Oct 26, 2012: Examples of how Google Analytics can be used to track various marketing campaigns.

1. Pub 355: Beyond Fans and Followers
Measuring Online Marketing Campaigns
Presented October 26, 2012

2. Not everything that counts can be measured.
Not everything that can be measured counts.
Albert Einstein
We live in a data-driven time. I can go to the gym in the morning and the exercise bike will
benchmark my workout. It will tell me how many other people did this workout. It will
compare my time on the bike today to my time on the bike yesterday.
I feel like I’m meant to do something with this data. But I don’t know what it is.
I feel the same way when I’m tracking my online marketing activities. There is so much data
that I can collect, but I don’t know what to do with it. I feel awash in data but not meaningful
information.
I’m going to share with you my insights into Metrics That Make Money.
We will cover 3 main things:
What you need to measure and why
How to make Google Analytics make sense
And what useful intelligence you can glean from SMM

3. There are 2 things we like to measure:
Things that lead to sales
Sales

4. Sales
Google Analytics makes it easy to track sales. You just have to know how to create a goal
funnel.
What’s a Goal Funnel?
A funnel represents the path that you expect visitors to take on their way to converting to a
goal.
It’s a defined set of pages or steps.
I view my cart. I click go to checkout. I complete my order.
A Goal Funnel shows the funnel conversion rate, as well as the points along the path where
the visitor abandons the task.
2 Things:
1. Know conversion rate so you can do some forecasting
2. Understand abandonment and what needs to be optimized
Reason it’s important for the non-ecommerce folks is
1. You can set up goal tracking for any non-financial conversion too like downloads, contest
entries, subscriptions.
Also, if you are selling online through other retailers, they have this data. They may not want
to share, but it is the info you want.
You want to see the number of impressions being served on your product pages and what
areas of the site convert, plus where people abandon the task.
1. So you can make forecasts and

5. Things that lead to sales
Twitter Followers Customer Feedback
RTs
Facebook Fans
Email Opens
Website Visitors
Press Mentions
Sales
Herding cats.
Let’s call “Things that lead to sales”: our micro actions. These are the precursors to a sale.
Things that have a non-financial impact but help us understand what influences a purchase.
(website visitors, fans/followers, email subscribers, recos from influential ppl, RTs from
influential ppl, press mentions, email opens, feedback (insights into customers that we didn’t
know before)
Many of these micro actions are about gaining permission to continue marketing to someone.
It’s about earning trust. It’s quid pro quo. This for that. Action and Reaction.
A customer gives you their email address, which you promise not to spam, in return for
valuable, relevant information in your email newsletter. You nurture a relationship with a
blogger, or on twitter or Facebook, in order to solicit feedback, to be recommended, to earn
media mentions, to amplify the conversation you would like to have about your books and
authors.
Again, since these are influencing factors that can lead to a sale, we want to measure this
activity.
Not everything has to be about Revenue, but in my experience, when people ask “did it work”,
they mean “did we make money”.

6. Things that lead to sales
Acquisition Website Visitors, time on site
Number of pageviews, repeat visits,
Activation subscription (email, blog), account
sign-up (profile data), Fan/Follower
Email Opens, Click-throughs,
Retention Repeat visits
Press Mention, RT,
Referral Refers 1+visitors to the site;
Refers 1+ visitors who activate
Sales
Another way to look at those metrics is to group them into the stages of a customer lifecycle.
Acquisition: users come to the site from various channels
Activation: users enjoy 1st visit
Retention: users come back, visit multiple times
Referral: users like product enough to refer others
Revenue: users conduct some monetization behaviour

7. If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will
get you there.
Misquote from Alice in Wonderland
Are we down the rabbit hole yet?
The #1 reason why we don’t know if our online marketing activities are working or not is
because we have not defined our goals.
Without clearly defined goals we have no criteria for evaluating success.
Your goals outline your intent. Your intent informs what you can measure.

8. A simple Contest
• Reach a new audience or reinforce our connection to an existing audience
Goal Lifecycle Action Reaction Metrics
@ / RT / Comment
Response Visitors
Acquire Subscriptions
Reach a new Listen Visit to the site
Activate (email/RSS)
audience Introduce Subscribe Fan/Follower
Retain
Return Account sign-up
Return Visits
@ / RT / Comment
Response Repeat visits
Reinforce our Retain Talk Email opens
Visit the site
connection to Referral Pitch CTR / Goal Funnel
Act Mentions
existing audience Revenue Thank
Refer Referrals
Referrals who convert
Take a contest for example:
We want to run a contest. Why? What’s the goal?
To reach a new audience or reinforce our connection to an existing audience.
Maybe it’s a contest to win a collection of cookbooks.
We’ll do outreach to foodie blogs. Get them to talk about the contest.
People will submit a comment or recipe or do some action as the entry.
So we can measure the macro action = entries.
But there is so much more than entries that will give us insight into the success of this
campaign.
(load graph)

9. Google Analytics: Annotations
Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing
Show annotations: Do you get more traffic to the website during the campaign period? Or
when you engage in a particular action like sending out a newsletter, running an ad. Track
this through annotations.

10. Google Analytics: Title- or Author-Specific Searches
Show: Are there more searches for the title or author you’re promoting?
OpenBook Toronto, for example, whenever there’s a new writer in residence, you can see the
spike in analytics of people coming to the site as a result of greater awareness created by
OpenBook activities.
If you’re actively promoting a title with a mix of online and offline, make this one of your
metrics. Can you increase the number of people coming to your site because they’re heard
about the book and are searching online for it.

11. Google Analytics: Audience Segments
If running a blogger outreach campaign or you’re doing media pitches. You can measure the
referral traffic from those sites, but what you really want to know is which sites are sending
you the most qualified traffic?
It’s about volume + activation
Who is referring you traffic that activates? Remember our Customer Lifecycle...
Time on site
Pageviews
Pages per visit
Repeat visits
Most important are those Goal Funnel. Who completes a desired action?
Subscribes to the newsletter
Downloads a pdf
Signs up for an account and provides profile data
Buys a book
You need Goal Funnels, which we talked about
And Audience segments
Creating a segment lets you run comparison reports against that segment.
(show report then how to set up)

12. A simple campaign to build Reputation
• Use a blog to establish authority / expertise for an author.
• Focus on writing good content first and self-promotion second
Goal Metrics
Pagerank +
Nth position in relation to competitors by a # inbound links from influential blogs
certain date # bookmarks (Delicious)
Google Position in Search Results
Volume of organic traffic per month
# inbound links from influential sites
X% increase of traffic per month
# email subscribers or fan/followers who can
be directed to the site
X$ per month attributable to Segment and Funnel:
referrals from blog Traffic that converts to sales
macro:
Net Profit per Sale. (Revenue - Total Expenses) / transactions
Suggested Max PPC Bid Value (Net Profit per Sale * Conversion Rate)
micro:
number bookmarks, sharethis
RSS subscribers
email subs
comments
retweets
@ mentions

13. A really simple campaign to increase Engagement
• Be nice to customers who mention your company / authors / titles on Twitter
Goal Metrics
# positive comments sent to customers per
week w/in given timeframe
Increase # positive conversations # of conversations that started from those
comments
# additional activation points
micro:
CTR (Click-Thru-Rate)
Landing Page Arrivals
Conversion Rate
Gross New Subscribers
Confirmation Rate
Net New Email Subscribers
Average Cost per Click
Marketing Cost
Cost per Net New Email Subscriber

14. A problematic campaign to increase Offline Sales
• Implement a promotion on social media with a specific store.
• Give participants a printable campaign voucher so you can track offline sales
Goal Metrics
Goal Funnel: Impressions,
Download voucher
Form Completion; Downloads
$ monthly sales monthly sales
% increase in store traffic over
monthly store traffic
pre-promo period
Attract an audience in a particular area traffic from particular area
macro:
cost per lead
what reach at what cost

15. A simple campaign to increase Online Sales
• Use Twitter or Facebook to inform prospects about special promotions.
• Exclusive, limited-customer/limited time offers.
Goal Metrics
Increase monthly sales monthly sales attributable directly to SMM
Segment & Funnel: new customers
Increase % value from new customers
attributable directly to campaign
Increase conversions from Segment & Funnel: monthly revenue
Twitter traffic generated from customers from Twitter
Repeat customers from that group
Retain X% of new customers
Unsubscribe rates
Reach large numbers of readers
If you’re doing your own ecommerce, see what things you can do to compel purchasers to
add this to their profile.
macro:
cost per lead
cost per conversion
average purchase value
micro:
referrals
inquiries
coupon downloads

16. Social Media Measurements
Content
Platform Ratio of Posts to X Peak Conversion
Resonance
Opens
Day
Email Opens CTR
Time of Day
Unsubscribes
RTs
Day
Twitter RTs @
Time of Day
Recos
Like
Day
Facebook Interactions Share
Time of Day
Comment
Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing
Beyond time-based campaigns, there’s the general, day-to-day work to maintain and build
your audience in preparation for future campaigns.
What are the successes?
Time cost of developing content so, how do know if it’s worth the time?
Likely have a certain number of tools that you use on a regular basis: email newsletters,
Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Slideshare.
Each tool serves a specific purpose.
Each tool should have specific goals and metrics
Here’s one way to look at it.
How am I supposed to find the time to also track what I’m doing.
Less is more.
This is not a make work exercise.
This is about insights so you can optimize your activities.
You choose how far down the rabbit hole to go.
Make a Hypothesis about your Customer Lifecycle and those Precursors to Conversion
Choose 5-10 conversion points that are directly related to business objectives
Measure & refine
Focus on conversion improvements

17. Data is black and white
• The number tell you if it’s working or not working.
• The numbers do not tell you how to fix it.
• The job of a web analysts is to understand and communicate the story behind
the numbers.
Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

18. Let’s take a Breather

19. ABC Metrics
Acquisition: Where do
New/Return Visitors come
Acquisition from?
Activation
Behaviour: What do
Retention they do on the site
Referral
Revenue Conversion: What precursors
influence sales?
So when I’m looking at Google Analytics, I’m thinking about the data as it relates to those
customer stages.

20. Acquisition
• 161.01% increase in visits starting in Fall 2011 season
• Where did those visits came from: Direct, Google, Paid, Facebook
• If Paid, what’s the Cost per Click?

21. Cost per Click
• Pay per Click (PPC) advertising
• Cost per Click (CPC) is the amount you pay each time someone clicks your ad
• If you spend $5,000 on ads and get 10,000 clicks, this is a CPC of $0.50
Cost ÷ Clicks = CPC
$5,000 ÷ 10,000 = $0.50

22. Behaviour
• 30 days before a book event is when visitor traffic starts to increase.
• 1 week before launch night is the sharpest increase
• As expected, the top content pages during each spike are for the featured book

23. Conversions
• Traffic to tickets page follows similar patterns to the total visits.
• 1.59% ecommerce rate (orders/visits)
• New Visitors generate 97% of transactions, Repeat Visitors only 3%

24. Conversion Rate
% of visitors who convert to a desired action: buy, sign-up, download
In ecommerce, it refers to the percentage of Visits that convert to Orders
Number of Orders ÷ Number of Visits = Conversion Rate (E-commerce)
As an example, a website that generated $100,000 of sales through 2,000
orders in a month with 40,000 visits, has an Average Order Value of $50 and
Conversion Rate of 5% (which is quite high):
$100,000 ÷ 2,000 = $50 AOV
2,000 ÷ 40,000 = 0.5 = 5% CR
This means that 5 out of 100 visits turn into an average of $50 revenue
This can then be used to project revenue for a campaign aimed at generating
another 5,000 visits, in the following manner:
Number of Visits × CR × AOV = Projected Revenue
5,000 × 5% × $50 = 250 × $50 = $12,500

25. What Channels Complete Ecommerce Transactions?
• The Traffic Sources to Tickets
show that Search, Referral,
Social Media and CPC traffic
are the best drivers

26. Off-Site: Social Networks
Facebook performs best for volume of traffic
Blogger is a great channel bringing second best traffic and longest duration of visit, second
only to YouTube.
I’d give up on Yahoo! Answers but spend more time on LinkedIn.

27. Top 30 Locations (ECommerce)

28. Month over Month Top Reporting Metrics
Acquisition Total Visits
How do we acquire visitors? Visit Sources
If paid traffic, is it working? Visits to Tickets by Channel
Activation Pages/Visit
Bounce rate
Retention Average time on site
% repeat visits
Referral Non-transaction activities:
What behaviour do they Visit performance pages
engage in? Visit blog
If outreach, what sites are most Sign up for eNews
valuable? Enter a contest
Exit via social media links
Revenue Ecommerce Conversion Rate
How many conversions? Number of transactions
If time on marketing activities, Average order value
which perform best? % from new vs. return visitors
Instead of just looking at data after the fact, better to look at comparative data month over
month during the season.
Looking for actionable data: what does it tell you to do
If you’re paying for traffic, is it working?
If you’re doing outreach, which sites are most valuable?
If you’re spending time on marketing activities, which perform best?

29. Quiz
Imagine you’re running an online advertising campaign promoting Louise Penny’s
bestselling novel.
• The goal is 2,000 pre-orders.
• The cost of the book is $29.99
• You’ve spent $5,000 on ads.
• Your ads received 400,000 impressions & generated 200 pre-orders to date.
What is the conversion rate for pre-orders from this ad campaign?
What is the net income (total revenue - expenses) this ad campaign
generated?
200 / 400,000 * 100 = 0.05%
($29.95 * 200) - $5000 = $998

30. Budgets, Costs and Time
• Approximately 2 hours per channel per week in maintenance mode
• 50-100 hours for a 2-week contest or in active campaign mode
• $200 for contest badge or ad
• Facebook contest using Antavo, max. $300
• Facebook ads, est. $1000-3000
• Media release Newswire.ca, est. $300-600
• Publicity $3-5000 per city
• Landing page: $1500-4000
• Microsite: design $2500, programming Wordpress $5-7000
• Display Ads on blogs: $750-1500+
• Video: $3-5000

31. Next Class
Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo, “Chapter 6: Measuring Success: How to Monitor the
Web,” Friends With Benefits, 99-114.
Social Media ROI: Socialnomics, http://youtu.be/QzZyUaQvpdc
Olivier Blanchard, “Basics of Social Media ROI,” http://www.slideshare.net/
thebrandbuilder/olivier-blanchard-basics-of-social-media-roi
Jay Baer, “6 Social Media Success Metrics You Need to Track,” Social Media
Examiner, http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/6-social-media-success-metrics-you-
need-to-track/

32. Questions?
Contact Info
Monique Sherrett
monique@boxcarmarkting.com
604-732-6467