Google Analytics is a tool that many organizations use to track their web visitors. You can track hyperlinks in a Marketing Automation Professional (MA Professional) mailing with Google Analytics, helping you to better understand your audience. Let's take a high-level look at how Google Analytics works with MD2.
NOTE: Make sure to coordinate with your web tracking resources when you set up domain information. The information flows from MA Professional to Google Analytics, and you want everyone involved to make sure they know what to expect.
Setting Up Domains
To work with Google Analytics, you'll need to add the domains that you want to track. Any added domains are appended with the necessary Google Analytics tracking codes. Essentially, by adding domains, you are telling MA Professional to add the tracking codes so that you can gather data.
- Navigate to Admin > Setup > Google Analytics to register your domain(s).
- If this is your first time setting up Google Analytics in MA Professional, you won't have any records available in the table. Click Add Domain to enter the details for a new domain.
- In the Add Domain window, enter the following information (required fields have an asterisk):
- Domain - The URL that you wish to track.
- Source - The click source or the origin of your web traffic (e.g., "google").
- Medium - The category for the source (e.g., "organic" searches, paid searches, web referrals, etc.).
- Name - Keywords used to discover a site.
- Term - Paid keywords used to discover a site.
- Content - Information used for A/B Testing and Content-Specific Ads.
- When complete, click Ok. The information saves and is ready for Google Analytics use.
- If necessary, click Add Another Domain to add any additional domains.
Source and Medium
The Source and Medium fields are commonly viewed together to create a more granular look at where your web traffic comes from (e.g., "google/organic" or "www.iamap.org/email").
Managing Google Analytics Settings
To access Google Analytics:
- Open a mailing and navigate to Options > Analytics.
By default, analytics for each available domain are enabled.
- To modify a domain's settings, click Change Settings.
The page expands to reveal the domain's settings. You can change:
- Source
- Medium
- Name
- Term
- Content
NOTE: MA Professional only supports Google Analytics fields without spaces. Do not use spaces in the Source, Medium, Name, Term, and Content fields because the text version of the mailing will display the URLs with the corresponding space, which breaks URLs.
- Click Reset to discard any changes and restore the domain to its previous settings.
- To disable the domain, check the Do not track for this mailing box.
- Click Done to save any changes.
Other Details
Any domains you add enable MA Professional to automatically add the Google Analytics tracking fields at the end of the hyperlink in a mailing or template. The values entered with the domain are used as account-level defaults for all mailing hyperlinks for the listed domains.
For tracking to occur, the domain must be an exact match in the mailing. This is particularly important when using sub-domains. If the domain to be tracked is entered using the www.domain.ext format, this supports hyperlinks in the http://www.domain.ext, https://www.domain.ext, or www.domain.ext formats.
NOTE: Keep in mind that www.domain.ext is not necessarily the same as domain.ext. You must use the appropriate URL for your website.