How-To Guide to Google Analytics Campaign Tracking

Guide to Google Analytics Campaign Tracking

Using Google Analytics to track your marketing campaigns is an awesome way to collect data that you can use to grow your business. The best thing is, once you learn how Google Analytics campaigns work, you’ll be able to set them up easily and quickly.

In this article, we’ll tell you how to set up and track your Google Analytics campaigns using UTM parameters, plus how to find your data in Google Analytics.

What Google Analytics Campaigns Can Track

While Google Analytics can track a lot of things out of the box, there are some that it can’t track. Luckily, you can set up campaign tracking for a lot of those bits of data you wouldn’t get otherwise.

Use campaigns to track:

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  • Visits from email: Track which email sent traffic, how much it sent, and what those visitors looked at on your website.
  • Visits from PDFs and other documents: Have files for download on your website with links in them? Add UTM parameters to track them with Google Analytics campaigns.
  • Social media visits: While Google Analytics can track social media without using UTM parameters, you can use parameters to lump your social traffic into specific campaigns with other sources, track what day or time you post on, or traffic from social media ads, for example.
  • Visits you want to lump together: Let’s say you’re going to run a giveaway, and you’re going to advertise it through email and social media. Give all those visits the same campaign parameter to vies them all in once place. That way, you’ll quickly see which channel worked best for that specific campaign.

What Are UTM Parameters?

UTM parameters are little bits of code that you put on the end of the URL you want to track. Then, Google Analytics recognizes those parameters and sorts that traffic into its Campaigns report in Universal Analytics. In Google Analytics 4, it’ll just be mixed in with your other sources in your Traffic Acquisition report, but you’ll still see which campaigns brought in traffic.

There are 5 parameters you can use to describe your campaign and set it apart from your other traffic sources. They are:

  1. Campaign Source: The source of your traffic, such as newsletter, Instagram, or offline
  2. Campaign Medium: The medium you’re using to marketing your campaign, such as email, social, or pdf
  3. Campaign Name: The name you want to give your campaign, such as winter_promo, ipad_giveaway, or ebook_download
  4. Campaign Term: If you’re running a paid campaign, enter the term or keyword you’re targeting here

How to Track Campaigns in Google Analytics

Intimidated? Don’t be! With ExactMetrics, you can use our simple URL Builder tool to easily create the URLs you use in your campaigns.

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With ExactMetrics, all your most important metrics are right there in your WordPress dashboard. So, to get access to the URL Builder tool we’ll be using next, get started with ExactMetrics now!

Once you have ExactMetrics installed and connected to Google Analytics, navigate to ExactMetrics » Tools to find the URL Builder.

Then, simply fill in each field with a word or phrase that makes sense to your campaign, then the tool will give you the URL to use in your posts or email or whatever you’re putting your links in.

When you’ve filled in all the fields, the box at the bottom will give you your URL:

copy-custom-url-tracking-lead-source

So in the above example, you’d use that URL in your Facebook post to track that specific traffic from that specific post in Google Analytics.

How to Find Campaign Data in Google Analytics

Where you find your campaign data will differ depending on whether you’re using Universal Analytics or Google Analytics 4. Let’s take a look at both.

In Universal Analytics, head to the Acquisition » Campaigns » All Campaigns report. Here, you’ll get a list of your campaigns. Click into one to see it broken down by Source / Medium.

UA Campaigns Report

In Google Analytics 4, you’ll find the data under Acquisition » Traffic Acquisition. Once there, click on the Session default channel grouping dropdown:

Session Grouping Dropdown

From the dropdown, choose Session campaign:

Session Campaign in GA4

Now, you’ll see your traffic broken down by campaign:

GA4 Campaigns Report

That’s it for this tutorial!

Now that you’re tracking campaigns, do you want to know how to track a bunch of different conversions? Check out our Ultimate Guide to Conversion Tracking in WordPress.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to see all the latest Google Analytics tutorials.

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