JK1
Google Analytics for links that don't belong to me, is there a point?
I use MailChimp to send out my company's email newsletters. We have Google Analytics integrated so that we can measure performance. When MailChimp sends out an email, it will attach the various utm_ paramaters to all of our links. This includes links to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google Play, Apple.com and more. Is there any benefits to this? The links go straight to these other domains and do not pass through our site. So what exactly is getting tracked here? Nothing, right?
I'm wondering if there's something I'm missing, or if MailChimp is just applying utm_'s to every link instead of being smarter about it and only linking to domains that belong to me.
Hi James,
You're correct - no, there is no benefit to adding GA tags to links on domains that are not your own, because you won't be able to view the results in your GA account. However, it also doesn't hurt anything to include them... other than contributing to what I'm sure is a massive mess of data for the analytics teams at Facebook, Google, etc. to sort through with the countless websites and emails linking to those domains. :-)
MailChimp and many other ESPs just apply tracking to all links indiscriminately to make it easy for users. If that's easier for you than manually adding to each link in the HTML, then go for it! No harm done.
I typically apply my own Google Analytics to avoid that issue with Mailchimp. I feel it's not necessary to send GA to domains my clients don't own. Also, I prefer to define my own parameters for a cleaner implementation.
Hi James,
You can mention that is true, but then some of the ESP does track on what people did on social when they visited their website. However, UTM source certainly has nothing to do with that. Good question raised, we do often get requests to add UTM link tracking to all URLs while it just makes sense to some.
Kevin