In part 1, we defined the various elements you’ll likely need to consider when tagging your marketing campaigns. Now we’re going to tackle how to standardize those elements into a consistent structure and how to append them to your inbound URLs.

This should be a religion for everyone it involves at your organization. The reason consistency is so important is two fold. First, presumably you care about your time. Following a structure will save you an incredible amount of time in your analysis. Second, make it really easy for your web analytics platform to digest inbound traffic and put it into the right categories. We’ll spend more time on processing rules later.

Within Adobe Analytics, which is where I have the most experience, you can and should group these elements into a single string and attach them via a parameter to your inbound URLs. The key for your URL parameter is not standardized in Adobe Analytics, so be sure to talk to your admin to find out what to use. Google Analytics, however, uses multiple parameters to capture different elements and store information. They have a URL builder which can be handy, though to get as detailed as you’d like to, you’ll have to combine elements into a single parameter.

In Adobe Analytics, I would recommend using abbreviations, and documenting the friendly name. Since Google Analytics has multiple parameters, most people choose to just use a friendly name. Keep in mind, religion means don’t change your caps or conventions (ex. Facebook vs. facebook vs. FB vs. fb). Your web analytics platform takes everything in your parameter very literally, so if you deviate with just a single capitalization, traffic may not be grouped together as you intended. Here’s a table with some examples.

For Adobe Analytics combining these elements with an underscore is the perfect way to develop a concise tracking code structure that’s easy enough for a human eye to scan through, but robust enough to capture a ton of information. Here’s how it would look…

DM_G_PD_SMB_US_BTS_PR_GWP_300x250

Adobe Analytics can use a number of different keys, so check with your tech team to see which one is configured for your setup. A fully parameterized (new word?) URL then look like this…

totallyawesomesite.com/landingpage?CMPID=DM_G_PD_SMB_US_BTS_PR_GWP_300x250

And don’t forget, parameters get attached with a “?” if there isn’t another “?” in the URL. If there is already a “?” in the URL, attach your parameter with an “&.” Within Google Analytics, unique parameters are used  to capture some of these elements. They have a handy tool to build a tracked URL here. Based on our discussion around the important elements to track, you may want to consider combining multiple elements into the utm_content and utm_campaign parameter.

So the same tracking code in Google Analytics format would look longer, and something like this…

?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=SEM&utm_campaign=BackToSchool&utm_Term=&utm_content=PD_SMB_US_PR_GWP_300x250

Here’s the fully tracked URL with the Google Analytics version of the tracking code…

totallyawesomesite.com/landingpage?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=SEM&utm_campaign=BackToSchool&utm_Term=&utm_content=PD_SMB_US_PR_GWP_300x250

Yes, these URLs are long. Yes, they have a lot of info, but capturing this information in parameters through standardized elements will give you so much more insight when you get asked questions about ROI and need to make optimization decisions. In part 3, we’ll dive into effective ways to document and empower teams to generate their own tracking codes, while keeping the same consistent structure.

Anything you’ve found particularly useful when building your tagging structure? We’re in this together, don’t keep it a secret.

When you’re ready to get going – the campaign tagging template will make it easy…