Do you know how to track the performance of your SMS campaigns? If not, you’ve come to the right place. SMS integration with Google Analytics is one of the best ways to track and analyze your SMS campaigns.
Google Analytics is by far the best web analysis service. It provides valuable insights into your online performance and can also analyze signals from other channels, such as SMS marketing.
Integrating SMS marketing with Google Analytics is the best way to measure the effectiveness of your SMS campaign.
In this blog post, we’ll explain how you can set up Google Analytics to measure the performance of your SMS campaigns.
Benefits of SMS Integration with Google Analytics
First, you’d better get familiar with the advantages of using Google Analytics to track SMS campaigns.
Easy Tracking Capabilities
You just need to add UTM parameters to your SMS links. Then, you can monitor the traffic coming from your SMS campaigns in the Google Analytics dashboard.
Google Analytics can easily track each click on the link with UTM parameters and subsequent actions on the linked website. In fact, you can monitor both your SMS campaign and your website using a simple dashboard.
Improving Engagement
If you analyze your recipient responses, you can identify what messages resonate with your audience. This will allow you to optimize your SMS to achieve higher engagement rates.
Targeting Marketing
Google Analytics enables you to analyze your customers’ behavior and segment them more accurately. Therefore, you can run more targeted and personalized SMS marketing campaigns.
Cost Efficiency
When you find the campaigns that yield the best results, you can allocate your marketing budgets more effectively. This way you can avoid wasting your money and time.
Comprehensive Performance Metrics
Google Analytics offers customizable reporting features and data visualization tools. Using its dashboard, you can create any type of report to understand various aspects of your performance better.
Step-By-Step Guide to SMS Campaign Analytics Using GA
Now, let’s review the process of tracking and analyzing your SMS campaign using Google Analytics.
Step1: Set Up A Google Analytics Account
First and foremost, you must create a Google Analytics account. Of course, to have an account on GA, you need to have a property like a website and verify the ownership of it so that Google Analytics allows you to track its performance.
Then you can add other channels like event and SMS marketing to measure their performance along with your website.
Here is how you can create a Google Analytics account:
- Sign Up for Google Analytics
First, visit the Google Analytics website and sign in with your Google account. Then, click on Admin and choose Create Account. After that, enter your account name and configure settings as needed.
- Create a Property
Now, you need to define your property on Google Analytics. To do that, in the Admin panel, click Create Property and enter details like website name, URL, industry, and time zone.
- Install the Tracking Code
Google Analytics has a strong data protection policy and doesn’t allow other people to track your campaign’s metrics.
So you need to confirm that you own the property. After creating your property, Google Analytics provides a Global Site Tag (gtag.js).
You just need to copy and paste this tracking code into the <head> section of your webpage.
Fortunately, the Site Kit tool on WordPress dashboards offers a straightforward integration between Google Analytics and your website.
- Verify Installation
To check the integration, it’s good to use the Realtime Report in Google Analytics. You can easily open your website in a new tab and perform an action like clicking a link.
Then, go to your Google Analytics dashboard and check if it appears in the Realtime Report.
Step 2: Create UTM Parameters for Your Text Messages
UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module and includes snippets of code that you attach to the end of your desired URL like the one below:
“https://www.yourwebsite.com?utm_source=sms&utm_medium=sms&utm_campaign=spring_sale”
You can use UTM codes to track specific sources of traffic to your webpage. As you see, UTM has some specific parameters like:
- Utm_source: It determines the traffic source like sms_campaign.
- utm_medium: This parameter shows the marketing medium or channel like sms or social media.
- utm_campaign: It allows you to name your specific campaign like spring_sale.
- utm_term (optional): This parameter lets you track keywords (useful if sending different SMS variants).
- utm_content (optional): It allows you to differentiate between variations of the same message.
Fortunately, Google offers a free UTM builder for your campaigns. You just need to go to the address and generate a trackable URL using your website URL and UTM parameters.
It’s good to test the URL on your browser, visit it, and confirm its traffic on Google Analytics.
Step 3: Shorten Links with Bitly via WP SMS
As you see, the UTM link is really lengthy and it’s not suitable for a short message. If you want your SMS to look nice, you’d better use link shorteners like Bitly which is offered by some SMS tools like WP SMS.
You first need to go to bitly.com and sign up for an account. Then, obtain a Bitly Access Token by going to API under Settings.
Now, you must log in to your WP SMS dashboard and go to:
- SMS → Settings → Advanced → URL Shortening via Bitly.
After that, enter the access token you obtained from Bitly and activate the Bitly integration by toggling it on. Finally, save your settings to automatically shorten all URLs in your SMS messages.
This way, you can be sure about the content of your messages to look professional without extra items.
Step 4: Run Your SMS Campaign Using WP SMS
It’s time to run your SMS marketing campaign. Before running your campaign, it’s good to take a look at WP SMS capabilities to make the most out of it.
Here are some of the most important features WP SMS offers:
- Audience segmentation
- WoCommerce notification
- Automation
- Scheduling and repeating
- Newsletter
- Link shortener
- GravityForm integration
- FluentCRM integration
- Dynamic content
WP SMS allows you to create SMS templates with variable items using the dynamic content feature.
For example, you can create an SMS sample for a new order like:
“Thank you, %billing_first_name% %billing_last_name%! Your order #%order_number% of %order_total_currency_symbol%%order_total% has been received. Track or manage your order here: %order_view_url%. Need help? Contact us at %billing_email% or %billing_phone%.”
This is an automated notification that will be sent to a customer when he/she has a new order. Along with these transactional text messages, you can run promotional SMS campaigns using WP SMS.
Step 5: Track SMS Campaign Performance in Google Analytics
Finally, you can go to your Google Analytics dashboard to track your SMS campaign. Here is where to find SMS campaign data in Google Analytics:
- Login to Google Analytics.
- Go to Reports → Acquisition → Traffic Acquisition. You can also search “Traffic Acquisition” in the search bar.
- Filter by Source/Medium.
You need to track total clicks, bounce rates, session duration, and conversions to measure the success of your SMS campaign using GA.
You can make comparisons between the traffic you receive from other channels like direct search and the traffic coming from your SMS campaign.
When you apply the comparison, Google Analytics will automatically list the traffic and activities obtained from various channels.
Also, Google Analytics offers a feature, Export this report to analysis, for further analysis using various types of visualization features and charts like:
- Table
- Pie chart
- Line chart
- Scatter plot
- Bar chart
- Geo map
It’s also helpful to click on Insights in the top-right corner to ask any Google Analytics questions about your SMS campaign performance. This is an intelligent feature that gives you summaries of your performance without the difficulty of analyzing the charts.
Optimize Future SMS Campaigns Based on Google Analytics
Google Analytics gives you this opportunity to review key metrics and understand how well your SMS marketing campaign performed.
Consider the following metrics and optimize your future campaigns accordingly:
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
CTR is the percentage of recipients who clicked on the link in your SMS. So if few people are clicking the SMS link, you need to find the problem in your message body, offer, and timing.
Try to make your text message more engaging and action-driven. Also, personalization has a great impact on the engagement rate of your SMS campaign.
It’s recommended to use the recipient’s name, %billing_first_name%, and other personal info to create a connection.
Another important item that affects CTR is your call to action. You need to use compelling phrases with enticing offers to encourage recipients to click on your link. For example, you can use the following CTAs:
- “Claim Your Deal Now“: This is more urgent.
- “Tap to Save 20%”: This CTA is more action-oriented.
Try to run A/B tests with different sending times to find the best timing for your text messages.
The following image shows typical time intervals that get maximum exposure:
Bounce Rate
It’s the measure of visitors who left the landing page without taking action. If your SMS analytics using GA shows a high bounce rate, you need to focus on your landing page and your offer.
Try to increase your page load speed and make it mobile-friendly because many people get rid of your offers if they face any difficulty in visiting your page.
Conversion Rate
The conversion rate is the percentage of people who take the desired action like purchasing your product.
If you have a lot of visits on your landing page but they don’t complete your desired action, you must revise your offer, page design, and description of your products and services.
To gain the trust of new customers and explain the benefits of your products/services in detail, it’s a good idea to add testimonials from previous customers. You should also offer a better perk, such as higher discounts.
Session Duration & Engagement Optimization
Sometimes, you want people to spend time on your web pages and engage with its various items.
If your SMS campaign Google Analytics shows that users don’t spend much time, you must work on your content and offers.
You can also direct them to the next step by adding CTAs such as “Continue Shopping” or “Checkout Now.”
Revenue & ROI Optimization
Last but not least, you have to measure your SMS campaign’s Return On Investment, which is the revenue of your campaign compared to its costs.
If you see that your SMS campaign doesn’t drive string sales, you might have to revise the whole strategy of your SMS marketing.
Of course, sometimes, you can achieve better results with tweaks like timing, better CTAs, more attractive page designs, and higher discounts.
Conclusion
SMS integration with Google Analytics is a smart method to track the performance of your SMS campaigns.
Using GA, you can constantly measure key metrics of your campaigns and optimize your strategy to get better results.
To do that, you need to create UTM links and shorten them using the Bitly integration on WP SMS.
Then, you can easily track it using Google Analytics and compare your SMS conversion with other channels like direct traffic.
This way, you can analyze your whole marketing strategy using a single dashboard and follow an omnichannel strategy effortlessly.
If you need more information about WP SMS features you can use its demo or contact us. So why wait? Get started right now!
FAQs
What is SMS Analytics?
SMS analytics is the process of tracking and analyzing your SMS campaign performance. In other words, you analyze metrics like delivery rates, open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.
Can Google Analytics track my SMS campaign?
Yes! Google Analytics can track UTM links you include in your text messages. This way, when your recipients click on the link, Google Analytics starts to record their behavior.
How to track SMS marketing?
First, you need to create UTM parameters for your SMS campaign. Then, you can add the parameters to your web pages and create UTM links. After that, you can shorten URLs to include in your text messages. Finally, try to analyze performance in Google Analytics to measure engagement and conversions.