Tracking Email Conversions

[Anonymous]

What are other members of the community doing to track conversions (form fills) for each specific email?

For some context, I am trying to do a better job tracking email conversions using statuses within my email programs. One thing I am trying to figure out is, what is the best filter/set-up to use in order to be able to report on email conversions.

The logic I am using is that a form fill equals a conversion. Since people can fill out forms anywhere, I know that just using the logic "fills out any form" equals status update/program conversion will not give me accurate results. I want to know that the form filled out is the one specifically referenced in my email.

Is the only way to accomplish this to use very specific logic on each program -- such as "clicked link in "email A", and within 10 minutes filled out "Form B" on "Landing Page C"? Or is there a less granular logic I can build in my master email template and more easily extend it to all other email programs?

Any insights are appreciated! What are you all doing to track conversions (form fills) for each specific email?

Thanks!!

Steve

[Balkar_Singh]

Hi Stephen,

You could use UTM parameters on LP where the form is placed, and use those links in your emails - here's a great post on best practices to do the same - ​

Hope this helps!

Balkar

[Dory_Viscoglio]

Hi Stephen, the easiest way would be to include a parameter at the end of each of the links in your emails, as Balkar has suggested. These parameters can then fill in hidden fields on your form, or just be used in the constraints of the form fillout trigger.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Dory and Balkar,

Will doing this help me report on the effectiveness of emails? Ultimately, I want to be able to add a new column into my email reports that says "Program Status" and would show the status (as either Sent and Bounced, Delivered, Opened, Clicked, Filled Out Form).

Thanks again!

Steve

[Balkar_Singh]

Hi Stephen,

Email performance reports have the number of sent, delivered, opened, clicked and other columns, but nor program status. If you want program status, you can get that visibility in members tab of the program, but you need to mark program status to Sent, Delivered etc via triggered campaigns to get that. The values (Sent, Delivered, Filled out Form) - can be defined by creating a new channel, and setting up the same in the program where such reporting is needed.

Hope this helps,

Balkar

[Anonymous]

Thanks so much Balkar!

I have set up the new channel and created the statuses I want to track, but the problem I'm having is setting up the logic on the master tempalte needed to update the status to "Filled Out Form".

Clearly, "fills out form on landing page" could not be the filter to update the program status unless that webpage is only linked to in the email. As far as I know, you would have to use "clicked in link in email AND filled out form" to get something close to an email conversion smart list (although that still might not be 100% accurate). Even if you were willing to use that clicks link and fills out form logic, you would have to do some pretty granular work every time you send out an email to keep this up.

I am wondering if there is a more scalable way to get this done.

Thanks again!

Steve

[Dory_Viscoglio]

Hey Stephen, you could have a hidden field on your form that would be populated via the link click (URL Parameters), and depending on the value of that field you would determine a success from an email, or some other source.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Dory -- that makes sense. By doing this, would you be able to look at a list of all emails that went out in a given year and then say "what percentage of people who received this email converted to form fill" using this tactic? I imagine that using this tactic would allow me to look at a list of form fills and determine how many of them came from emails, but I'm really interested in looking at it from an indivual email reporting perspective.

Thanks again!

Steve

[Raymond_Johnson · Accepted solution]

Hi Stephen,

If I understand correctly you have a program with a custom channel that includes the status "Filled Out Form". Since you are using a custom channel, you do need a matching smart campaign to update to that status. Your criteria for this status change is "clicks link in "email A", and within 10 minutes filled out "Form B" on "Landing Page C", this can be done fairly easily with a trigger smart campaign, without the need for any hidden or custom form fields.

The sticky part is that you want this trigger set at a global level so you don’t have to populate it very time you create new email program. The problem with that is, that once you try to set this at a global level you do start to need tokens and hidden custom form fields to identify matching emails and forms. Which, more than likely will need to be a 1-to-1 relationship, meaning that for every email you will need to create a new single use form and update all of the hidden values, URL parameters, and tokens every time. All of which in my opinion is far more work and cluttered then just updating the single smart campaign per email.

If you create a master copy of your program and every time you need to create a new program you clone form that it, will be far cleaner and easier than trying to set this at a global level. The logic I would use to set the status change is below, and the flow step would just be “Change Program Status” to “Filled Out Form”.

It’s not the answer you were hoping for but I hope it helps.