Web Tracking is a powerful tool that enables your organization to collect data about visits to and activity on your website. You can track, for example:
- the number of users (i.e., "visitors") and what percentage are new versus returning,
- which pages of your website were visited (called "page views"), and
- user interactions (such as watching videos, making purchases, and downloading content).
Additionally, web tracking allows you to build Target Groups that you can then use for more focused mailings and campaigns based on the website activity data that you've collected.
NOTE: Web Tracking is very similar to Google Analytics. If you're already using Google Analytics, the Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional (Thrive Marketing Professional) web-tracking code will not conflict with it.
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What is the goal?
The goal is to use website visits and activities to create groups of users. These groups can be targeted in mailings and campaigns so that they are more focused to the audiences to which they're relevant and more likely to get results.
EXAMPLE: You could send a mailing about bicycling to a group of visitors who played a video about exercise and nutrition, knowing that they probably have some interest in bicycling based on having watched that exercise and nutrition video.
Another benefit of having these groups is that they can be used as filters to refine the results of mailing-activity reports.
What can I track?
You can track three types of website activities:
- Page Views - Visits to individual pages and visit duration. See Web Tracking - Users.
- Page Interactions - Interactions on your website (e.g., filling out forms, playing videos, downloads, etc.). See Web Tracking - Interactions.
- Online Purchases - E-commerce and product transactions (membership renewals, certification purchases, donations, store purchases). See Web Tracking - Purchases.
NOTE: All of your web visitors will be tracked. Some of your users will be Anonymous and others will be Known. A Known User is someone whose web activity you can connect to a subscriber record in Thrive Marketing Professional. Thrive Marketing Professional allows you to target emails to Known Users based on the pages they visit or their online interactions.
How does it work?
You will be provided JavaScript code to insert on your website. The initial code is placed in a header or footer on your website so that all page visits and durations are tracked.
When a user clicks a hyperlink with web tracking enabled, a first-class cookie is stored in their web browser. This cookie then communicates with Thrive Marketing Professional to link the web activity back to the user's record in the system. Subsequent visits to your website, directly and via a hyperlink in an Thrive Marketing Professional mailing, will track and report that user's activity.
Ultimately, all of your known web visitors can be tracked. A "known" User is someone whose web activity you can connect to their record in the system. Thrive Marketing Professional allows you to target emails to Users based on the pages they visit or their online interactions.
With all the right pieces in place, the marketing attribution puzzle can be assembled so you understand your return on investment (called ROI) and the experience you're creating for your constituents.
How to set up web tracking
- Navigate to Admin > Set Up > Web Tracking.
- Click Add New Domain to enter the details (domain name, IP addresses to ignore, and parameters to retain) of the website that you would like to track.
- Click Add Domain.
NOTE: If a domain has been set up and information has been collected, that information persists in Thrive Marketing Professional, even if the domain is later removed. Thrive Marketing Professional does not delete the already-collected data.
- Click View Instructions to view a custom page that provides all of the information that you need to submit to your web developers.
- After Web Tracking has been set up in your account, you can click Web Tracking in the left navigation to access the Web Tracking Report page to view the details for all of the sessions on your website.
Thrive Marketing Professional Web Tracking is very similar to Google Analytics. If you're already using Google Analytics, the Web Tracking code will not conflict with it. Now, you will have all that data available to build target groups and to feed campaigns based on how your subscribers interact with your website.
Get started with web tracking
Now that you have a better understanding of Web Tracking and how to use it, below are links to articles that'll help you get started with Web Tracking.