ball. Particularly when pride, and your job is on the line it may be tempting to deny and pass on blame. Hopefully though, you’ll recognize the transparency of results from online marketing is an opportunity to legitimize marketing’s role in many companies. Instead of being known for producing flashy brochures, and gobbley gook copy writing, optimized online efforts can turn marketing into a department recognized for creating top line revenue and profits.

If you think your gut is trustworthy, check out Anne Holland’s Which Test Won? Each week she’ll run a new conversion optimization test for opt in forms, landing pages and other on page variables. It’s a great learning opportunity, and provides a valuable lesson that winning results do not always match up with established best practices. Here’s to continually testing your assumptions!

Photo credit helgasms

However, increased spend in paid search is increased competition, driving up the costs of leads and sales. This trend will put a serious damper on ROI without constant attention from a seasoned search marketer managing a ppc campaign. Setting and forgetting is not a ppc strategy that generates results.

One way to beat rising costs is to boost your ppc campaign conversions.

Optimizing For Conversions

1) Keyword Insertion

Put yourself in a searchers shoes. If you’re searching for “red gift boxes,” which ad would you more likely click?

The winner is the ad that uses the search term in the ad title and copy. In ppc advertising, specificity converts. Also notice the keyword search term is bolded to draw attention. Not only will the first ad benefit from a high click through rate, they’ll also bid less per click. This is because Google knows they’ll make more from an ad with $2 bid, and 5% click through than another ad with a $5 bid and 1% click through.

2) Differentiation

Quantitative statements are crucial to increasing click through rates for ppc ads. Instead of a generic statement like “many red gift boxes” the first ad sets expectations by stating there are “Red Gift Boxes in 8 sizes.” Once again, it’s important to be specific in your ad copy.

3) Destination URL’s

Keyword insertion in the display url of a ppc ad is another way to increase relevance for the searcher, to say I have what you’re looking for. This could be accomplished with a subdomain, or trailing url that redirects to the landing page.

4) Value Propositions

You need to have the right promise that motivates people to buy. To get people to click you should introduce the value proposition in your ad copy, and follow through with those same statements on the landing page.

While Jam Paper does a good job of setting expectations in their ad copy with the No Minimum Order and Same Day Shipping guarantees, these are absent on their landing page. This disconnect could be causing searchers to abandon the landing page.

5) Set Expectations & Follow Through

In some respects the Jam Paper landing page delivers on the ppc ad promise. The landing page shows only red gift boxes, it’s not a generic category page for various colored gift boxes. Another important factor, both the ad title, and page heading contain the dynamically inserted keyword. This combination increases relevance between the ad and page, increasing the chances that the searcher will convert.

However, as I noted previously the value propositions in the ad are conspicuously absent on the landing page. What’s happening is an interruption of the scent trail, which leaves the searchers stranded. At the very least, the Jam Paper landing page should include above the fold text or graphics that reinforce their value propositions that appear in the ppc ad.

Hopefully I’ve illustrated an important idea in this post – that all these techniques are inter-related. Each is crucial, and supports the others in creating high converting ppc ads and landing pages.

Photo credit epublicist

For my lists, I operated under the assumption that permission is not optional – You must ask. It’s considered a best practice approach.

However, despite my advice, the lure of short term incentives proved too enticing for one of the other company’s. The company manager told me about his brilliant idea to take the CC’d email addresses in messages received from customers, and partners and add these to the house list. Since their messages include opt-out links, and comply with other Can Spam rules they’re not breaking any law.

Naturally, they get opt outs with each send. They haven’t been blacklisted. And they do get leads. I’ve made them aware of the risks involved with their actions, and they’ve made an informed choice. If you plan plan on skirting email best practices, here’s something you should be aware of…

You can comply with Can Spam, but still be perceived as a spammer by recipients.

While you can inflate a list with email addresses, you can’t buy or steal subscriber engagement. What problems will arise from communications that are not opt in?

● Depressed response rates. People will ignore your messages leading to low open rates, click-throughs, and a high opt-out rate leading to shrinking list syndrome.

● Decreased deliverability. People will become trigger happy with the spam button, leading to your emails being blacklisted by ISP’s. If this happens, you’ll be more likely to get an even number of socks from the wash than your emails into in boxes.

● Loss of trust & damaged brand credibility. Being accused of spam will damage your reputation beyond deliverability. People are more likely to point out spamming on blogs, and online reviews which could show up in search engine results.

What do you think it will take for companies to realize that an opt-in, engaged subscriber list is more profitable than email addresses obtained through questionable means?

Photo credit Cobalt123

Breakdown Of Social Sharing By AddToAny

I agree, the growing trend is for people to continue sharing more content on social networks, yet you have to view these statistics with some skepticism, and consider how sharing should fit into your business.

1) AddToAny is only one of many social sharing service widgets available. Their results are likely not representative. For instance, this does not account for the many people who copy and paste urls when sharing.

2) Important to Marketers. This study doesn’t break down the type of information being shared. There’s a high probability that people are sharing news about Michael Jackson’s death, or Youtube videos of dogs doing back flips on Facebook, and not your case studies and blog posts. Whereas you’re likely to find more of the latter being shared on LinkedIn and Twitter.

How content is shared is ultimately influenced by your audience and the type of content.

Just for comparison, my last employer had much different stats compared to AddToAny’s report. Sharing via email, took place 86% of the time, with Facebook and Twitter rounding out the top 3. Our e-commerce business catered to older, small business owners with most email sharing being products, whereas our blog content received the majority of social media network shares.

Remember, people want to share content on their own terms, so you should provide different options. But just because Facebook is popular, doesn’t mean it will be the preferred method in how people would like to share your content.

With email competition increasing, it’s time to rethink your tactics. Those marketers who optimize their email strategies to create an engaged audience, and relevant communications can increase their net profits on average 18 times more than broadcast mailings.

The Evolution Of Email Marketing

1) Batch & Blast

This is email marketing in it’s infancy. Everyone gets the same message about your new beach ball, including Sally, who lives in the Nevada desert, and has a phobia of water. As your list grows it’ll get harder to keep messages relevant, which will likely be reflected in a higher than average unsubscribe rate.

2) Profile Driven

In this stage messages are segmented based on information subscribers provided when they signed up, or by demographic information in your customer relationship software. An example might include sorting your business customers by sic code, and sending off a Valentines themed email offer just for Jewelers.

3) Persona Driven

It’s time to kick relevancy up a notch. In this phase persona’s are developed for your customer segments, describing who they are, and answering questions about their behavior. For instance, what keeps these Jewelers awake at night? Finding new customers to grow their businesses. If that’s the case, that Valentines day email might include tips for marketing their business on the holiday along with one of your products that will help.

4) Behavior Driven

Customers actions are the best predictors of future behavior. In these scenario it’s important to document normal customer behavior, and set set up trip wires for customers who deviate from the norm. For example, your data may show that the Jewelers segment on average, repeat purchasing your product every 60 days. So at 60 days you mail out a discount offer to customers who haven’t purchased again by this point. Now you’re beginning to manage customer defection.

5) Predictive Messages

Predictive messaging also relies on behavior while also combining other inputs like personas and demographic information to further segment customers. Instead of blanketing all Jewelers at 60 days with a discount message, you might find accounts with higher order sizes tend to space their orders out over longer periods. So instead you send a discount offer to these different customers at 60 and 90 days. At this point you’re not just managing, but maximizing your email program for maximum profit.

How Evolved In Your Email Program?

Companies fall all across the email marketing evolutionary spectrum. Level of sophistication depends on a lot of factors, like technological aptitude, industry, etc. This post illustrates the power of one-to-one messages, and that the potential for exponentially increasing profits are worth the time and financial commitment to improving your email marketing.

Despite the wholesale move to join the online word of mouth cacophony, many marketers are still approaching social media from a flawed mindset. Thinking in terms of exposure, and reach they seek out big names like getting featured on Tech Crunch,  End Gadget or being reviewed by high profile bloggers like Pim Techamuanvivit and Susie Lau.

While I’d be ecstatic to have my product receive a glowing mention from a rock star in my specific niche, it’s not something I strive for with a single minded focus, and neither should you. A-list bloggers are showered with gifts, and products from marketers hoping for a review. Odds are you won’t be one of them. The fact is, I’d rather reach 500 low and medium level influencers in my niche than 0 stars.

The reality of plugging into word of mouth in the physical world, and on the web is recognizing it’s not the number of connections that matter, but how enthusiastic a person is toward a product or service. People who have a genuine interest possess the greatest influence, fortunately social media makes it easy to find them.

Photo credit inju

When running a small business it’s easy to be seduced by the siren song of percentages. Many owners concern themselves with percentages of COGS and gross profit margin, basing important merchandising decisions on rules of thumb. Often they’re businesses are dashed on the rocks of bankruptcy, all because they neglected the more important dollar amount of gross-profit margin.

The difference between percentages and hard dollars is not an academic argument. It could very well mean the difference between profitabilty and financial insolvency. Consider the following scenario:

A small business owner buys widget X at $1 and sell it for $4.

• markup = $4/$1 = 4X
• gross profit = $4 - $1 =$3
• gross-profit margin = $3/$4 = 75%

Now, that same business person see’s widget X with extra features and trapping being sold at $4 from their wholesaler. Most owners would mentally calculate that they’d have to sell the product at $16 (4X markup). While the extra features make the widget X greatly improved, they know no sober will pay that money, so they don’t stock improved widget X.

Why didn’t they think about selling it for $8?

• markup = $8 / $4 = 2 X
• gross profit = $8 - $4 = $4
• gross-profit margin = $4 / $8 = 50%

For the same amount of effort a $4 gross profit and better than $3. Yet many small businesses don’t see it that way.

They stick to old rules of thumb, thinking that a 2X markup is worse than 4X, and keep selling products that net them a lower gross profit. They’ve been seduced by the sirens song.

Photo credit Daniel Y. Go

Smartphones are enabling people to shop smarter. Price comparison is instant with app’s on the iPhone and G1 allowing consumers to find deals, and sometimes negotiate a better offer. In most cases, retailers have been completely blind sided by the growing mobile bar code scanning trend.

Lately, I’ve been experiencing in increasing frequency mobiles impact on offline shopping behaviors.

Just the other month I had a shopper walk into the ski shop asking if we carried the Salomon Xwing 10. We didn’t have it, and I suggested taking a look at similar skis, but confessed I wasn’t too familiar with the particular ski he wanted. That’s when he whipped out his Moto phone and brought up the specs for the ski.

Knowing what he was looking for, I showed him a couple other skis close to the Salomon. Next he did something totally cool and unexpected, he googled the reviews for the skis and made a decision.

Talk about putting the consumer in the drivers seat!

For many retailers, I bet this type of customer control in the buying process has them quaking. But in reality it’s a good thing. You should stand by your prices, and if you can’t be the lowest then you’d better be competing on added value. Remember, people are still willing to pay a premium for service.

How To Address The Trend

I like how Wegmans is tackling an increasingly price conscious consumer with their comparison shopping signs.

Savvy retailers might take this a step further and encourage people to make price comparisons on the floor. One way to accomplish this is to place UPC codes in a more prominent position. Or perhaps borrow a strategy from Progressives playbook, and create a mobile friendly site that compares prices between you and the competition.

Of one thing I’m certain, mobile price comparisons will continue to grow, and if you’re a retailer, you don’t want to miss this opportunity.

I bet you can think of some creative ways retailers can benefit from the mobile upc price comparison trend, and would love to hear your input in the comments section.

Photo credit appleseed

There’s a high probability this is happening with your Yahoo Mail recipients. For some time Yahoo has been inserting Shortcuts into email with links to maps, Wikipedia and other contextually relevant sites. This is great for users, but hell for marketers. If you include a product title in the message there’s a good chance Yahoo will link it to an ecommerce site like Amazon.

Is There A Solution To This Problem?

The only way around this is to test your email in Yahoo Mail to find the shortcut links, and make those direct links back to your site to prevent the shortcuts from being added to the campaign.