Tracking Analytics for Online and Offline Campaigns

Studies have shown that online retailing will grow over the years and a large percentage of the online retailers will be profitable regardless of the retail category. Thus, the emergence of the web as an integrated business channel has increased the significance of Digital Analytics and Tracking.

Through the tools of Marketing Technology, we can increase the online business revenue. It is useful for all types of websites, especially e-commerce sites where transaction or performance is immediately reflected in the analytics tools.

It is useful for all types of websites, especially d-commerce sites where the goal of the site is to help a customer find product and complete their shopping while providing an awesome experience.

Companies that have an online business and offline business can use marketing technology tools to integrate both types of business. 

Web Analytics applications can also help companies to measure their results of their traditional print advertising campaigns, too.

It does not make sense to spend money on offline advertising without knowing the percentage of return we get as a result of our advertisement campaigns.

For all those who were worried about how to track your offline business campaigns, I would say do your planning for tracking upfront.  There are various analytics techniques to measure the effectiveness of the impact and you should certainly explore the best option for your business.

Taking one example, integrating online and offline business is tracking your offline campaigns through link tagging.

You can measure the offline advertising success exactly the same way as you measure online advertising success through this method. For this, you have to tag the links in your offline ads with the campaign variables used by your web analytics tool.

One way that has been done to track is by using a friendly URL like this:

zoommetrix.com/promo.

A user who enters that address in the bar will then get redirected to a page with campaign parameter so that analytics tool can track the traffic and it’s conversion online.

The landing page URL could look like:

zoommetrix.com/landing-page?utm_source=poster&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=2015-summer-campaign

The best practice is to create a custom URL or a custom landing page. It will work better than attaching the campaign variables to the URL that you send to a page that is already getting a mix of traffic from various sources.

When a customer looks for the advertised custom URL or custom landing page, then you should do a page redirect. It will help in tracking the variables. This process helps you to tag your offline campaigns like your online campaigns. In the same web analytics report now, you will be able to view the traffic and conversion for both of your online and offline campaigns.

An important thing to note here is that if you publicize your custom URL in other places, then you will end up in driving the traffic that was not generated from your offline campaign. This will naturally reduce the results you want to get.

Web analytics reports help you to know whether your campaign has worked out or not. It will help you to analyze the major pitfalls and will give you a clear idea of how to improve your business, both offline and online.

The greatest advantage here is that the steps taken by you will be entirely based on practical data and not mere guesswork.

Custom URLs are also known as vanity URLs or friendly URLs. They are catchy versions of the old, long, boring URL, which makes it easy for the customers to remember. It is the user-friendly version. You can make use of the help of Google URL builder or bit.ly to set up such URLs.

It is useful when you have specific offers for your visitors. Unique URLs will lead to the specific landing page that has the offer.

From the market level view of your Web Analytics reporting, you can infer whether your particular ad is affecting a particular market. It means that your products are better selling in those markets if they have a high correlation of website metrics. You can improve your business in other less performing markets by changing your marketing strategy according to your web analytics report.

It is also a best practice to run an ad words campaign alongside with your offline campaigns in order to capture the customers who search online in reference to your offline ad.  Include keywords in your ad words campaign like the themes or phrases used in your offline ad. This will definitely increase ways to integrate and promote your site through offline channels.

I hope this give you a sense that you have possible ways to help you understand if your offline campaign is getting any response or not.  And this approach may not be perfect, but it is certainly something you should try and measure.