It’s easy to schedule email reports in the new version of Google Analytics. You can set up email reports to be sent to your own inbox, to colleagues within your organization or anyone else who needs to be kept updated on a regular basis on your website’s performance. You can choose to send your Dashboard Report, any of the Standard Reports (Visitors Overview, Traffic Sources Overview, Goals Overview, etc.) or, if you have Custom Reports set up, you can send a Custom Report. (Don’t have Custom Reports set up? Read this post on using Custom Reports. And here’s a Custom Report Configuration so you don’t have to create your own.)
How To Get Google Analytics Reports Sent to Your Inbox
1. Log in to your Google Analytics account. Go to the report you want to email and click on Email under the title of your report. (We’ve highlighted it in green below.)
2. In the Email Report box, enter the email address you want the report sent to (multiple email addresses need to be separated by a comma) and, if you want, edit the subject line.
3. Next to Attachments, you can specify the file format you’d like the report to be sent in.
4. Set the Frequency (Once, Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Quarterly) and Day of Week you’d like the report sent.
5. If you click on Advanced Options you can set how long you want the email setting to be active for.
6. Write an email message in the text field. This message will go out with all of the reports.
7. Click Send
Looking for more help with Google Analytics? Check out our blog category on Google Analytics tips.
Granting other users access to your Google Analytics is easy to do and offers administrators the ability to share traffic data with key contacts such as colleagues within the organization, outside consultants, and anyone else who needs to make strategic decisions based on website data. Google Analytics also offers tiered access levels to help govern who has read-only access to view reports vs. who has full admin access for setting goals and adding filters.
How to Give Someone Access to Your Google Analytics
Note: You can only add users if you are an Administrator of the account.
1. Log in to Analytics and click on the Admin tab in the top right corner, then select the User tab. Click the +New User tab. (We’ve highlighted it in green below.)
2. In the New User form, add the person’s email address. Note: the email needs to be a Google address. If you’re adding more than one user, you can separate multiple addresses by commas or spaces.
Next, choose the person’s role.
Users have read-only access. They can’t modify Analytics settings and you can restrict them to specific profiles.
Administrators have full access and the same privileges as account owners. They have access to all reports, and they can modify settings, add users, create profiles, set filters and setup goals.
3. At the bottom of the form is where you grant profile access to Users.
The Admin role will have access to all profiles, but if you grant User access (read-only), then you need to select the profile(s) on the left and click Add. The User will be able to view any profiles that appear in the list on the right.
Integrating Google Analytics with your email newsletters is important so that you can track what visitors from the newsletters do on your site.
While most email marketing services track the clicks on links in newsletters, they don’t track important metrics about what visitors do after they click. When running an email newsletter campaign, you can track this data by integrating Google Analytics with your email tool in order to answer questions like, how long do visitors from the email spend on the site? How many pages do they visit? Do they convert, or how many goal completions do they make such as downloading a whitepaper, purchasing a product or requesting a quote? What’s the conversion rate for newsletter visitors vs. non-newsletter visitors?
Knowing this information allows you to measure the success of your email newsletter efforts.
To further understand what newsletter traffic does on your site, once Google Analytics integration is set up, you should also create an advanced segment in Google Analytics to isolate your email traffic so you can look at visitors from your email campaigns in relation to other audience segments.
How to Add Google Analytics Tracking Code to Constant Contact Emails
1. Log in to Constant Contact.
2. In the Emails tab click on the email you want to schedule.
3. In Email Settings, once all of the fields are correctly filled out and you have a Send To List selected, click Schedule in the top right corner.
4. In the Schedule pop-up window select Include Google Analytics and enter in a Google Analytics Campaign Title. This is what you’ll see in Analytics to identify your email so choose a naming convention that will make sense when you’re looking at your Analytics reports. If you send out a monthly newsletter, use the name of the month/year as your campaign title. If your newsletter is topic-based, then perhaps include the subject keyword. i.e., Apr-12 News: Facebook Tips
5. Click OK.
View Your Campaign Reports in Google Analytics
1. Log into Google Analytics and in the sidebar select Traffic Sources > Sources > Campaigns
2. Here you’ll see your Campaigns listed by Campaign Title. By default, the Campaign Source is the same as your Campaign Title and the Medium is auto completed as email.
Measuring the value of your marketing efforts is a constant struggle for businesses because there are so many factors that indirectly affect sales. On top of that, online marketing can drive offline sales and offline marketing can drive online sales. All of these factors make it difficult to really know what is influencing a sale. That said, Goals and Custom Reports in Google Analytics can give you insights into the two things that the people holding the marketing purse strings care about:
Sales
Things That Lead to Sales
Sales are the macro conversions—the big hairy, totally awesome goal—while “Things That Lead to Sales” are the micro conversions—the precursors to a sale. These micro conversions have a non-financial impact (gaining a new Twitter follower, a Facebook like, a new email subscriber) but they are all the things that help us understand what influences a purchase decision. That’s why when it comes to conversions, you want to follow Dave McClure’s advice and think like a pirate—AARRR!
THINGS THAT LEAD TO SALES
Acquisition: How did visitors get to your site (search, referral, direct), how many visitors came from each source, did they bounce?
Activation: What are your visitors’ on-site behaviours: number of pages viewed? Repeat visits? Do they sign up (newsletter, email, membership, subscription)? Do they/are they a social media fan or follower?
Retention: Do you capture their attention (email opens, click throughs)? Does your content keep them interested (repeat visits)?
Referral: Do your visitors love you so much they tell other people about you? Blog and media mentions, retweets, +1s, social sharing? AND, do they tell other people who then also sign up, like, follow, refer, buy, etc.?
A funnel represents the path that you expect visitors to take on their way to converting to a sale. It’s a defined set of steps or pages in the checkout process. For example, 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 a visitor abandons the task. Funnels are important for non-ecommerce goals as well, such as email newsletter signups or whitepaper downloads. Goals and Goal Funnels will tell you the conversion rate for the macro goal so you can do some forecasting and they will help you understand what steps in the process need to be optimized.
Once you have Goals and Goal Funnels set up in Google Analytics, then it’s time to create some Custom Reports that will tell you even more information about those micro conversions—things that lead to a sale—like website visitors, time on site, number of pageviews, sign ups, click throughs, repeat visits and referrals.
Setting Up Custom Reports
I call this my “What Does Success Look Like” Report because it quickly tells me what channels generate the most conversions and the most valuable conversions, as well as the conversion rate, and the bounce rate for my various marketing channels. You can see in the example report that the Goal Completions number only tells part of the story, whereas Goal Completions + the Goal Conversion Rate provide greater insight into which channels could be better leveraged.
Above you can see that Facebook generated 9 Sales and Twitter (t.co) generated 14 sales. Instead of making a judgement based only on Goal Completions, and assuming that Twitter is the better performing channel, you can look also at the Conversion Rate. Facebook traffic converts at 9.09% whereas Twitter only converts at 6.64%. The Site Performance Report would suggest that a little experiment is in order. If you can double the Facebook traffic, will the conversion rate stay the same? i.e., instead of 99 visitors a week from Facebook, could you get 198 visitors and therefore 17 sales? Of course, there are many factors, such as time, to also consider, but the point is that using only 1 data point limits your view of the opportunities.
How Do You Set Up a Custom Report in Google Analytics
Log into Google Analytics
In the top navigation, click on Custom Reporting
Click New Custom Report
Label your report and name the report tab
Click on the blue Add Metric box to add your KPIs (key performance indicators) and select the relevant fields from the dropdown menu. These metrics will make up the columns of your grid.
Click on the green Add Dimension box to create a hierarchy or drilldown structure. For example, if you are running a banner ad campaign, you may want the top-level reporting to show that the source/medium is referral traffic from the National Post, but if you have more than 1 banner image/copy, then you may want to drilldown to see what ad specifically is sending traffic to the site. Same with Google Adwords campaigns, you may want to see what Campaign, Ad Group and Keywords are performing best.
You’ll be prompted to select a Google Analytics profile then the report will appear in the Custom Report tab for that profile. You can then click Edit to adjust the report to include the Goals relevant to your site.
As online marketing continues to mature, it’s even more important to understand how to extract the social metrics and business metrics from Google Analytics in order to understand the value your marketing activities have on the business’ financial health. Be ready next time your manager asks if you know what’s working.
Step 1: Pick Good Goals
Step 2: Set up Goals in Google Analytics
Step 3: Create a Custom Report
Step 4: Experience the Awesome
Need help with Step 1: Pick Good Goals? (Blip.tv) Slides+Audio from my BookNet Canada presentation “Beyond Fans and Followers: Measuring Your Online Marketing Campaigns,” which looks at the key performance metrics for a variety of common campaigns like running a contest, doing a discount promotion or reaching out to bloggers.
Goals are used in Google Analytics to measure business objectives such as generating revenue (sales, donations, subscriptions, etc.), gaining new subscribers to an email list or members to a website, and tracking any type of measurable action such as contest entries or case study downloads. Common examples of Conversion (or Goal) Tracking include the following:
Complete Contact Form
Sign up for Newsletter
Complete the Sale
Download
Contact Form Completions
Sign Up Completions
Sales Revenue, Volume, Avg. Order Value
Conversions or Events
Goal Funnels
The steps (or micro conversions) a visitor progresses through in order to achieve the end goal (or macro conversion) are part of what Google Analytics calls the “Goal Funnel.”
The Goal is the end goal, like filling out a Contact Form and reaching the Thank You page upon submission.
The Funnel is the series of steps taken to access the form, preview the form then submit the form (click submit).
The Simple Goal Funnel below displays the number of conversions for Newsletter Signups. In the example, you can see 4 people arrived at the Sign Up Form from 2 sources (3 came directly and 1 from an internal page). All 4 signed up (reached the Thank You page) so 0 abandoned the process.
Goal Funnel Reports are accessible in Google Analytics under Conversions > Goals > Funnel Visualization.
A more advanced Goal Funnel with micro-actions is used to track goals with multiple steps, like a shopping cart or member registration that requires an email opt-in / confirmation email.
Adding Goals or Modifying Goals
The Goal Settings are accessed from the gear icon in the top right corner, under the tabs for Profiles> Goals.
Google Analytics offers 4 sets containing 5 goals each. Best practice is to group goals according to the type of action. For example, Set 1 may contain all goals related to revenue while Set 2 contains all goals related to engagement (newsletter sign up, share/save).
Follow These Steps to Set Up a New Goal
Create a list of all URLs (or steps) a visitor completes during the course of a particular goal.
Make note of “required” steps, i.e., does a visitor HAVE to navigate through these steps in order to reach the final URL (the final step, the Thank You page).
With the URL path information in hand, create a new goal by clicking on the link for the desired Goal Set.
Provide a descriptive Goal Name, like Newsletter Sign Up Completions.
Set the goal as Active.
Select URL Destination (Note: other options as available such as time on site or events).
Set the Goal URL as the final step (the Thank You page).
DO NOT use the full URL. No http://www.yourdomain.com. Only enter the portion of the URL after .com, .net, .org etc.
Select Exact match if your URLs are always the same, i.e., there are no unique identifiers at the end of the URL. Use Head Match for URLs where the “head” or beginning of the URL is always the same but a unique identifier is added to the “tail” or end.
Goal Value is optional but we recommend that you set a value, even an arbitrary one. For example, 100 may be the goal value for a donation while 50 may be the value for a newsletter subscriber. Since business goals range in value, establishing some range within Google Analytics will help you more clearly see which channels or marketing activities generate the most value (vs. the most volume).
If there is a series of steps that leads to a goal completion, track those micro actions in step-by-step order in the Funnel.
Apply the same URL formatting rules as noted above in the Goal URL.
Required step is important to flag if you only want to track actions that flow through a particular entrance path. In the case of the Newsletter example below, we want to track the number of visitors who sign up for the newsletter BECAUSE they came from a Survey page. Since people can sign up for the newsletter in various ways, we need to set the Survey landing page as a Required Step.
Conversion tracking (Goal Tracking) in Google Analytics makes it easier to understand which channels are effective at generating revenue, encouraging engagement and measuring overall campaign success.
If you need help determining your goals or what to measure, see these related articles:
Google Analytics provides a number of preset Advanced Segments that allow account owners to filter or compare traffic reports. Advanced Segments helps answer questions like how do mobile visitors perform on the site compared to desktop visitors. Additional custom segments can be added, which are handy for tracking marketing campaigns or understanding visitor behaviour. For example, what do Twitter referrals do vs. Facebook referrals. Or what actions do repeat visitors who have visited 10+ pages on the site do after signing up for the newsletter. The combinations of rules that can be defined for a segment help answer site performance questions related directly to business goals. Advanced Segments are handy. Get to know them.
Common uses of the default segments include:
Viewing a single segment, for example, only Mobile Traffic on the site. When this segment is checked, all reports are filtered to show only what visitors using mobile devices did on the website.
Comparing two or more segments, for example, Paid Search Traffic vs. Non-Paid Search Traffic. When two or more segments are selected, the reports display only traffic from those segments, making it easier to see how one performed in comparison to the other.
As mentioned additional custom segments can be added, which are handy for tracking marketing campaigns and other business goals.
Common custom segments include:
Site-specific traffic, such as, traffic only from Twitter. When running promotions in a specific social media channel, or on a particular referring site, a custom segment can be used to filter and track the performance of visitors coming from that site.
Location-specific traffic, such as, traffic only from a particular city, province/state, country, or even IP address.
Activity-specific traffic, such as, traffic that visits more than once or traffic that completes a specific goal like Buy or Subscribe.
Custom segments can also include any combinations of and/or statements. i.e., “Twitter and Facebook traffic who complete a petition” or “visitors who return to the site more than 3 times and visit more than 5 pages.”
Using Advanced Segments
In any Standard Reporting screen, just below the “Home” tab, there’s an Advanced Segments tab. Clicking the tab will reveal the Default and Custom Segments panel.
Google Analytics shows “All Visits” unless otherwise specified in Advanced Segments. To filter reports by segment, check the desired parameters.
Creating a Custom Segment
Clicking on “Create a new advanced segment” prompts you to define the rules to build a custom segment.
In the Name field, provide a descriptive label for this segment. i.e., Facebook Traffic.
To create the segment for Facebook traffic, choose “Include” traffic from any “Source” that “contains” “Facebook.com.”
You can repeat these steps to add additional filters to the segment. For example, using “AND” include traffic from any source that contains Twitter.com would create a Social Media segment that would show aggregated traffic for both sites.
Click Test Segment or Preview Segment to see if you’ve set this up correctly and then click Save Segment.
This will take you back to the report overview. To apply your custom segment to your report, click the Advanced Segments tab and check the parameters you wish to view or compare. Graphs and data in Google Analytics will then only display the parameters selected.
Have a super advanced segment you’d like to share or favourite report? Let us know in the comments.
We’ve spent the first week of 2012 here at Boxcar Marketing struggling with Google products—in particular, how to link an AdWords account to a Google Analytics account.
Below are the steps that worked for us to link our two accounts. Hopefully, by following these steps, you’ll have an easier (and less stressful!) experience.
Why Link AdWords To Google Analytics?
Linking your AdWords account to Google Analytics gives you data on what people do on your site after they’ve clicked your ad. For example, you can see how long visitors from your ads spend on the site, where they leave, and what percentage of these visits lead to sales.
This information gives you a better understand of the value of your ad spend.
Before You Start
In order to link your AdWords to your Google Analytics account, you need to have the same Google Account email address for both. If they are different, give your AdWords email address admin access to Analytics. (Here’s how.)
If you’re linking an AdWords account that is part of a My Client Center account, you’ll need to add a unique Google Account email address as an admin that that AdWords account. This is because a Client Center account can’t be linked to an Analytics account. Again, if this email address isn’t an admin of Analytics, you’ll have to go in and give it admin access.
How To Link AdWords To Analytics
1. Log in to Google Analytics.
2. In your Account Home page click on the gear icon in the top right corner.
3. Here you’ll be taken to Account Administration. Click on the account that you want to link to AdWords.
4. On this page, click on the Data Sources tab. In the AdWords tab follow the instructions to link accounts. We kept the auto-tagging turned on so that Analytics will automatically tag our AdWords links for tracking.
Note: you can also link your accounts through AdWords by clicking on the Tools and Analysis tab > Google Analytics. Click on the gear icon in the top right corner and follow steps #3 - 4 above.
Once your accounts are linked, you can access information about your ads in Analytics under the Advertising tab or in AdWords under the Tools and Analysis tab > Google Analytics.
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