Through tunnels and shafts we weaved

Krystle Hall, Campaign Officer 

Yesterday I attended an IDM Google Analytics training session in Teddington. We always keep abreast of the latest innovations and marketing trends in MARC and as the market landscape has become more digitally driven so too have our corporate campaigns. Google Analytics is an ingenious tool that I use to track both our digital and offline activity. It is particularly useful when it comes to campaign evaluations and future planning. I have used Google Analytics extensively in the recent Clearing and Winter evaluations and was really excited to learn more about how to utilise the data that we capture.

Other trainees that attended the course came from a range of backgrounds and industries including travel, the arts, retail, social media agency and a few media buying agencies. It was great to see what others are doing and to have the opportunity to share ideas and strategies for online advertising. Spending the day with like-minded individuals is always a pleasure. Sharing tales and experiences with your peers provides assurance that we all face similar challenges across different sectors and leaves you with a sense of reassurance that you are doing a good job.

There is nothing better than finding a real gem of a function that can make your job easier. Our trainer Mike was like a foreman leading us into the deepest depths of a mine, “Dig here chaps and you are sure to find some gold!” And indeed we did find gold and rubies and diamonds. Through tunnels and shafts we weaved, drilling further and further to reveal segment after segment, experiment tools, attribution modelling, multi-funnel channeling and organic traffic reporting. I was able to pick up a lot of shortcuts to produce my analysis, reporting and evaluations faster and to make them slicker.    

The greatest jewel uncovered for me was multi-channel funneling and being able to build my own channel grouping. This is going to allow me to track the journey of individual users, see the combination of channels that work together and how each one compliments the other without spending hours and hours trawling through the data. This is what I have really wanted to do but didn't know how. Just image… I will be able to produce a view per campaign and see exactly what combination of techniques worked and when. I can’t wait to set this up; shiny new toys for me to play with *the moment when you realise you are really sad*

We looked at some basic tracking coding, discussed PPC and SEO strategy and techniques for enhancing delivery and return, and we also looked at the limitations in the data collected, which is important to take into consideration. On the whole, I have a huge amount of insight that I can take back to the team in preparation for the next big campaign, Clearing. 

Type soonly,

Krystle