From clicks to conversions: Implementing conversion tracking in SFMC

December 26, 2023
Read

 

Conversion tracking in Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) help in evaluating the success of your email campaigns by linking them to website conversions. This process enables marketers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and understand user interactions beyond the email click.


What is a Conversion?

A conversion is not strictly a revenue-generating action; it can encompass various user interactions such as signing up for a newsletter, downloading a white paper, making a donation, or completing a purchase. Identifying the goal of your email campaign is crucial to determining what constitutes a conversion.


Understanding the Mechanics of Conversion Tracking:




User Interaction:

When a user clicks on an email link, they are directed to the landing page associated with that link.


Reading Appended Parameters and Cookie Insertion:

The landing page, designed to read appended parameters, dynamically captures essential information such as job ID, subscriber ID, list ID, and others.

Simultaneously, a tracking cookie is inserted into the user's browser. This cookie serves as a unique identifier, allowing subsequent tracking of the user's journey.


Navigation to Conversion Page:

As the user continues their journey on the website and navigates to the conversion page (e.g., completing a form, making a purchase), the tracking cookie retains the information collected on the landing page.


Data Transmission to Marketing Cloud:

The collected information, stored in the tracking cookie, is transmitted back to Salesforce Marketing Cloud when user navigates to the conversion page.


Subscriber Association:

Marketing Cloud correlates this information with the specific subscriber associated with the email campaign. The tie-in is established using unique identifiers, ensuring accurate attribution of website actions to individual subscribers.


Implementing Conversion tracking:

Landing and conversion pages: 

After identifying the conversion and landing pages for your email campaign, the next crucial step is to insert JavaScript code into these pages for generating a tracking cookie. Code sample for landing and conversion pages can be found here.


Some points worth noting:

Cookie Time Limit:

Be mindful of the cookie's time limit to avoid perpetual tracking. The code inserted on the landing page allows you to set the cookie expiry date, with a default duration of 90 days.


Avoiding Duplicate Loads:

Pay close attention to how many times your conversion page loads. Each load triggers a request for the conversion tracking pixel from Marketing Cloud servers. This can result in duplicate conversions being registered.  Salesforce just sees every call to the tracking pixel in conversion page as a conversion.


Passing Additional Data to SFMC:

You can pass additional information from the conversion page to Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC). This could include product IDs, product costs, or any other relevant details. This enriches the data, providing more insights into user interactions.


Appending Parameters to Email Links:

  • Enable conversion tracking at the link level by checking the conversion tracking checkbox or adding conversion=true to HTML links.

  • Ensure each link has an alias name for easy identification.
  • Pass essential parameters (e.g., job ID, subscriber ID) for tracking code to read and insert a cookie.

The parameter that has to be appended are:

1
2
3
4
5
6
j=%%jobid%%: Represents the job ID.
sfmc_sub=%%SubscriberID%%: Represents the Subscriber ID.
l=%%List_%%: Represents the List ID.
u=%%JobURLID%%: Represents the landing page ID.
mid=%%MemberID%%: Business unit MID.
jb=%%_JobSubscriberBatchID%%: Batch ID.

Example URL:

1
2
3
<a href=http://www.salaparthi.com/?j=%%jobid%%&sfmc_sub=%%SubscriberID%%&l=%%List_%%&u=%%JobURLID%%&mid=%%MemberID%%&jb=%%_JobSubscriberBatchID%% conversion="true">
  Sravan’s blogz
</a>


Accessing Conversion Data:

Accessing conversion data can be done through the Tracking folder in Email Studio. Navigate to a specific campaign, open it, and click on the Conversion tab to view detailed conversion data.



 Additionally, utilize the Conversion Tracking Statistics Report for comprehensive insights into your conversion data.

Points worth Noting:

  • If a subscriber clicks on a couple of campaigns, the conversion data is tied up to latest campaign on which the click happened.
  • Many marketers' express frustration about the manual task of appending attributes to every link within their email campaigns. Simplify the entire process by leveraging the Parameter Manager. This enables conversion in each and every link of the emails.
  • Before utilizing Parameter Manager, the web analytics connector must be activated in your SFMC account.
Tags :

No comments:

Post a Comment

Powered by Blogger.