Domain redirect for direct mail (source) tracking in Analytics?
-
We have a client that would like to do some direct mail marketing and the plan is to use a short/simple domain in the marketing materials, which redirects to the main site domain. By default this would show as a referral traffic source in Analytics, right? So any traffic that came through that redirect would be attributed to "shortdomain.com / referral"? Meaning I wouldn't need to do any sort of customized, advanced tracking set up to track conversions that I've already set up (ecomm and goals) and attribute them to this new source?
Just double checking that I'm not overlooking something.
Thanks!
-
You should be able to see the 301 redirect as a referral source, yes. Just keep in mind that it might hurt conversion rate if you're sending users to one domain and redirecting them to another because it feels a little suspicious to some.
-
Thanks for the reply, but I actually have a couple of follow-up questions now:
It depends, some redirects do not pass on the referring domain which is what the analytics tool picks up to determine if it is a referral.
What do you mean by "some redirects"? I would be doing 301s most likely.
As for why I'd rather not use the URL building for tracking parameters - Because no one is going to type those lengthy URLs in. This short domain is going to be in direct mail marketing materials (like postcards)... So it makes sense to have "Visit shortdomain.com", but not http://www.shortdomain.com/?utm_source=Direct Mail&utm_medium=USPS&utm_campaign=Winter Promo
I'm just not certain that a simple 301 redirect on shortdomain.com to primarydomain.com would then show in GA what I explained in the original question.
Perhaps redirecting shortdomain.com to the longer http://www.shortdomain.com/?utm_source=Direct Mail&utm_medium=USPS&utm_campaign=Winter Promo is the solution?
-
It depends, some redirects do not pass on the referring domain which is what the analytics tool picks up to determine if it is a referral. I assume you are using Google Analytics by the way you have written the source. If so I would use GA's tracking parameters to be sure link to documentation on Google.
Another advantage of adding the campaign tracking you is that you can segment visitors by giving different campaign codes. So you might want to give a different code for direct mails to the different areas of the country, e.g. North East, South East then you could tell which area was more responsive or had biggest bounce rate.
Let me know if you need anything more on this?
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Tracking a Redirect
Recently a client of mine had a new site developed and had changed their domain, so the old URL is now redirecting to the new URL. They want to be able to track referral traffic in the analytics so we can decipher how much direct traffic is coming in from people typing in the old URL. Is this possible and if so, can I have a guide in doing so? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | DigMS0 -
Tracking sessions from a sub-domain that is 301 redirected to main domain
Hi, one of my client is launching a new site on a subdomain newsite.brand.com.au but will use a shorter URL on the packaging on their new rang of products to be sold in supermarkets, prompting shoppers to visit xxx.brand.com.au. This specific sub-domain xxx.brand.com.au will be 301 redirecting to newsite.brand.com.au How can I identify and track accurrately all the visits coming from xxx.brand.com.au to newsite.brand.com.au?The visits from sub-domain xxx.brand.com.au will be attributed to direct channel I guess. Is it worth adding GA on this 301 redirected sub-domain xxx.brand.com.au or there another way to identify those visits on newsite.brand.com.au ?
Reporting & Analytics | | mecglobal0 -
Main Website Redirects to Mobile Website, Mobile Website counts this as direct traffic, is there a way to tell what the source/medium is?
Hello, The situation is that someone is arriving on my main website https://www.example.com and being redirected to http://m.example.com. When this happens my analytics says that the traffic is all direct coming to my mobile site. However, I know people clicking on my google cpc, and some google organic users are hitting the main website and being redirected. Before we didn't have as good of a redirect on our main website so I could tell organic and cpc traffic coming in, now my main website has a huge drop in these categories because they are redirecting to mobile but I can't tell on my mobile how much traffic from each is going to the mobile site. Is there a way to fix this? Is it because my main website is https:// and mobile is a http:// (as I know that sometimes makes traffic direct) or is it a bigger problem that can't be resolved? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | oxfordseminars0 -
How to find backlinks from GWT domains
Given the list of GWT domains that link to our site, what is an easy way to find the actual pages on those domains that link to our site? Best,
Reporting & Analytics | | ChristopherGlaeser
Christopher0 -
How to identify rising keywords in analytics?
Hi Guys I just spotted in the Google Analytics > Traffic Sources > Search Engine Optimisation > Queries section a keyword that on the 27th Feb went from generating 35 impressions per day to 2000 impressions per day. This was down to people searching for a newly launched product. Does anyone know how I can identify any increases like this easily? I only came across this by accident, and I am 1 month behind the times. It would have been ideal to pick this up closer to the time so I could capitalise and write some great content on the topic. Thanks Paul
Reporting & Analytics | | TheUniqueSEO0 -
Cross domain tracking setup in Google Analytics
I really need help on this, I can't figure it out. I need to track a few subdomains and and couple of seperate domains in one profile in Google Analytics. So I have: www.maindomain.co.uk sub1.maindomain.co.uk sub2.maindomain.co.uk www.anotherdomain.co.uk So the code I have placed on all of these domains is as following: I have then set up seperate profiles which filter out the data by domain. E.g. for sub1.maindomain.co.uk, I have user the fitler: Custom filter > Include > Filter Field = Hostname > Filter Pattern = sub1.maindomain.co.uk For the www.anotherdomain.co.uk, I have used the same filter. Now this all seems to be tracking visits and unique visitors okay, but I always have a very low pageview count, less than visits and sometimes zero. Could anyone shed any light on what I am doing wrong? Thanks in advance mozzers.
Reporting & Analytics | | MirandaP0 -
Call Tracking Services - Canada
Does anyone have any recommendations for call tracking services that service Canada? If so, have you used them personally? Was set up difficult?
Reporting & Analytics | | Stevej240 -
301 redirects reduce traffic considerably
I recently identified an issue with our site whereby we had three different URL types for each article. As an example, we might have something like: /articles/my-article-name /articles/my-article-name.aspx /articles/My-Article-Name We've since taken action to address this by implement 301 redirects from the second and third formats to the first (so everything is without the .aspx extension and is in lower case). But the results have been disconcerting. Before the change, one of our articles receives 150 or so hits per day via the .aspx version. The other two existed but had very low traffic (1-3 per day). We decided the non .aspx and lowercase version was the version we wanted. Sure enough, when we introduced the 301 redirects on September 25th the traffic for the .aspx version just stopped (after a day) and the traffic for the non-.aspx version climbed. But not enough. After the change, the non-.aspx version is receiving about 60-70% of the traffic that we used to have on the .aspx version. So, instead of receiving 150 per day (to the .aspx version) we are receiving around 100 or so to the non-.aspx version. This pattern has occured across all our articles and, as a result, our site-wide traffic has dropped by about 40% or so. Since we are using 301 redirects I had assumed that the search engines would just update to reflect the non-.aspx version. I am sure I am missing something here. Any help would be most appreciated. Thanks. Mark
Reporting & Analytics | | MarkWill0