Campaign URLs are a method of taking a normal link and pimping it out with cool tags and identifiers that make it magical. It’s magical in the sense that every click on that link will be filtered and compiled into a special dashboard on Google Analytics that aggregates all the clicks on all the various links to various pages that are grouped into that campaign.
Why does anyone care?
This makes it much easier to report on the holistic success of a marketing or communications campaign around a specific goal or season. You can see a bird’s eye few of just how many people engaged in total with all the communication elements used in that campaign – all creatives, all placements whether it be an email, social, our own website, or outside press or partners. But in addition to that, you can drill down further into the campaign to see what worked best, both in terms of which placements generated the most traffic, to which creatives got more engagement.
You can compare which placements/creatives resonated with new users to your site vs returning users, and which generated traffic that stayed on the page and remained engaged, vs those who just bounced.
If used over time and analyzed after each campaign, these URLs can help guide marketing choices, design choices and identify areas to grow. So in essence, this method of magic can be a massive asset for identifying which marketing and communication efforts work best for bringing your particular message to the masses.
Heather Toner 