Web Analytics Connector (WAC)

Web Analytics Connector (WAC) allows you to tag links automatically in emails to include specific variables in the URL. For example, the Web Analytics Connector allows you to automatically add “utm” parameters for Google Analytics tracking.

An example link from your email, may take you to your home page of:

https://www.ampscript.com/?utm_source=mc_marketing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=welcome

There are 4 Levels where data can be included in links:

• Account level
• Email level
• Subscriber level
• Link level

Account Level

Account level is applied to every link in your email and should not be changed. The Google Analytics tracking variables used for this can be: utm_source and/or utm_medium.

Example URL: https://www.ampscript.com/?utm_source=mc_marketing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=welcome

Note that the:

• The tag utm_source has a hardcoded value of “mc_marketing”
• The tag utm_medium has a hardcoded value of “email”
• These two tags and values would be applied to every link sent from Marketing Cloud and should not be changed with each email send

Email Level

The Email level can dynamically generated for a specific campaign using the email name. The Google Analytics tracking variables used for this can be: utm_campaign

Example URL: https://www.ampscript.com/?utm_source=mc_marketing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=welcome

• The tag utm_campaign will use AMPscript to dynamically populate the value with the email name
• The URL will be coded as: &utm_campaign=%%emailname_%%

Where %%emailname_%% will be dynamically populated with what is entered into SFMC as the email name.

Subscriber Level

The Subscriber level can be dynamically generated to associate specific subscriber. Google does not allow the use of Personally identifiable information such as the email address so you can use the subscriber Id. The Google Analytics tracking variables used for this: sfmc_id.

Example URL: https://www.ampscript.com/?utm_source=mc_marketing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=welcome&sfmc_id=12345678

• The tag sfmc_id will use AMPscript to dynamically populate the value with the subscriber Id (system-generated ID)
• The URL will be coded as: &sfmc_id=%%subscriberid%%

Where %%subscriberid%% will be dynamically populated with the SFMC system-generated ID.

Link Level

Link level: specific to links and can be different for each link in your email. The Google Analytics tracking variables used for this: utm_content.

• The tag utm_content will use AMPscript to dynamically populate either the Link Alias 
• The URL will be coded as: &utm_content=%%linkname%%

Where %%linkname%% will be dynamically populated alias link. Note that the URL can also be used in case the alias is not filled out in the <a href> tag but the caveat is that if you have multiple links that are the same, you won’t be able to tell which link was clicked.

Parameter Manager

With the January 2020 release, Parameter Manager now allows you to add/update your Web Analytics Connector strings without having to open up a support ticket. Yay! This is located in the Setup section if you are an Administrator.