We get it - tracking your campaigns is key to understanding how well they're performing and how customers are interacting with them. That’s why we’ve introduced UTM tracking within Ticketsolve! With this feature, you can capture UTM parameters from your URLs and bring them directly into Ticketsolve, allowing you to see which purchases were made through specific campaigns.
How UTM tracking works
Campaign tracking is actually pretty straightforward. Systems like GA4, and now Ticketsolve, use UTM tracking codes to monitor how your campaigns perform. In simple terms, UTM codes are little bits of text added to the end of a URL. Ticketsolve can then pick up this extra info to tell you where customers came from, what campaign drove them, and, most importantly, if they made a purchase as a result.
Instead of using this link in your campaign:
https://myvenue.ticketsolve.com/shows
You would use this tracking link:
https://myvenue.ticketsolve.com/shows?utm_source=newsletterOct24&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Winter24season
See the difference? The UTM trackers added to the URL are:
- utm_source=newsletterOct24 (where the traffic came from, e.g., a newsletter)
- utm_medium=email (the medium, in this case, email)
- utm_campaign=Winter24season (the specific campaign being tracked)
Now, when a customer buys a ticket from this link, you’ll know they came from the October 2024 newsletter via email, and it was for the Winter 24 Season campaign. Easy peasy!
How to build tracking URLs
It’s easier than you might think. You can use third-party tools like Google Campaign URL Builder - it’s free and super simple to use. We’ve also written a handy help article on how to use the Google Campaign URL Builder. Just plug in your campaign details, and it’ll generate the tracking URL for you.
In Ticketsolve, we currently support tracking the following UTM parameters:
- mc_eid
- mc_cid
- utm_source
- utm_medium
- utm_campaign
- gclid (Google Click Identifier)
- msclkid (Microsoft Click Identifier)
- utm_term (for tracking keywords)
- utm_content (to track different content within the same ad)
- fbclid (Facebook Click Identifier)
- utm_id
- utm_social
- dclid
- gbraid
- wbraid
If there’s something specific you want to track that’s not on this list, let us know! We’re happy to add more based on your feedback.
Tracking UTMs from your own website
To track UTMs across your website and into Ticketsolve, you’ll need to use Google Tag Manager (GTM). Our handy tag will pass the UTM codes from your site to Ticketsolve so you don’t lose any tracking.
If you’re new to GTM, check out our help article on How to set up Google Tag Manager. Already using GTM? Make sure you're on the latest version and have the Cross Domain Tag enabled.
Reporting on UTMs in Ticketsolve
We’re super excited about this new feature, and we wanted to get it into your hands as soon as possible. For now, you can find UTM data in the Your Reports section. While we work on integrating this info into our standard reports, you’ll need to build custom reports. Just make sure to include Formatted Trackers when downloading your data!
Create a Your Report
Let’s say you're running a couple of campaigns across platforms like Facebook, Google and email. You created unique URLs for each campaign and platform with UTM trackers so you can see where your customers are coming from.
After sending out the campaign, give it a few days and then hop into Ticketsolve to report on your success via Your Reports. Here’s how:
1. Go to Reports > Your Reports.
2. Click Add New and create a new Line Item Facts report. (If you're not familiar with Your Reports, read our guide on How to use Your Reports).
3. Add your Filter(s). This might be 'saw shows' to report on one specific show only, or a 'purchased on' filter to look at sales across events over a date range.
4. Once you've added your Filters, we'd recommend going across to the Summaries tab to check that the data like shows, orders and tickets included looks accurate.
5. Now to get the UTM tracking data, you'll need to download the report data as a CSV.
Download the Your Report data as a CSV
1. Click on the 3 dots icon and select Download.
2. Select the Line Item Facts tab, as we want to download the individual line items (1 line per ticket).
3. Now you can select the data you want to download in the CSV. We'd recommend including the below, but it's up to you - the one you must download to get the UTM tracking information is 'Formatted Trackers'.
- Ticket
- Quantity
- Total
- Order
- Order number
- Order total
- Order type
- Order created on
- Formatted Trackers
- Show
- Show name
- Event datetime
- Customer Contact
- Postcode
4. Click to Download CSV or Send via Email (you'll only be able to download directly if the report is under 5000 lines).
5. Open the downloaded CSV on your device. At first, your CSV will probably look a bit like this:
6. To make it easier to read, add some simple formatting and styling:
- Expand the columns so they are wide enough to reveal the #### data.
- Expand the 'Formatted trackers' column so you can see the full info.
- Select the 'Formatted trackers' column and select Wrap Text.
- Add some table styling.
7. Once you've played around with the formatting and styling, you should be left with something like this:
In this example, if we look at the 'Formatted trackers' column, we can see tracking for Facebook campaigns, Google Ads, Mailchimp email campaigns, and marketing efforts targeting local 'what's on' listings.
This report will give you a detailed breakdown of your orders including the quantity of tickets, which postcode customers came from, how much they spent, whether they booked online or at the box office, and, crucially, which campaigns led to those sales. Armed with this info, you can tweak future campaigns for even better results.
Want to know more?
- Google URL Builder: How to track custom campaigns with Google Analytics
- How to set up Google Tag Manager
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