The easiest way to track your Google Ads campaigns in Recurly
Learn how to capture Google Ads data and send it into Recurly so you know which campaigns are generating your customers & revenue.
Do you know which of your Google Ads campaigns are actually producing customers and revenue?
What if you could see the exact origin of each customer you get, right down to the campaign and ad they clicked, right there in Recurly?
If you could do this, you’d know what campaigns and ads are generating customers and revenue, which will help you invest more in the correct ones.
In this post, we’ll walk you through how to use Attributer to capture Google Ads data in Recurly so you can create reports that provide information on the exact origin of your customers and revenue.
Why it's important to track customers and revenue from Google Ads
Say you own a company that sells project management software. To put the word out there, you run ads on Google showcasing the different term types people may be searching for, like 'Project management software' and 'Task management software.'
If you were using a tool like Google Analytics to count visitors and signups, you'd get probably get results like this:
| Spend | $2,000 | $2,000 |
| Visitors | 200 | 100 |
| Goal Completions | 20 | 10 |
If this was the only information you had access to—visitors and goal completions from spend—then it would look like your Task Management campaign was far outperforming your Project Management campaign and you’d like direct more of your budget to that.
But imagine if you could see the results all the way down to the number of customers and amount of revenue generated.
You’d get something like this:
| Spend | $2,000 | $2,000 |
| Visitors | 200 | 100 |
| Leads | 20 | 10 |
| Customers | 2 | 5 |
| Revenue | $8,000 | $25,000 |
You can understand the whole and real story if you can monitor campaign performance down to customers and revenue.
In this situation, the Task Management Campaign is doing better because:
- You received more customers from the Management Campaign (12) than from the Task Management Campaign (2)
- The free trial-to-customer conversion rate is more remarkable for the Project Management Campaign (60%) than the Task Management Campaign (14%)
- The average customer value is higher for the Project Management Campaign: $2,083 per customer vs. $1,142 per customer from the Task Management Campaign.
- The cost of acquiring a customer is lower through the Project Management Campaign: $416 vs. $714
As seen in the analysis above, you get a better grasp of what’s working and what isn’t when you can capture the source of every free trial and customer.
4 simple steps to capture Google Ads data in Recurly
Attributer makes it easy to capture Google Ads data in Recurly. Here's how it works:
1. Add UTM variables to your ads
The first thing to do to start capturing Google Ads data in Recurly is to add UTM parameters to your campaigns.
If the term UTM parameters are new to you, they're essentially extra bits of text that you add at the end of the URL that you send to people from your campaigns.
Hence, if, for example, the page you want to send someone is attributer.io/integrations/salesforce, then your final URL with UTM parameters may appear like this:
attributer.io/integrations/salesforce?utm_medium=paidsearch&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=brand-campaign
Even though you can create the UTM parameter whichever way you want, it is wisest to follow the general best practice for Google Ads, which is something like this:
- UTM Medium = Paid search
- UTM Source = Google
- UTM Campaign = The name of your Google Ads campaign
- UTM Term = The name of the ad group the ad belongs to
- UTM Content = The specific ad
Adding UTM parameters to your URLs is simple. Plus, free tools are available online to help you build them.
2. Attributer stores the Google Ads data in a cookie
When the Attributer script has been applied to your site, Attributer will scan your visitors for the UTM parameters you just added to your campaigns in step 1.
If Attributer finds them, it will appoint this specific visitor to ‘Paid Search’ and then store this information in a cookie in the user’s browser. This way, this particular data is always available when the user submits a form (i.e., starts a free trial of your SaaS product or buys your subscription offering).
3. Google Ads data is sent to Recurly
Every time a user enters information on one of your forms (like the sign-up form for your product or service), the Google Ads data is sent to Recurly along with all the data provided by this user, including their name, email address, company, etc.
The attribution data can be passed through to Recurly in two ways:
- Hidden fields in forms - By adding several hidden fields to your forms, Attributer can automatically write the necessary data to them. Once the form is submitted, this data is sent to Recurly along with the other information included in the form.
- Retrieved from the cookie - A simple line of javascript can be added to your registration process so that the UTM parameters are captured from the Attributer cookie and then sent into Recurly. This is beneficial if you allow users to sign up for your product or service through their Google or Facebook accounts, as this eliminates the need for the user to complete a form.
4. Run reports in Recurly
With the Google Ads data (e.g. the campaign they came from, ad group, keyword, etc.) and every customer now in Recurly, you can use this information to build reports.
Some of the reports you can run are the following:
- New Customers added each month by Campaign
- New Revenue added each month by Ad Group
- Average Revenue Per Customer by Ad
- Customer Lifetime Value by Channel or Campaign
- Customer Churn Rate by Channel or Campaign
- And many more!
These reports can be created inside Recurly, or you can sync your Recurly data into other analytics tools (like Profitwell and Chartmogul) to run even more detailed reports.
Why using Attributer is the best way to capture Google Ads data in Recurly
Why opt for Attributer when there are other ways to capture Google Ads data and send it to Recurly?
Here’s why:
1. Captures all traffic
Aside from being a reliable and proven tool for sending Google Ads data in Recurly, Attributer can also track all the other sources of customers & revenue, such Organic Social, Organic Search, Paid Social, etc.
Because of this, when you create reports in Recurly to see where your sign-ups and customers have come from, you’ll be able to determine the source of ALL your leads, not just the ones from your Google Ads campaigns.
This can be very helpful if, for example, your SEO efforts are producing more sign-ups and customers than your Google Ads campaigns. This information can help you invest correctly.
2. Attributer remembers the data as visitors browse your site
Other ways to send Google Ads data into Recurly require the UTM parameters to be present on the page where the form is submitted. This is a problem for most subscription applications as the page they send Google Ads traffic to is usually not the page a user creates an account on.
For instance, say someone clicks on one of your Google Ads and is led to a landing page for this campaign. After some deliberation, they decide they want your product or service and click the ‘Start Free Trial’ button, which takes them to a signup page to fill out your form and create an account. This means that the page they complete a form on isn’t the same as the one they initially landed on, so the UTM parameters you added behind your ads are lost.
It’s different with Attributer because it stores the UTM parameters in a cookie in the user’s browser. So no matter what page the user completes a form on, the UTM parameters will always be sent through.
3. Provides cleaner data
One of the dilemmas when using other raw UTM capturing tools is that your data can get messed up, making it challenging to create accurate reports.
For example, pretend some of your Google Ads campaigns are tagged with UTM_Source= Google.com (capital G), others with UTM_Source= google (lowercase, no domain), and others with UTM_Source= adwords.
If you send these raw UTM parameters into Recurly and use them to determine the number of sign-ups and customers from your Google Ads campaigns, it'll show up as three different sources and you'll have to calculate the real numbers manually.
This won’t happen with Attributer because it considers the possibility of capitalization and other inconsistencies and would appoint the leads to the Paid Search channel no matter what.
4. Attributer captures landing page data
Have you ever wondered how many customers and leads you make from your blog and other in-depth content pieces you worked so hard on?
Attributer can help with this as it captures channel data, the landing page (i.e., attributer.io/blog/capture-utm-parameters), and the landing page category (i.e., /blog).
With this data available, you can view how sections on your site are performing (e.g., your blog) in terms of producing signups, customers, and revenue.
Moreover, since Attributer captures both the landing page and landing page group, you can view your blog’s performance in two ways: as a whole section and as individual blog posts.
Wrap up
If you want to keep track of the number of sign-ups and customers you get from your Google Ads, then Attributer is an excellent way to do it.
It will capture the UTM parameters behind your Google Ad campaigns and send them to Recurly, which lets you run reports that determine which campaigns generate sign-ups and customers for your business.
In addition to this, Attributer will also provide you with data on leads that come from other channels. This way, you can track the source of ALL your leads (not just those from Google Ads). Ultimately, all this will help you make an informed decision regarding where to best invest to grow your business.
The best part is it’s free to get started! Begin your free trial today and experience what Attributer has to offer you.
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About the Author
Aaron Beashel is the founder of Attributer and has over 15 years of experience in marketing & analytics. He is a recognized expert in the subject and has written articles for leading websites such as Hubspot, Zapier, Search Engine Journal, Buffer, Unbounce & more. Learn more about Aaron here.