The best way to track Instagram Ads in Sugar CRM
Using Instagram Ads to promote your business? Learn how to track how many leads & customers you get with Attributer + Sugar CRM
If you're using Google Analytics on your website, it's probably doing a great job of showing you how many visitors you got from each of your ad campaigns.
But is it showing you how many leads & customers you got?
Probably not. To do that, you need to send Instagram Ads data into Sugar CRM so you can see how many leads you got from your ads, how many converted into customers, how much revenue was generated, etc.
Fortunately though, there is a way to do exactly that.
In this article, we'll show you how to use a tool called Attributer to track how many leads and customers you get from your Instagram Ads right from within Sugar CRM.
4 steps to track leads from Instagram Ads in Sugar CRM
It's easy to track how many leads & customers you get from your Instagram Ads when you use Attributer with Sugar CRM. Here's how to do it:
1. Add UTM parameters to your Instagram Ads
The first thing you need to do is add UTM parameters to each of your Instagram Ads.
If you haven't heard of them before, UTM parameters are just extra bits of text that you append to the end of the URL you are sending people to from your ad campaigns.
So if the page you are sending someone to is attributer.io/integrations/sugar-crm then your final URL (with UTM parameters) might look something like this:
attributer.io/integrations/sugar-crm?utm_medium=paidsocial&utm_source=instagram&utm_campaign=brand-campaign
You'll need to put whatever information you want to capture in Sugar CRM in the UTM parameters, but if you're not sure what that should be, the general best practice for Instagram Ads is as follows:
- UTM Medium = Paid social
- UTM Source = Instagram
- UTM Campaign = The name of your campaign
- UTM Term = The name of the ad set the ad belongs to
- UTM Content = The specific ad
Tagging your URLs with UTM parameters is easy and there are plenty of free tools available on the web which can help you create them.
2. Install Attributer and add some hidden fields
The next step is to install Attributer on your website.
After you've signed up for our 14-day free trial, we'll give you a small piece of code to add to your website (instructions on how to add it can be found here).
Once that's done, you then need to add a few hidden fields to the lead capture form on your site (I.e. your Contact Us or Request A Quote forms). These fields are:
- Channel
- Channel Drilldown 1
- Channel Drilldown 2
- Channel Drilldown 3
- Channel Drilldown 4
Attributer works with many of the most popular form builders (including Gravity Forms, Webflow Forms, Typeform and many more) and adding hidden fields to most of them is super easy (and you can find step-by-step instructions for dozens of form builders here).
3. Attributer writes Instagram Ads data into hidden fields
Now that you've set everything up, Attributer will begin to track where each of your website visitors has come from (including those that have come from your Instagram Ads).
It will then categorize each visitor into various channels (the same one's you see in Google Analytics, like Paid Social, Paid Search, Organic Search, etc) and storing this information in a cookie in the visitor's browser.
Then, when a visitor fills out one of the lead generation forms on your website, Attributer writes the attribution information (like the fact they came from your Instagram Ads, the campaign they came from, etc) into the hidden fields.
4. Instagram Ads data is captured in Sugar CRM
Finally, when the visitor submits a form on your site, the Instagram ads data is captured by your form tool along with the lead's name, email, etc. and it is sent to Sugar CRM.
Once the data is in Sugar CRM, you can use it to:
- Understand how many leads & customers you're getting from your Instagram Ads - You can use the data provided by Attributer to build reports that show how many leads you've generated from your Instagram Ads, how many have turned into customers, how much revenue you've accumulated, etc.
- Tailor your sales follow-up - You can use the data to understand what your leads are looking for and customise your outreach. For example, if you're a law firm & a new lead comes in from an Instagram ad that promotes your will drafting services, you can mention that directly in your follow up emails and calls.
What data gets captured in Sugar CRM?
With each form submission, Attributer sends through the following information:
1. Marketing channel data
Attributer passes through information on how the lead first arrived at your website.
As an example, imagine you're run a small law firm and you're doing Instagram ads to promote your will drafting services.
If someone clicked on one of your ads and submitted a form on your site, the following information would get passed through (depending on what UTM parameters you placed behind your ads):
- Channel: Paid Social
- Channel Drilldown 1: Instagram
- Channel Drilldown 2: Will Drafting Campaign (or the specific campaign name)
- Channel Drilldown 3: Retirement Home Ad (or whatever ad creative they clicked on)
2. Landing page data
Attributer also sends the initial landing page (e.g., sydneylawfirm/blog/best-will-drafting-services) and the landing page group (e.g., /blog).
This means you can see how many leads you're getting from various types of content on your site (like your blog as an example) as well as understand which blog posts are generating the most leads.
Why use Attributer?
Attributer is a piece of code that you place on your company's website.
When a visitor lands on your site, Attributer looks at where they came from and categorizes them into a standardized set of marketing channels (I.e. Paid Social, Paid Search, Organic Search, etc). Attributer then saves the data to a cookie in the user's browser.
When the site visitor submits a form on your website, Attributer inputs the marketing attribution information into the hidden fields behind your forms and the data is sent into whatever backend tools you have connected to your forms, such as Sugar CRM (but it could also be sent to your email marketing tool, a spreadsheet, your billing platform, etc).
Here are a few reasons why Attributer is the best way to track your Instagram Ads in Sugar CRM:
- Captures other attribution information - When a lead arrives on your site through channels like Organic Search, Organic Social, Referral, or Direct, Attributer captures this data. This means you can see where ALL your leads and customers are coming from, not just those from your Instagram Ads.
- Remembers the data - Attributer is specifically engineered to store UTM parameters in a cookie in the user’s browser, meaning that no matter what page the user completes a form on, the UTM parameters will always be passed through and you’ll have more accurate data on how many leads and customers you’re receiving from your various marketing campaigns - including your instagram ads.
- Cleans the data - Attributer was built to expect inconsistencies in UTM usage. As an example you might have utm_source=instagram in some campaigns and utm_source=instagram.com in others. Attributer is able to assign these leads to the correct channel (Paid Social in this case) regardless of the inconsistencies, meaning you have more accurate data to make better marketing decisions with.
3 example reports you can run when you send Instagram Ads data to Sugar CRM
Before I started Attributer, I led marketing and analytics teams at a variety of tech companies for 15+ years.
I've probably spent over $1 million in ads on Instagram (and other social networks) and run literally hundreds of reports to better how many leads & customers we were getting.
Here are a few of the reports I found the most beneficial:
1. Leads by channel
The leads-by-channel report helps you understand how many new leads you're getting every month broken down by how they first arrived at your site (I.e. Paid Search, Paid Social, Organic Search, etc).
This big picture view helps you understand where most of your leads are coming from and where you should focus to get even more of them.
For example, if the chart shows that most of your leads are finding you through Organic Search (like in the graph), but you're spending a lot of money on Instagram Ads, it might be a good idea to switch up your strategy.
2. Customers by network
If you're running ads on Instagram, it's highly likely that you're also running campaigns on Facebook and the various other networks owned by Meta (Facebook's parent company).
This report provides insights into the number of customers generated from each network and can help guide your decision-making regarding the allocation of your budget.
3. Revenue by campaign
This chart shows the revenue generated from your different campaigns currently active on Instagram.
It's a valuable tool for identifying campaigns that are actually delivering a positive Return on Investment (ROI) and can help you optimise your Instagram Ads spend to get more customers & revenue.
Wrap up
If you've been searching for an easy way to track how many leads & customers you get from Instagram Ads, then using Attributer with Sugar CRM could be a great solution.
You'll be able to easily see how many leads you're getting from your Instagram Ads as well as which specific campaign, ad set or ad they came from.
The best part? It's absolutely free to get started, and the setup process typically takes just around 10 minutes. So start your free trial today!
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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.