The Basics of Data Tracking & Analytics

Jamie Jean Schneider Domm

Digital Strategist, Social Media + Big Data, North American Division

If you can track it, you can measure it. As a result, you can gain a better understanding of your audience and their behavior, helping you adapt your strategies to more effectively reach them. Taking the time to review the performance of your digital communications and platforms enables you to better understand what is working and what needs to be changed, which empowers you to shape your digital communications strategy based on data. In the long run, this will save both time and money while maximizing impact.

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Avoid data paralysis

Time is valuable. Don’t get so caught up in the details of the data that you respond too late and miss an opportunity. Aim to stay ahead of the curve and be proactive instead of reactive in your strategies.

Most ministries and churches do not have the luxury of a dedicated analytics team, but you don’t need to dive too deep to get valuable information about how your website and campaigns are performing. Since most ministries are new to digital communications and analytics, we’re going to stick to a high-level overview. Go back to those key performance indicators we discussed in the strong foundations section, and use those as a guide for what to track based on your ministry’s goals.

Take the time to familiarize yourself with the terminology of the various data points. Most analytics tools define their terms within the platform. You can usually access these definitions by hovering your cursor over the question mark next to the data category.

The data that is most important to your efforts will be:

• Website performance data
• Social media platform analytics or insights
• Social advertising performance reports

Compare the information you find to the performance goals and metrics you established. Always look for areas of improvement and adjust accordingly.
Communicate with everyone involved by:

• Sharing report summaries with your team (both good and bad)
• Creating summary reports for management, committees or boards; keep detailed reports for yourself
• Problem-solving as a team; sometimes the best solutions are found outside your industry/department/specialty

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Use trackable links (a.k.a. UTM codes)

​UTM codes are segments appended to a URL that enable data platforms like Google Analytics to record information about website visitors and traffic sources. This is vital for social media managers as it enables you to measure and prove social media success or, alternatively, identify problems and adjust your strategies. Creating trackable links is surprisingly easy to do and will give you valuable insights into how well your digital communications and ads are performing.

What is a UTM code?
UTM = Urchin Tracking Module
Example: https://www.SDAdata.org/?&utm_campaign=DigitalGuide-2020&utm_source=Social-Media

UTM codes can be used in links shared via:

• Social media posts
• Email
• Online ads
• Websites
• Any link that drives traffic to your website

 
Creating your own trackable links
A trackable link has five building blocks:

1. The URL you want to direct people to
2. A ? to signify the start of the UTM code
3. & + UTM
4. The name of the promotional campaign the link is related to
5. The source where the link will be used
   

 
Example:

URL – https://www.sdadata.org/digital-discipleship-and-evangelism.html
Campaign – DigitalGuide-2020
Source – Social-Media

Put it all together using this formula:
Regular link + ?&UTM + Campaign (what event, month, where, etc.) + &UTM + Source (channel/platform)

Final result:
https://www.sdadata.org/digital-discipleship-and-evangelism.html?&utm_campaign=DigitalGuide-2020&utm_source=Social-Media

Be sure to always test your links!
After you create your trackable link, be sure to test it to make sure it works. It can be very frustrating for your audience to receive digital content with a broken link.

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Website performance data

The most common analytics tool for detailed website performance tracking is Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free tool for monitoring where your visitors come from and understanding how they interact with your website. It’s easy to set up a free Google Analytics account. Most website hosting platforms offer easy-to-follow directions to get you started. Once you are set up, take the time to familiarize yourself with the tool and make it a habit to check your website’s analytics each month.

Terms and definitions

• Session: A visit to the website during which the user is active
• Users: Number of unique people who have visited your website during a specific time frame
• Page views: Total number of pages viewed; repeated views of a page by a single user are counted
• Page/session: Average number of pages viewed during a session
• Average session duration: Average length of a session
• Bounce rate: The percentage of single-page sessions in which there was no interaction with the page

Key metrics to monitor

• Demographics: Age and gender
  Known data about your website visitors.
• Geo: Location
  You can see location by country, city, state, and metro area. You can also look at language if that is relevant to your ministry.
• Behavior: Site content – pages
  Here, you can determine your most popular and least popular pages.
• Behavior: Engagement
  Length of visit/depth of visit.
• Acquisition and traffic sources
  As communicators, we want to know what is working and what is not working to drive people to our website.
  
  

The channel (or traffic sources) breakdown

• Other = UTM codes or campaigns
• Direct (visitors typed in the URL)
• Social media (no tracking code)
• Referral from another website
• Search engine (e.g., Google, Bing, etc.)
• Paid search (results from Google Ads)

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Campaign performance

When you drill down deeper under campaigns, you can learn what aspects of a campaign performed the best by using unique UTM campaign names for the different components of your communications strategy. Google Analytics automatically picks up the campaign name and source from the tracking links. There is no need to do anything in Google Analytics to make this work! Just be consistent with the UTM codes you use, and be clear with your campaign and source names.

Remember, prioritize. You don’t have time to track everything, nor do you need to!

Once you have determined what you’re going to track to determine whether or not you’re reaching your goals, check performance monthly, and record your results in a way that enables you to see trends over time. Some analytics tools like Google Analytics allow you to create dashboards for easy access, while social media insights may require that you create your own charts and graphs. To learn more about Google Analytics, check out our beginner tutorial on SDAdata.org.

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Social media analytics or insights

Most social media platforms offer at least basic insights into the performance of a ministry’s account and who their audience is. Take the time to familiarize yourself with the analytics for your social media platforms and regularly check them to understand trends over time.

Pay particular attention to:

• Demographics. Who follows/likes your page by location, age, gender, and language.
• Engagement. This includes comments, likes, shares, messages, video views, etc. If you’re creating content that resonates with your audience, you should expect to see strong engagement rates.  
• Video views. A more reliable metric for gauging success than number of views is how many minutes are spent watching your videos and the number of thru plays. Many platforms count a few seconds of watch time as a view, so the number of views can be misleading. 
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Peak visit/engagement periods. Knowing when your profile traffic peaks and when your audience is most likely to engage with your content will enable you to schedule your content strategically. 

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Social advertising performance analytics

After you place your ads, don’t wait until the campaign is over to check performance. Monitor the ads closely to make changes and optimize as needed. Catch problems early on; otherwise, your money may go to waste. The great thing about social advertising is that you can edit campaigns at any time if they are not meeting your expectations. Make sure you understand what the numbers mean; most platforms have descriptions available in pop-ups next to the column head. 
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Be sure to:

• Understand where your ads are appearing and what locations have the strongest results.
• Determine who you are reaching by age, gender and location. You may find that your ad doesn’t resonate with who you thought it would or that your targeting was off.
• Monitor engagement/response. Are you getting the results you expected?
• Test images, messages, and audiences (A/B testing) to learn what type of ad and messaging performs the best with your target audience.
• Connect performance to Google Analytics and monitor visitor behavior using trackable links.

 
Some basic terminology you should know:

• Results: The number of times your ad achieved an outcome, based on the objective you selected
• Reach: The number of people who saw your ads at least once; reach is different from impressions, which may include multiple views of your ads by the same people
• Impressions: The number of times your ads were viewed
• Frequency: The average number of times each person saw your ad
• Cost per result: The average cost per result from your ads
• Cost per impression: The average cost per impression of your ads
• Relevance: An estimation of how well your target audience is responding to your ad
• Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of times people performed a click after viewing your ad
• Cost per thousand (CPM): The average cost per 1,000 impressions
• Cost per click (CPC): The average cost for each click

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Track so that you can learn

​Remember, if you’re going to take the time to put together a campaign strategy, take the time to track its performance so you can be better informed next time. There’s no point in testing strategies without tracking your efforts. If you don’t learn from your campaign, you can’t improve the next one. Social media and digital marketing are both an art and a science. Use data to inform your intuition. 

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