Generating interest in your organization, and converting new members, is a top priority for any association or professional society. Getting visitors to your site is the first step, and when they join or renew as a member you want to know which marketing campaign was successful.
You can easily track these conversion sources by using your MatrixMaxx AMS combined with the power of Google Analytics and UTM codes. What to learn how? Keep reading this article for an example of how we could track individuals applying for membership. [For a high-level intro to Conversion Tracking you may watch this instructional how-to video for setting up meeting registration tracking.]
URL Creation
If you aren’t already doing so, your association must start to use Google Analytics UTM codes in your emails (and create redirects to these URLs for print mailings). These codes allow you to track the success of your website marketing campaigns in Google Analytics, as well as track membership conversions in MatrixMaxx — a two-for-one value!!!
You start this process by creating a special parameterized URL that will contain the critical data you want to track.
NOTE! The codes you use are case-sensitive, so be sure to copy and use the URL, and codes, exactly.
- First, get the URL of the membership application form you are publicizing/marketing. In order to track conversions in MatrixMaxx using this generic method, this page must be a MatrixMaxx-generated page. For example, if you are generating an informational page in your CMS or as a custom-built site, then the only way you can generically track conversions is to send the user directly to the MatrixMaxx-generated membership form. (Matrix could also add custom code to your CMS to enable it to function with this tracking; contact Matrix Group to discuss options.)
- Then access Google’s URL Builder to create the links that you send out with your communications.
- For Campaign Name, you should put in the name of the membership campaign. For example, “membershippromotion-CompanyMembership” or “membershippromotion-Associate” or “membershippromotion-Student.” (You will then use this name in MemberMaxx to connect to this membership(s). See below for details. This name MUST match what you put into MatrixMaxx’s Email Campaign Code field or your conversions won’t be tracked in MatrixMaxx!)
- Fill in the Medium with the general way you’re reaching your audience, such as “social media,” “email,” or “print”.
- Then, the most important field is the specific Source that narrows the information even further and will come into MatrixMaxx as the Marketing Code Analytics Source field. You can use terms like “Newsletter-April2017″, “Homepage Branding Area”, “Facebook”, “Twitter”, “LinkedIn”, “Brochure”, “Primary Contact Postcard”, “CEOLetter-April2017”.
Once your parameter data is complete, Google will provide you with a special URL. You should now use this URL in your marketing campaigns.
Membership Setup
Because Membership setup is specific to individual MatrixMaxx clients (while your organization may have two types of membership, Company and Individual, other organizations may have ten levels of Company membership and three levels of Individual membership), the analytics campaign code setup process is different from setting up product or meeting codes. To set individual Analytics Campaign Codes for each of your organization’s membership types, navigate to MatrixMaxx > go to the Members tab > then Reports > and open the report titled, “Settings for Membership Type Campaign Codes.” Put the campaign code you want to use into MatrixMaxx under the field beside each of your membership types.
(IMPORTANT: This value MUST match what you put into your parameterized URLs or your conversions won’t be tracked in MatrixMaxx!)
Marketing your Membership
Make sure any communications sent out use these parameterized Google tracking ‘UTM’ links.
When a user clicks on the link, MatrixMaxx sets a cookie in their browser, containing the Campaign and Source information.
Tech Notes:
- The cookie expires after 90 days.
- If a user follows one link but doesn’t purchase a membership, then a few weeks later follows a second link with the same Campaign name, we’ll overwrite the cookie with the new Source data so that if the user purchases the membership this second time, we’ll capture the second source that created the conversion, not the first one that failed to convert.
- We track the marketing code at the application level.
- If there is no source for the particular campaign for the item that has just been ‘sold,’ but the browser session holds a source, we will use this for the sake of gathering potentially useful data. For example: A user follows a link to the ‘2017 Salary Survey’ product, which sets a cookie with a source of ’email-newsletter-April2017′. The user does NOT buy the product, but they end up linking to the Annual Meeting and registering, we will cature the current browser session source of ‘2017 Salary Survey’ and record that, even if you never mentioned or marketed the annual meeting in the April newsletter, it clearly drove them to your site and influenced their registration.
- By default, this cookie-setting function will only work by sending users to MatrixMaxx-generated WWW pages. However, you may make this function work with other pages (e.g., CMS-generated pages) by using the MatrixMaxx URL Builder. Go to Reports -> Analytics -> MatrixMaxx URL Builder
IMPORTANT! If your association sends out links to your membership applications without the UTM codes in place, we can’t set the cookie and thus you can’t track conversions!
Reporting on the Results in MemberMaxx
So here’s what you’ve been waiting for: How do you see all this great data???
Application-level Reporting
The Google Campaign Source is being saved into the the membership application’s Marketing Code field.
You can check the Source an application came from by going into the application view of either a company or individual application.
MatrixMaxx Intranet -> Members tab -> (Organization OR Individual) Applications >
- Search for the specific application from here, or search through all applications to find the specific one you want to view.
- In the Application View of the particular application, you’ll see Marketing Code, which will contain the source this membership purchase came in with, if it had one.
Membership Type-Level Conversion Tracking: The Membership Application Marketing Source Code Report
You can see the breakdown of membership applications by Marketing Code by running the “Membership Application Marketing Source Code” report, under the Members Reports section of the Members tab. This report breaks down how much of the total membership revenue is coming from various sources. Click on one of the Marketing Codes to see all the applications that came in with that marketing code. Note that the category “Undefined” indicates membership applications that came into MatrixMaxx without a Marketing Code.
Reporting on the Results in Google Analytics
You can see the traffic to your membership application pages broken down by source by accessing your Analytics and going to Site Content -> All Pages and finding the page you’re linking to. Click on the URL and you’ll be taken to a view for that page only. You can then set the primary or secondary dimension to Source and you’ll have a breakdown of the traffic by the Source you used in your communications.
Note that this works for any page on your site; the source data is kept for a user’s entire session, from when they enter through your link with tracking codes to when their session ends by either leaving your site or closing their browser.