Email Traffic: Why It’s Important (+9 Tips)

what is email traffic and how to increase email traffic

Email traffic in digital marketing is the kind of traffic that comes from your email marketing campaigns. It’s one of the most valuable sources of traffic to your website because it comes from existing leads and customers.

Take note that not all links in your emails go to this traffic. To make sure it appears properly under this channel grouping, you have to integrate your email marketing software with Google Analytics or manually tag your links with UTM parameters — and make sure the medium parameter is exactly “email.”

If neither one of those two options is met, the link will be tagged under direct traffic. Also, UTM tags are case-sensitive. So use “email” without the quotes as small case.

Importance of Email Traffic

Traffic coming from your email campaigns is one of the most valuable traffic you can get.

Why?

Because this traffic comes from your existing leads and/or customers. After all, they would’t receive any emails from you if they didn’t opt in your email list, right?

These people behave differently than cold traffic primarily because they are further along the buyer’s journey.

They are more invested in you and your company. They know you more than people who are hearing from you for the first time.

This is the main reason why email marketing remains the favorite channel among marketers — it brings the highest ROI across different channels.

Uses of Email Traffic

Email traffic tells you how engaged your current leads and customers are.

It’s a great indication of which messaging is working in your email marketing.

If you are using different marketing emails and tracking them properly, you can see the performance of them in your Google Analytics account.

As you already know, there are two primary metrics to look at when it comes to email marketing: open rate and click-through rate (CTR).

Open rate indicates your subject line convinced your reader to open it; while CTR tells whether your copy/messaging itself is relevant and compelling for the reader to take action — click the link and do whatever you want them to do.

How to Increase Email Traffic

Below are some tips to increase your email traffic. While this list is not exhaustive, these should be enough to get you started.

1. Continuously build your email list

Email lists naturally decay at ~22.5% per year. What that means is a contact in your email list will be practically useless in 4 years.

This could be for a number of reasons. People change jobs and with that change, their email addresses. Your content might become irrelevant to them for no fault of your own. And many more.

Make sure that you continuously generate new leads so you replenish your email list. Here’s a simple 7-step process to generate leads online.

2. Don’t rely on newsletter signups as your lead generation

First, email marketing is not limited to newsletters.

Newsletters are the worst kind of lead generation tactic you can use on your website.

Why?

Because it doesn’t add any value to your readers. They don’t benefit from it. Most businesses only use this to continuously send discounts and promos.

Sample marketing offer to increase email traffic

Instead, create marketing offers. Distribute them on social media and use them in ads to reach a wider audience (like the image above).

3. Use a lead management strategy

As part of the 3 pillars of email marketing, a lead management strategy allows you to segment your email list allowing you to personalize your messaging later on.

Segmentation is what separates successful marketers from the annoying ones.

4. Send relevant email

This builds on the lead management strategy above. What this means is once you are able to segment people coming in your list, send only relevant email to those people.

For example, in my own lead management strategy, I determine if the person coming in my email list is a business owner, a marketer, or others.

Sample email for persona segmentation

Once I know who they are, they follow the next tip…

5. Create lead nurturing campaigns per segment

I create lead nurturing campaigns per segment. This way, I only send them relevant emails.

Let’s go back to my example in the previous point.

When people tell me they are a business owner, they are enrolled in a ‘business owner nurturing campaign’ and if they tell me they are a marketer, they enter a ‘marketer nurturing campaign.’

This can be as simple or as complicated you like. You can start with only one lead nurturing campaign. Then, once you build that out, create another one. This way, future leads will then enter nurturing campaign A and some will enter nurturing campaign B.

lead management and segmentation

I wrote a step-by-step guide on how to create your own lead nurturing campaign here.

Feel free to bookmark that page as I’m sure you’re going to go back to it a couple of times.

6. Don’t forget to add UTM tags

As I mentioned above, don’t forget to add the proper UTM tags in the links in your email. Otherwise, when people click on links to it, they will not be tracked under email traffic.

If your email marketing software has an integration with Google Analytics, use that. This ensures all links you are using are tagged automatically.

But if not, you can use the URL Campaign Builder by Google. You fill out the fields then copy the link it provides.

Google's Campaign URL Builder

7. Add links to your email

While this may seem natural, there are some people I’ve spoken with who don’t include links in their email.

And make sure they are working, too!

If you’re sending a simple blog article summary/roundup, that email usually has two things: copy and an image.

For example, here’s Pocket’s daily digest email…

Pocket Email with Links

For each blog article, there are 3 links to it: the image, the title, and the save to pocket.

Bottomline: Add links wherever you can.

8. Include links to your articles in your email signature

One other tactic you can use is to add the links to your website in the email signature.

If your marketing and sales teams are aligned, this can be the campaign priority for the quarter. Or maybe a big event coming up soon.

What will happen is all your marketing and sales team’s email signature use the same copy and link to the registration page.

Just make sure you add the proper UTM tags so they get tagged under Email Traffic in Google Analytics. Of course, this can be easily done through an email signature manager, but if you don’t have one, it’s best to create a template then send it out to the rest of the team. That way, they just copy and paste it instead of re-creating it themselves.

9. Link to your articles in 1:1 email conversations

You use email every day to communicate with your customers, vendors and suppliers, contractors, and many more.

If your company is truly creating helpful content, you shouldn’t hesitate to link to them and include them in your email communications.

It’s as simple as, “hey, we recently published a an article on lead nurturing. I remember that you mentioned you were having trouble creating a lead nurturing campaign a few weeks ago. Hope this helps. (Insert link here)

So, What Are You Going to Do Next

Your email list is one of your most valuable assets. It’s the only one you actually own (vs Facebook or any other social media).

Increasing your email traffic gives you a high chance of succeeding because it’s an indication of a highly engaged audience.

A highly engaged audience is more likely to buy from you. And that means sales for you so you can grow, expand, and deliver more value for them.

Are you using any of these tips? Let me know in the comments below.

What Is Lead Nurturing: How to Stop Selling Yet Get Amazing Results

What is Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing is the process of sending automated emails to people in your email list that meets certain conditions with the main goal of making them take action.

Lead nurturing comes after lead generation. It’s part of the second pillar of effective email marketing, which is lead management.

What is Lead Nurturing? 

Lead nurturing in digital marketing is a tactic where you send automated, but highly-relevant, emails (or other forms of communication) with the end goal of making influencing them to take an action. 

With modern technology, this is actually not limited to emails anymore. Some organizations use chatbots, SMS, and other messaging tools to nurture their leads. For the purpose of this article, I’ll just use email; but whatever you can do with email, you can do with other types of communication channel.

If you ever bought something online, or subscribed to a newsletter, or signed up for a course or content download, you have probably experienced lead nurturing yourself — whether or not it was effective, that’s another topic.

The Current State of Lead Nurturing and It Needs to Change

When you gave your email address (along with other information) to these companies, what was the first email you receive? Most probably, it’s some sort of a thank you email.

But then, the next email you receive is all about them — about how great they are and how they start selling you things right away.

This is the biggest reason why a lot of marketers fail at email marketing. They don’t know how to nurture the leads properly. Sure, some people will buy right now. But most won’t.

Related: Biggest Reason Digital Marketing Campaigns Fail

If your organization is doing this exact same thing, don’t worry. You’re normal. Because 99% of organizations are like this, it’s so easy to stand out.

Just stop selling.

That’s right. Do not sell.

I went through this issue in detail when I discussed the buyer’s journey. If you’re not familiar with the topic, read it until you understand it. Mastering the buyer’s journey is probably one of the things that separate mediocre marketers from the great ones. Another great resource is the different stages of awareness to understand why you should not sell to people right away.

What People Are Actually Looking For

Your customers are looking for something to solve a problem/need/want. While you may think your products/services are the greatest and can actually help them, your customers don’t think of you that way.

From their perspective, if you don’t add value and just ask for their money, that’s what they’re going to think of you — that you only care about their money.

Not them. Just their money.

It’s worth reading that paragraph again.

Ask yourself this question: “Would you want to do business with someone who only wants your money?”

And if you think that you’re the only choice out there, just remember that no industry is safe from competition. While your customers “might not” have any choice now, the moment a new competitor offers a similar product, they’ll just switch over in the blink of an eye.

So, What Are You Going to Do Next?

Implement a lead nurturing sequence that is educational in nature. Stop selling. Add value. After you do that, then and only then will you have the right to sell to them.

And if your prospects and leads don’t buy now, you don’t stop with the lead nurturing emails. Continue adding value to their lives. This is the basics of the online conversion path.

Here are 3 lead nurturing examples from companies you can copy. I broke down that they did great and what they can further improve on.

In addition, you might want to review your arsenal as a digital marketer. Did you know that there are 12 different types of marketing email you can send?

Since majority of companies start selling right away, it’s so easy to stand out.

Do you need help with creating lead nurturing campaigns for your company? Let me know in the comments below.

Default Channel Groupings in Google Analytics: Technical Definition Plus Sample Use Cases

What are the Default Channel Groupings in Google Analytics

Default channel groupings in Google Analytics is what you call the different traffic sources in your Google Analytics account. They are comprised of the following:

  • Organic Traffic
  • Direct Traffic
  • Social Traffic
  • Referral Traffic
  • Email Traffic
  • Paid Traffic
  • Display Traffic, and the
  • Others Traffic

Google Analytics Channel Groupings Technical Definition

Some of the default channel groupings are self-explanatory like email and social, but there are nuances as to how Google Analytics categorizes them.

If you want to be technical, Google defines these as…

ChannelDescription
DirectSource exactly matches direct AND Medium exactly matches (not set)OR Medium exactly matches (none)
Organic SearchMedium exactly matches organic
SocialSocial Source Referral exactly matches Yes OR Medium matches regex ^(social|social-network|social-media|sm|social network|social media)$
EmailMedium exactly matches email
AffiliatesMedium exactly matches affiliate
ReferralMedium exactly matches referral
Paid SearchMedium matches regex ^(cpc|ppc|paidsearch)$ANDAd Distribution Network does not exactly match Content
Other AdvertisingMedium matches regex ^(cpv|cpa|cpp|content-text)$
DisplayMedium matches regex ^(display|cpm|banner)$ORAd Distribution Network exactly matches Content
(unavailable) or (other)Sessions don’t match any channel description

You can find more about them from Google’s Help Center.

Depending on your website’s traffic, these default channel groupings might not appear in your reports. For example, here’s a screenshot for one Google Analytics account I’m managing.

Default Channel Groupings Inside a Google Analytics Account

You’ll notice that there is no Display Traffic or the other channel groupings from Google.

This simplifies what you see in the reports so you can focus on the things that matter the most — the kind of traffic that you already have instead of what you don’t have.

Most Common Default Channel Groupings in Google Analytics Explained

1. Organic Traffic

Organic traffic is the kind of traffic that comes from search engines. When people search for something on Google (or Bing, or any other search engine), a list of websites shows up. This page is called a search engine results page (or SERPs). When people click on one of these results, that visit is counted in the organic traffic of that website.

It is the best, most sought-after traffic by marketers. It’s the main reason why content marketing is on the rise today. The results of organic traffic are exponential.

Organic Traffic Growth in 1 Year

When marketers talk about SEO, it’s all about increasing the website’s organic traffic. Just remember that SEO is not static. Changes happen. A lot.

No matter how optimized your website is, if you don’t create and distribute content, you will never rank high on Google and other search engines.

Example: Jon searches in Google for the keyword “email marketing statistics 2020.” He sees the results of his search. He clicks on one of the results and your website page on Email Marketing Statistics 2020 loads.

2. Direct Traffic

Direct traffic is the kind of traffic that comes from people directly typing or entering your website’s URL on their browsers. If someone bookmarks your page, then later goes back and open it, that’s counted as direct traffic.

It’s usually an indication of brand awareness or repeat visits. After all, it’s highly unlikely that you visit a website by typing a URL if you haven’t heard of the brand somewhere else, or know it’s URL for that matter.

From the user’s perspective, direct traffic usually comes from bookmarks or autocomplete in the URL — which is similar to typing it directly. The only difference is that you had a little help from your browser.

Example: Jon realizes that Christmas is around the corner. He opens up Safari and starts typing “amaz” then the browser autocompletes the URL to amazon.com. He hits enter and Amazon’s website shows up.

Caveat: see email traffic below

There’s also another instance where direct traffic might increase without being the result of people typing directly your website. It involves the transfer of traffic from a secured site (https) to an unsecured site (http).

Example: Jon is browsing this particular page. Then he clicks on a link to http://domain.com. Since my website is secured and the target site is not, GA will count Jon’s visit as direct traffic instead of referral (see referral traffic below).

3. Social Traffic

Social traffic is the kind of traffic that comes from social networks. This happens when people share a link on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. and you click on it.

Quora, Reddit, and other similar sites also fall under here. But it depends on how Google categorizes the site. In short, it depends on the document referrer field and matches the value there to a list of known social networks. If it doesn’t have a match, it will fall under referral Traffic.

Example: Jon is scrolling on Facebook and sees a Tasty video about pasta cooked 4 ways. He sees how it’s made and thinks to himself, “I can do that.” He clicks on the link in the post to see the full recipe. Tasty’s website loads with the specific recipe for that video.

Caveat: See others traffic and UTM tags

4. Referral Traffic

Referral traffic is the kind of traffic that comes from other websites.

If done right, this is the result of effective content marketing. What happens is other people/organizations write about you/your products/services on their own websites.

Since they have their own audience, when they click on that link, they land on your own website.

Google Analytics counts that as referral traffic. The website that links to your site is called the referring website/domain.

Example: Jon is reading an article from wistia.com. He reads an interesting statistics saying that by 2019, video content will comprise of 80% of all consumer internet traffic. He noticed the link, so he clicks on this and lands on another website (smallbiztrends.com). From smallbiztrends.com’s analytics account, Jon’s visit is counted in their referral traffic. The referring website/URL/domain is wistia.com.

5. Email Traffic

Email traffic is the kind of traffic that comes from your email campaigns.

Take note that not all links in your emails go to this traffic. To make sure it appears properly under this channel grouping, you have to integrate your email marketing software with Google Analytics or manually tag (UTM parameters) your links — and make sure the medium parameter is exactly “email.”

If neither one of those two options is met, GA will count that link click (visit to your website) under direct traffic. This skews your data because you might think that your email campaigns aren’t working.

Example: Jon received two emails from an eCommerce website. Email 1 contains an announcement for a sale coming up. It is sent via their email marketing software. Jon clicks on the link and lands on the website. GA counts this as email traffic. Email 2 was sent by a customer representative about a complaint he had. The email linked to the terms and conditions page. Since the email was manually sent and no UTM parameters were added, this traffic is counted as direct traffic.

6. Paid Traffic

Paid traffic is the kind of traffic that comes from paid advertisements. These are ads from Google Ads or Bing Ads. To be more specific, links with the medium “ppc” or “cpc” (or the ones indicated in the table above) are the ones tracked.

You can customize this, along with other settings, in the admin settings of your Google Analytics account. You can find out more information about how to do this in my previous post about paid traffic.

7. Display Traffic

Display traffic is the kind of traffic that comes from paid advertisements as well. Unlike Paid Traffic, this kind of traffic requires the medium parameter to be equal to “display.”

I’m sure you’ve visited sites that are showing you ads. If you click on one of those banner ads, most of the time, your visit which leads to another website will be counted as display traffic.

You’d often find ads on news or media outlets, bloggers or affiliate sites. If it involves a form of pretty graphics, those are display ads.

Refer to the table above to see which parameters direct traffic is counted in your GA account.

8. Others Traffic

Others traffic is the kind of traffic that comes from traffic that doesn’t fall under the default channel grouping definitions. This usually happens when you use custom parameters (UTM tags) in the links that you share.

Remember that UTM parameters require some fields to work. Items 1-4 are required; while 5-6 are optional:

  1. Link/URL
  2. Source
  3. Medium
  4. Campaign
  5. Content
  6. Keyword

For example, if you added “facebook” in the source parameter and used “post” in the medium parameter, this will show up in the Others traffic. For it to appear under Social traffic, you either have to add the value of “social” in the medium parameter.

Google's URL Campaign Builder Example

You can learn more about UTM tags here.

Here’s a final note the default channel grouping in Google Analytics. You can change the rules that govern the way traffic is grouped into these buckets in the admin section of your Google Analytics account.

One popular use case for changing the default channel groupings is to separate the traffic coming from advertisements on social from the traffic coming from ads via search. You’d need to create a custom channel groupings in your Google Analytics account.

Do you have questions about the default channel groupings? Are you using custom rules to modify how your reporting looks like? Let me know in the comments below!

Frequently Asked Questions

What are Google Analytics Default Channel Grouping Definitions?

The default channel groupings in Google Analytics are defined by a set of rules using the ‘medium’ parameter. A click or visit with an “email” as the medium parameter will fall under the Email default channel grouping. If you used “Email,” it will fall under the Other channel grouping. For more examples, check this table to find out which visit falls under which channel grouping.

What is not considered a default “medium” in Google Analytics?

There is a lot “medium” that’s not considered as a default value in Google Analytics. Take a look at this table to see which mediums are recognized by GA. If it’s not there, it’s not a default medium.

Why aren’t the default channel groupings showing in my account?

The reason why the default channel groupings are not showing up on your channel acquisition report is you do not have data that falls under it. If you don’t have ‘display’ data, you won’t see it there because there are zero values there anyway.

Why are my ads and social media campaigns showing in the Others channel?

If your campaign traffic are being categorized in the Others channel, you are most likely using custom parameters that are not the same as the default settings in Google Analytics. For example, using a “Email” as medium is different from “email.” The former will show up under the Others channel while the latter will be tagged under email traffic.

What Is Lifecycle Marketing

What is lifecycle marketing

Lifecycle marketing is a type of marketing that uses the customer lifecycle to determine what and how you communicate with your prospects and customers.

Depending on where your audience is at any given moment, the communication they receive from you will be different. It’s one of the most effective approach to digital marketing because the message is highly dependent on where the customer is right now.

Have you ever called a fast food restaurant to have something delivered?

What’s the first thing they ask you?

Most of the time, they ask you for your phone number or your name.

They use this to search their database to determine if you have existing purchases from them (i.e. a customer) or if this is the first time you’re ordering. This will determine what they will say next.

So, if you’re a customer already, they just verify your name/address, then proceed with the order. But if you’re calling for the first time, they’d ask for your complete address and other relevant information before proceeding with getting your order.

Now, imagine if they don’t screen at the beginning of the call.

Each time you call, you’d have to repeat the same information over and over. Ordering will take a lot of time and will only end up with you frustrated.

The way these fast food restaurants process orders is a form of lifecycle marketing. The message they communicate differs whether you’re at the first stage or the middle stage or the last stage.

But, lifecycle marketing is more complex than that.

For B2B organizations, the buying cycle usually takes weeks and months. It’s not a simple 2-minute phone call where you can get to say what you want then get it 30 minutes later. B2C organizations also have complex buying cycles.

Usually, the higher monetary value is, the longer and more complex the process is.

5 Steps to Effective Lifecycle Marketing

So, how do you implement an effective lifecycle marketing?

1. Determine your own lifecycle stages

In a previous post, I wrote about the standard lifecycle stages. If your organization has this already setup, then that’s great. If not, read that article first.

If you already have different sales stages, you can use that as a starting point.

2. Define the criteria/action/behavior for each stage

The most important part of this exercise is to make sure you define exactly what action or criteria you need for each stage.

Here’s an example of how this works and why it’s important:

  • A subscriber is anyone who joins your email list.
  • A lead is someone who downloaded a marketing offer.
  • A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is someone who downloaded your software, requested a demo, or downloaded any one of your case studies.
  • and so on.

Define each stage properly so you avoid confusion.

But the most important part here is that you communicate the established definitions to everyone who has any interaction with customers. Usually, these are the marketing, sales, and customer service teams.

Using this example, a proper lifecycle marketing strategy will not send communications about your products and discounts to your subscribers. They are not in a stage that is ready to receive those types of communication. And if they did, it will only turn them off.

On the other hand, a standard promotional campaign for 30% off should not be sent nor seen by your customers as well — especially if they bought your product at full price.

3. Create content/marketing offers for each lifecycle stage

For each stage in the customer lifecycle, create content or marketing offers that, after completing/availing it, will move them to the next stage of the lifecycle.

Let’s say you sell coffee equipment like drip machines, Aeropress, and water kettles.

You have a blog where people can find everything they need to know about brewing the perfect cup of coffee.

Naturally, you write about coffee and where it comes from. This includes how different altitudes affect the taste of coffee, what coffee cherries are, the different types of processing, how long it takes to grow coffee, etc.

You also have content about brewing your own coffee at home using Aeropress / V60 / French Press / Regular Drip machine. You share about grinding your own beans at home, the “right” size for each brewing method, water temperature and how it affects your coffee, and many more.

Continuing from the previous section, you can imagine why a blog subscriber might not be interested in your products as they might only be interested in your content and learning more about great coffee.

Again, you can only write about how great your products are, but that won’t be as effective as capturing a bigger audience.

This concept is explained in detail in my post about the 5 stages of awareness.

Writing about your products only without talking about coffee doesn’t flow together. It would only make your products seem irrelevant. It’s always better to write about something that matters to your customers, not just you.

4. Automate your marketing

The main goal of lifecycle marketing is to give your prospects and customers the experience they want, need, and expect.

And the only way to scale your business is to automate your marketing. This is done through lead nurturing.

For example, you setup a lead nurturing campaign that sends marketing offer downloads every 2 weeks. This is sent to your subscribers so that after downloading an eBook, they become a lead.

Once they become a lead, two things happen: (1) they are removed from the subscriber-to-lead nurturing automation and (2) they are enrolled in the lead-to-MQL nurturing campaign.

What that means is they will no longer receive marketing offer downloads every two weeks. Instead, what they will receive are communications designed to move them to the next stage — offer to download a software/case study/demo request.

5. Improve and update every quarter

If you are applying a content pillar approach, every marketing offer you create will have its own email series. You can use these to update your existing nurturing sequences or create a new one if it’s for a different stage.

For example, you published a new case study. You can then update your lead-to-MQL sequence to include an invite to download this case study.

So, what are you going to do next

Applying lifecycle marketing is one of the most effective shift you can do to your digital marketing. I shared how you can do this via email in this post, but lifecycle marketing doesn’t end there.

The trend nowadays is to use an omni-channel approach where you use different channels to engage with your prospects and customers while still applying lifecycle marketing. I’ll share more about this in future posts.

Are you using lifecycle marketing right now? What results have you seen since you implemented it? If you see the value of lifecycle marketing but having trouble getting started, feel free to reach out in the comments section below.

What Is Lead Generation

What is lead nurturing

Lead generation is the process of gathering contact information of potential customers. In digital marketing, this is usually done through form submissions.

It is the first pillar of email marketing. Meaning, without an effective lead generation strategy, your email marketing will not succeed.

Lead generation is also one of the most overlooked strategy in digital marketing. Most organizations have poor lead generation execution.

This is especially true for most ecommerce sites. They don’t think it’s important. That’s why the only way for them to generate leads on their website is a newsletter subscription.

And we all know where that leads to right? Spammy and unsolicited messages. So why continue using it?

Other marketers also refer to lead generation as list building because most of the time, an email address is collected. This is called an email list and is the primary data inside your email marketing software.

Want to grow your email list by 225% with just 4 hours of work? Get your copy of my proven 5-step process here.

Lead Generation Analogy

You can think of lead generation as buying anything — food, water, a new iPhone or gadget.

You won’t hand over your money for something so overpriced. You will, however, do it if you feel that there is an equivalent exchange in value — whether real or perceived.

Imagine buying a Mocha Frappucino at Starbucks. If it’s priced at 550 per cup, will you buy one?

Most probably not.

You’d think that the value of a single cup of coffee mixed in with chocolate, syrup and cream doesn’t cost that much.

It’s the same for lead generation.

When you ask for contact information (like email, address, phone number) from your prospects, they will associate that personal information with some value.

If what they are getting is not equal or better than what you are asking for, they will not hand it over.

Using the same Starbucks analogy, they won’t pay for your overpriced Frappe.

Why Your Website Doesn’t Give You Leads

This brings us to the biggest problem most websites have — one newsletter signup form asking for a person’s email address.

For most organizations, this is the single, biggest lead generation form they have on the website.

The form asks for an email address in exchange for promo updates.

Is that an equivalent exchange?

Will you willingly give up your private information to someone who will just send you emails you will not even read?

And i’m not even mentioning that promos and discounts aren’t newsletters.

If you want to generate more leads, stop doing what everyone is doing. Don’t ask for email subscriptions to newsletters that contain promos and discounts.

Newsletter subscriptions are for blog updates. Content. Articles. Nothing else.

Here’s How You Generate Leads

If you want to generate more leads, offer something of value to your prospects and customers.

  1. Create an eBook that solves for their problem.
  2. Design a simple checklist about a process they encounter daily.
  3. Publish an email or video series exclusively for people who opted in.
  4. Give them special behind-the-scenes access to your latest project.

These are just samples of what you can do to generate more leads.

All these take effort and time.

But if you’re willing to do the hard work, you’ll definitely see the payoff in your efforts.

You can read more about how to generate more leads in 7 easy steps!

What Is Paid Traffic

What is Paid Traffic

Paid traffic is traffic coming from paid advertisements. It’s one of the default channel groupings in Google Analytics.

If you advertise on Google Ads or Bing Ads, traffic coming from those ads count towards your paid traffic. You can use this, along with goals, to determine the ROI of your ads.

Important Reminders on Paid Traffic

Just remember that not all paid advertisements show up in paid traffic. To be more specific, only those with the medium parameter with “ppc,”
“cpc,” or “paidsearch” appear here.

If you’re not familiar with that, read this article on UTM tags. Also, this might be a good chance to browse up on Google’s default channel groupings.

One example where an ad might not show up under paid traffic is when you advertise on Facebook.

Most of the time, marketers use the “boost” option to promote on Facebook. While there is no one right way to do things, this option is definitely not effective if left to itself (but that’s for another article).

When you boost or promote a post with a link to your website, when people come from this traffic, they’re attributed to social/referral traffic, not paid ads.

If you advertise heavily on social, it’s recommended to separate this kind of traffic to segment your reporting. This will allow you to see which channels are bringing you better ROI.

Some use “paid social” as a new custom channel grouping in Google Analytics. This can be customized in the admin view of your account.

Go to Admin > Custom Channel Grouping

How to create a custom channel grouping in Google Analytics

Paid traffic is a great way to meet your goals in the short-run.

It’s a great way to test the market without spending too much time and effort on a new campaign or product launch.

It can also supplement your other campaigns by streamlining your customer experience across all channels.

Just remember to track them properly so you know which ads are bringing you in results, and which are wasting your money.