What is conversion tracking?

Conversion tracking is the process of measuring marketing asset performance throughout the customer journey. For example, conversion tracking can tell you how many people bought one of your products from your online store after they clicked on a promotional email or SMS.

The purpose of conversion tracking is to tell you which events led to a conversion. This information can help you allocate marketing budget to efforts that generate the most revenue.

How to set up and use conversion tracking

1. Set your goals

Your business goals will define your conversion events. In ecommerce, the most obvious aim is to boost sales, in which case a purchase is a conversion. But there are plenty of other events that can represent a conversion, such as:

Website form sign-ups
Ad interactions
Opt-ins for SMS and email marketing
App installations and in-app actions

2. Map out your conversion flows

Conversion tracking can reveal all the touchpoints that lead to a purchase, which are numerous and varied in a non-linear customer journey. For example, someone may first land on your website via a paid search ad, then complete a sign-up form, then only complete a purchase after receiving a promotional message 6 months later.

As you’re setting up your conversion tracking, identify all the likely touchpoints of your brand’s customer journey so you can properly attribute revenue to the right source. In most scenarios, while one channel may be directly responsible for a conversion, other channels are assisting in the process. Learn more about attribution models and attribution windows and why they matter.

3. Enable conversion tracking on your chosen platform

This will depend on the analytics or marketing platform you use. For example, Klaviyo tracks conversions for emails and SMS campaigns and flows automatically, while Google Analytics casts a wide net and requires you to create a conversion action before it can be tracked.

To track conversions on your website, you’ll need the ability to add code to your website’s back end. This will allow you to either specify a page load as a conversion or track clicks on specific buttons, links, or customized event tags with value tracking, transaction IDs, etc.

One of the most common ways to track website conversions via Google Analytics is through Google tags.

4. Analyze conversion data by source

You can analyze your conversion data in a multitude of ways, but one of the most common and useful is to examine it by source.

Cooperative, multichannel attribution can help you get a sense of which channels are contributing to sales. For example, when you know email is bringing in 50% of your revenue but it’s also assisting with your SMS-attributed revenue, you’re getting the full story about your owned marketing program as a whole.

Note that this is more relevant when you’re investing in multiple channels to drive traffic and revenue on one source, such as your website. If you’re only using one or two channels, it’s best to simplify your attribution tracking as much as possible.

5. Optimize your marketing strategy

Use what you’ve learned from conversion tracking to improve your marketing strategy. Allocate more budget to channels that are working best for you. Understand where visitors seem to get stuck or drop off, and make changes to improve that part of your customer journey.

For example, if you find that a product page on your site isn’t converting well, find out why people might be leaving. Maybe the checkout process is confusing, or the page is loading too slowly. Fix these issues to make it easier for customers to complete their purchases.