Marketo email links as top referral source to website

[Anonymous]

Last month, Marketo email links were listed as one of our top refferal sources in Google Analytics. Can someone help me understand what this means exactly? Is it only those that went directly from one of our marketo emails to our website? Or could it also be users who went from one of our emails to a landing page then to our website?? Are marketo landing pages that are linked to our emails counted as a website visit? Would love to get clarity on what this means! Thanks!

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Kelly,

Good question. Your Marketo emails and landing pages will have different tracking links. Depending on whether you've set up CNAMEs for one or both, they should be something like "info.company.com" or "get.company.com."

What this means is that the referral traffic from emails and landing pages should be categorized separately in your Google Analytics instance. So email referrals should be strictly from those who have clicked on a link in an email that went directly to your website from a sent or forwarded email.

If the user went to a Marketo landing page, then clicked a link to go to your main site, they will be tracked as referral traffic from your landing page, and not your email.

Hope that helps.

[Anonymous]

Charlie -

Thanks for the explanation! The referral source listed is "go.patientkeeper.com". So, if I'm hearing you correctly, this means that the referral traffic came from emails NOT landing pages. The referral source would be "info.patientkeeper.com" if the referral traffic came from landing pages, right?

[Anonymous]

Kelly,

Charlie hit the nail on the head with his answer. I just wanted to add one more piece to this because of my experience with the same thing and using Google Analytics. 

In Google analytics, you can further segment your data from Known and Uknown. Technically, the people from your emails should already be known. This can help you separate your traffic from Google Analytics Referrer's even further and know your influence for potential new visitors vs. known visitors. This can be helpful when segmenting traffic to landing pages, if you have those setup in Google analytics. 

[Anonymous]

Kelly, that is correct, as long as "go.patientkeeper.com" is your email CNAME.

[Anonymous]

Thank you both for your help! Very helpful!