The Daily Carnage

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Crash Course on UTM Parameters + 5 UTM Tracking Tools

DECEMBER 19, 2021

UTM parameters are super helpful for tracking your marketing initiatives. While many marketers use them often, they might not be using them effectively. Time to strap in for the UTM crash course.

What are UTM parameters again?

UTM parameters are a set of five parameters that you can append to a URL that contain information about your marketing campaign. The five parameters are:

utm_campaign: The name of the marketing effort (e.g. launch, sale, etc.)
utm_source: Identify the source of the traffic (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc.)
utm_medium: Identify the medium used by a visitor to come to your site (e.g. email, social, cpc., etc.)
utm_content: Identify content or call to action (e.g. buy now, learn more, etc.)
utm_term: Used for paid search keywords.

To UTM or NOT to UTM?

Yes, totally use UTMs for: paid campaigns, social media marketing, email, print campaigns. Why? These types of sources are what need tracking since you can see the direct performance of your paid channels that have a single starting point.

No, you don’t need to use UTMs for: internal links, organic search, and natural refferers. Why? UTM parameters override a lot of that tracking information built into search engines or your own website’s analytics tracking sources and journeys.

How to manage your UTMs:

Wherever you are using to build your UTMs usually offers data tracking, but you can also do this manually in GA or spreadsheets. However, here are some other tracking tools to keep your UTM’s in one place:

Smart UTM Manager
TerminusApp
CampaignTracker.io
UTM.io
UTMLinkManager.com

Terminus has a 5 chapter course for beginners and experts all about UTMs. Check out the full course for all of the details in between like the different types of UTMs between social media and email.

4 Social Advertising Trends to Plan for in 2022

DECEMBER 15, 2021

It’s recap AND trend predictions season. Advertising can be a tricky beast as it is, but now more than ever we can see what’s working from the data. So after see what’s been going on the past year, AdWeek put together their top predictions for 2022. Let’s dive in:

Shopping journeys will become more complex: Shopping journeys are already hopping between channels and we expect to see more of it. As consumers spend more time on social media, they also have multiple touchpoints with a brand before making a purchase. The year 2022 will be the year of diversification and implementing a true multi-platform social advertising strategy. This will allow brands to meet their customers at every step of their shopping journey.
Creative will be more critical than ever: Creative has been undervalued in terms of personalization, and it’s coming back with force. Expect to see brands investing in their creative strategy more heavily. And the key to finding the right creative direction and best-performing ads is a robust creative testing plan. Testing will go hand in hand with this emphasis on creative.
Brands will open the data privacy dialogue: With the new privacy regulations, brands will be boosting the transparency and conversation about their data privacy with users. When consumers click “opt-in” or “track cookies,” they typically don’t understand why and that’s gonna change. Smart advertisers are going to build more trust and loyalty by simply opening the dialogue more.
AI will dominate, but with human touch: AI is booming but human touch is still required to make it effective. For 2022, expect to see more AI innovation and adoption in ad tech, with human augmentation playing a critical role.

What do you think of these predictions? See the full post in more detail at AdWeek.

The Science Behind Downtime and Creativity

DECEMBER 14, 2021

We asked you guys, “do you think you give yourself enough downtime?” And these were the results:

41% – Sometimes. But not as much as I need.
33% – WTF is downtime??
26% – Yes. I make it a priority.

So almost 75% of you are not getting enough downtime in your life. Well, science is saying you gotta do something about that. And that something is nothing. It is essential to make time to do nothing so you can stay sane, maintain your creativity, and boost your productivity.

Downtime is a big part of work-life balance that many people are neglecting, especially in creative industries. Marketers, creators, developers, and everyone in between get stuck in cycles of work, work, work, and then maybe some play, but no actual breaks.

The Definition of Downtime:

Downtime is unstructured time with no goal in mind and no targeted focus of attention.

Have you been doing downtime wrong? Podcasts, TV, and background noise might be our great ways to escape or speed up tasks, but experts say that doesn’t count. They suggest embracing the mind-numbingness of a task to give your brain a chance to chill.

The Science of Doing Nothing:

Studies show that thinking relies on two different brain networks, each with its own way of processing information. So how do you make them work together?

Brain network number 1 is the central executive network. This is the task and goal-oriented part of your brain. Brian network number 2 is the default mode network, also known as the imagination network. It comes to life when you’re not paying attention to anything in particular. Hence what makes downtime so important.

To get the most out of your networks, you have to let go and let your imagination network activate.

We get it. That’s not an easy thing to do in this busy world. Check out the full Forbes piece to learn more about ways to embrace downtime and the science behind supporting your creativity by doing nothing.

Takeaways From a Year of TikTok: 2021-of-a-kind

DECEMBER 13, 2021

TikTok proved that it’s here to stay and sourcing trends left and right. The video platform released their Year on TikTok: 2021-of-a-kind report. This recap lets you recall all the audio, entertainment, and advertising twists and turns that have happened along the way this year.

Let’s breakdown the biggest happenings in the world of TikTok in 2021:

In 2021, over 1 billion people tuned into TikTok.
For You feeds showed all sorts of diversity in content, but global trending content included comedy, food, and family videos.
Breaking down those family videos further: animals, significant other posts, and cute kids ruled those joy-bringing categories.
The music industry is shaped by TikTok and TikTok is shaped by audio. Some music is even altered to fit in with TikTok trends, and maximize sales with remixes.
TikTok celebrates the HECK out of their creators and is very creator-friendly as a platform. Lifestyle, technology, education, and fashion communities saw the most global creator growth.
It’s advertising-friendly, too. TikTok is a major source for retail and influencer markets with over 6 billion views of #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt.
TikTok’s tech boundaries have been pushed all year and their technology is only growing. They even added a new Q&A feature at the release of this report called “Ask on TikTok.”

We hope your brand isn’t missing out on this platform! TikTok broke down their stats and deets by US market and then globally. See their full report for all the trends, top videos, and creators they listed.

The Ultimate, 80+ Things Website Launch Checklist

DECEMBER 12, 2021

What’s poppin’ with your website? There is a lot of work hat goes into a well-designed, secure, solidly built website. There are the essentials, and then there are the little details in between. It can be easy to miss something.

Luckily, HubSpot put together a big ol’ list of things to check before, during, and after your website launch. So even if you have an established website already, you can still use this a guide to see if it is following all the best practices out there.

Now we can’t fit all of the checklist here, so we wanted to go through some of our favorites that often get overlooked when making websites:

Choose your CMS wisely. There are some options out there, but always make sure your CMS can organize your content, schedule it, and be optimized for SEO in a way that your team can manage.
Strategize your conversion paths. A website is an essential (usually the most essential) part to feeding your funnel. You’ll need to figure out exactly what actions you want users to take or how you’ll capture their information for your sales team.
Make sure it’s all trackable. You don’t want your website to be left in the dark. Tracking is how you will figure out things are working, so you’ll need analytic software.
Test it again! User experience and content are never to be set in stone. A/B post-launch and periodically to make sure you’re fine-tuning your site’s pages.
Compliance in all the right places. This can include being accessible for users with disabilities (WAI-ARIA), announcing if the website uses cookies, having the right usage rights, have terms and privacy policies visible to website visitors, and PCI compliance.

Check the full HubSpot list for all of the dirty deets to check out for your website.

4 Accessibility Misconceptions from Brands

DECEMBER 8, 2021

Our job as designers, researchers, and product managers is to make our work accessibile. There are no downsides to accessibility and still brands are getting it wrong. Why is that?

There still some corners that are easy to cut because of misconceptions about accessibility. Let’s get into the biggest four:

“Accessibility only helps a fraction of my users”: According to the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 1 billion people worldwide, 15% of the total population, live with disabilities. Those aren’t small numbers, people.
“Building in accessibility isn’t worth the time”: If you “bake in” accessibility into projects from the beginning, it reduces rework. So standardizing accessible components increases operational efficiency. Plus, accessibility spurs innovation. Touch screens, text-to-speech, audiobooks, electronic toothbrushes, and voice controls were all born out of accessibility.
“We don’t NEED to be compliant”: Yikes! That’s not just a misconception, it’s a mistake. Accessibility lawsuits are no joke and have seen an increase over the years. Compliancy ends up saving you from that risk. We can’t stress enough that building in accessibility from the start will save you both time and money.
“There is no ROI on accessibility”: Those 61 million people is a significant untapped market if your digital properties aren’t accessible to them. Improving accessibility issues could end up impacting your revenue overall.

So it’s time to shake off the misconceptions and keep accessibility from being an afterthought in your work. Own accessibility as an essential part of your process and a shared responsibility of the team.

For specific examples and advice on how to bring accessibility to the forefront, check out the full Customer Experience Magazine article.

10 Contact Form Design Best Practices

DECEMBER 6, 2021

Forms are often essential to sites needing to grab the information of users to send them more materials later, keep them in their funnels, or have them sign up for all sorts of things.

If you have forms and landing pages that you want people to fill out, here are 10 best practices to know:

Fool-proof your forms: It’s better to be crystal clear when possible. Contact for what? Explain what this form is being used for or where it is going.
Add all the hints: So there’s adding some “why” behind a contact form, but it’s also helpful to add the “how” along the way, too. Point out extra information for fields with microcopy.
Test, test, test: As with everything involving a web experience, test your form like a visitor.
Think before you CAPTCHA: Unless you’re getting many spam responses, CAPTCHAs can be clunky. We suggest invisible ReCAPTCHAs instead
Don’t use a form in a pop-up window: It’s just not something users dig.
Not every field should be required: Give your visitors some flexibility because no one likes groaning when they have to fill out every single field.
Keep it simple: Keep it short, simple, and in context.
Have an open-ended field: As we said, keep your forms simple, but leave one open-ended question for the thoughts, comments, ideas of your visitors.
Be consistent: Whatever text formatting you follow (caps, size, lowercase, etc.), make sure you follow through.
Keep it ethical: Duh, phishing is bad. Stealing passwords, credit card numbers, etc. is illegal and can cause you a lot of trouble. Use your forms for good.

Jotform is a custom form-builder that knows a thing or two about forms. Check out their full post for more examples on form how-tos.

Google Tag Manager vs. the Global Site Tag

DECEMBER 1, 2021

Google Tag Manager and the Global Site Tag can seem interchangeable, but they are two different tools. Luckily, MeasureSchool has a full guide on the similarities and differences between them.

So, what are we talking about here?

Google Tag Manager: is a tag management system that acts as a common tool for running all different tracking tags.
The Global Site Tag (gtag.js): is a tracking code that tracks information to forward to other Google tools like Google Analytics. You install it in the header section of your website.

Okay…what’s the difference?

So both methods can deploy tracking points to a variety of Google tools. But let’s get into how they are different:

Third-party marketing tool compatibility – Despite the name, the Global Site Tag only plays nice with Google Tools and the Google Tag Manager allows you to send data to any tool that has a JavaScript-based tracking code.
Functionality – gtag.js is very straightforward as far as functioning with data, but the Google Tage Manager has more features, especially for testing or debugging.
User Interface – Google Tag Manager requires very little coding knowledge with a more user-friendly interface (with features like those previously mentioned). With the gtag.js, you’ll need to do all your site’s tracking coding on your own, so it’s an invisible part of your site.

Cool. So which one do I use?

Both have benefits depending on your tagging purposes. For the most part, Google tag Manager is easier for marketers to navigate, especially without developer help. Global Site Tag is a mini segment of Google Tag Manager, so it’s just not as flexible as Google Tag Manager. If you have a need for manual tag set-up, though, gtag.js is the move.

To see more technical examples and how-to’s (and no-no’s), check out MeasureSchool’s full article with an accompanying video.

Advocacy Marketing: How to Do It

NOVEMBER 30, 2021

You can’t buy someone’s love (most of the time). This is also true for customer advocacy marketing, too which isn’t as structured as other similar marketing methods like influencer or ambassador marketing. It’s more about principles for your customer base.

Here are some ideas for your next advocacy strategy:

Provide an excellent product or service: Duh, right? It doesn’t matter how fantastic your marketing is without a top-notch product or service. Customers won’t become advocates and fans unless it’s worth it.
Deliver an unforgettable brand experience: Product? Check. Experience? Double-check. Every interaction customers have with your business contributes to their experience. The better these experiences are, the more likely a customer will share one.
Use a customer-first mentality: Show your customers that you value their opinion. Publicly responding on social media, publishing content based on customer suggestions, and asking questions are great ways to show them you’re actively listening. But the best way to stay customer-first is to continue to deliver on your promises as a brand.
Make it easy on your customers: Make it as easy as possible for your advocates to share information (and easy for you to track, too). Provide hashtags, sharable social links like ClickToTweet, or links with pre-written content.
Seek out your advocates: So you can keep on doing your best as far as brand operations, but sometimes you have to seek advocacy more actively. You can go the Net Promotor Score (NPS) route and survey your customers regularly. You can also go the social media route using listening tools or make a UGC campaign.

HubSpot’s full blog post has a bunch of real brand examples to see these strategies in action, so click below to read the full piece.