Accurate advertising analytics depends on perfect tracking URLs. It’s almost impossible to get this right if you’re building your URLs by hand in Excel or with a separate builder tool.
Here’s how to automate your tracking URL construction for Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, HubSpot, Mixpanel, and others.
Advertising Analytics Depend on Tracking URLs
Website analytics give you the power to see if your advertising is working. The insights gleaned help you to optimize your campaigns, messages, and media placements.
The linchpin of website analytics is the Tracking URL.
What is a Tracking URL?
A Tracking URL is a specially constructed web address that includes parameters that identify campaign, source, creative, keywords, and anything else you want to track through website analytics.
Here is an example:
When a visitor comes to your website using a tracking URL, your analytics service automatically records all this data.
What are Common Mistakes with Tracking URLs?
One of the most common mistakes in advertising is malformed tracking URLs. These bad URLs send bad data to your website analytics. This pollutes your website reporting and renders your analytics useless.
Clearly, you need accurate tracking URLs to get accurate advertising analytics.
The Problem with Tracking URLs
The biggest problem with tracking URLs is creating them.
To track properly, you need to create a unique tracking URL for every placement in your media plan. A single media plan might require dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of tracking URLs.
Won’t Tolerate Any Mistakes
The tracking URLs are complicated and vary for each client’s requirements. The coded formatting has to be perfect every time. It’s a minefield because if you get any little thing wrong, it won’t work.
Tedious and Time-Consuming
It is a tedious and time-consuming process, even more so when your media plan has hundreds of lines. Using a standalone builder or separate spreadsheet requires copying and pasting, making it virtually impossible to match each placement with the correct URL.
Every time you make a change to your plan, you have to reformulate your tracking URLs. What a nightmare!
So, how do you get all the benefits of tracking URLs without the hassle?
The Ultimate Tracking URL Builder
Bionic’s new Custom Tracking URL Builder completely automates the process of generating perfect tracking URLs every time. You never again have to worry nor suffer eye strain while triple-checking your tracking URLs.
Better Than The Old URL Builder
The new Builder expands upon the capabilities of the old Tracking URL builder, which was limited to creating only Google Analytics standard Tracking URLs.
Supports All Website Analytics Tools
The new Tracking URL Builder is flexible enough to handle custom Google Analytics and all other analytics tools including Adobe Analytics (fka Omniture), HubSpot, and Mixpanel.
Fully Customizable
From the simplicity of a campaign name to the complexity of unlimited parameter values, this ultimate Tracking URL Builder handles every situation. Best of all, it’s 100% automated and fully-integrated into the media planning process.
How to Set Up Custom Tracking URLs
By default, the system will generate standard Google Analytics UTMs.
To set up an alternative Tracking URL pattern, go to your Organization Administration settings. Here, you’ll find the Tracking URLs tab.
Click the Add New Pattern button to bring up the new Custom Tracking URL Builder tool. Watch the webinar below for a detailed demonstration of the Custom Tracking URL Builder.
Give it a Name
Bionic gives you the ability to create an unlimited number of Tracking URL patterns. To keep them straight, give each of them a name that helps you to remember its purpose.
Choose Your Delimiter
The delimiter is what separates the fields in your tracking URL. By default, it’s an underscore “_”. However, you can customize it to a pipe “|”, colon “:”, or any other delimiter,
Choose Keys
You’ll next choose all the keys to include in your Tracking URLs. You can choose from a dropdown menu with all the standard Google UTM keys. Or you can create your own custom keys.
Specify Values
Your Tracking URL needs a value for every key. Populating values is the hardest part of creating tracking URLs.
Fortunately, Bionic automates this process by pulling values directly from your media plan. You have access to EVERY column and EVERY custom column in your Bionic account as both text and, when available, code.
This gives you flexibility, control, and the ability to drive deep insights with your performance analytics.
Generate Tracking URLs While Media Planning
When media planning in Bionic, your tracking URLs are updated in real-time while creating and editing your media placements. Every time you add a placement, a new tracking URL is created. And with every edit, your tracking URL is updated.
This automation completely eliminates the need for a separate process to create tracking URLs. It saves time, eliminates errors, and avoids trouble with your analytics team.
Watch the Tracking URL Builder Webinar
Below is the recording of the webinar on our new Custom Tracking URL Builder. The webinar gives you an overview of the Builder’s benefits and a live demonstration of the software in action.
How to Get the Tracking URL Builder
If you’re already using Bionic media planning software, your Client Success Manager can answer any questions you may have to implement the right Tracking URL Pattern for each one of your clients.
If you’re not yet on Bionic, visit our website to see capabilities, watch a demo, see pricing, or request a trial.