What are goals and how to use them?

Goals track your email marketing conversions received to your website from the emails you send out. This means you can track how many purchases, downloads, or visits have been made from people receiving your email.

How can I create a goal?

Before setting up a goal, you would first need to set up a profile:

1. Select Reports from the Dashboard.
2. Choose Goals under the Settings menu.
3. Click the button titled Create Goal.
4. From the Create new profile page, choose a profile name and type in the domain URL for your website.
5. Copy the tracking script shown and paste it on the HTML source of the pages you want to track. This would need to be placed as the last element immediately before closing the </body> tag.
   

6. Click Save to create this profile.

Once a profile is generated, you’ll be able to set up goals specifically for this profile and site. You can create multiple profiles as well. To create a goal, you would:

1. Select Create Goal.
2. Choose a Goal name to appear within the goal reports.
3. Set the Goal status as on in order to publish and make it active going forward.
4. Choose the Match type for your goal.
   – Exact match would mean the goal will only activate based on the contacts reaching the exact URL you select on the next step.
   – Head match would mean the goal would be able to trigger for contacts who reach any page under that domain where the tracking code has been placed.
5. Place in the Web address by selecting if your domain is http or https and then choosing the URL for the existing page you wish to track.
6. Choose the numerical value for your goal under Goal type. The value you assign to the goal is counted once for each time the criteria for the goal is met, and is cumulative. If a contact clicks a link in a message and reaches the goal page, this counts as 1 x value. Each time the contact repeats this path the value would be added again. Alternately, you can set additional parameters for the goal by selecting Track multiple variables. This is an advanced option which would require custom coding.
7. Select Save goal to enable this goal.

Where can I see the results of my goals?

The results for your goals are shown within the email analytics for the messages you’ve sent out. Anytime that a contact clicks a trackable link within your account to your website and then reaches one of the pages you are tracking, this will count as a met goal. To access this information, use the following steps.

1. Choose Reports from the Dashboard.
2. Select the type of message from Newsletters, RSS, Autoresponders, or Automation.
3. The Goals tab will show how many goals have been met for the message(s) chosen. You can click on that tab to open up the details.

This information is also available under Contacts >> Search if you select Advanced Search and choose Add Condition >> Contact Actions >> Goals.

Why are my goals not being tracked?

There are a few reasons why a goal may not be active or reflected within your statistics:

• The tracking code is not placed in the HTML source of the page or is not the last element before the closing </body> tag.
• Other third party tracking coding, such as Google Analytics, are also present on the page. This can interfere with the goal tracking.
• The email sent out was not built in our drag and drop editor or click-through was not able to track clicks within the distribution settings. If the images or HTML of the message was blocked, they would also need to be shown by the person receiving the email in order to track their activity through the cookies.

Still not working?

Our Customer Success Team will be happy to help. Make sure you have the following information on hand to speed things along:

• The name of the profile and goal
• The name of the message with the link used
• The email address which completed the goal