google analytics 'goals' | midlands networking group | 6 october 2016

Digital engagement

evaluation modelChris Arnold

The problem…

• How do we justify / demonstrate the quality of

campaigns and activity beyond quantitative

metrics such as donations?

• How do we compare campaign to campaign

using deeper metrics than just clicks? How do

we measure engagement?

• How do you report the engagement so that all

teams (including the exec/trustees/board) can

relate to and understand?

Digital analytics – lots to measure

External websites

Read multiple pages

What do you end up with?

• Metric overload

• Metrics that mean different things to different teams

• Metrics that you can’t act upon for future improvement

• …so you focus on a small number of metrics that don’t give a balanced view of engagement (eg clicks or visits!)

Examples of click activity(Grumpy visitor) Low activity, low engagement

– Sees social media message “How to get better

sleep”. Clicks the link but leaves the website

without feeling like they gained any benefit

(Researcher) High activity, medium engagement

– Opens an email on mental health campaign. They

read two self-help articles, watch a video,

download a PDF on mental health, browse three

“about us” pages

(Ideal visitor) Low activity, high engagement

– A website visitor opens an email as part of a

careers campaign. They read a self-help article,

share it on social media and register their details

Click rate

• Each of those examples is reported on as a

‘click’, open, visit or session…which doesn’t help

us highlight how engaged they are

? ? ?

A way to measure engagement• Google analytics can track when someone visits

a specific page (URL) on your website, such as:

– /how-we-help/emotional-support

– /contact-form-thank-you.html

– /nutrition-webinar-watch.html

– /help-and-guides/how-to-give-difficult-feedback-at-

work.html

– /benefits-calculator/results.html

– [external clicks] www.facebook.com/share

…and give it a score

Using the Google Analytics Goals feature, you can

assign scores to each of these page visits

• Lower levels of engagement:

– Looking at the “About us” page

– Looking at your social media accounts

• Higher levels of engagement;

– Booking onto an event

– Contacting you for support

Where do we start?1. Identify possible activities and engagements

(and URL)

2. Assign activities an engagement score

3. Use Goals in Google Analytics with these

engagement scores

– Measured in monetary currency £,$,€,¥

Model structure

Non-engaged traffic

Bounce traffic (unless on key pages)

Engaged traffic

Multiple page views

High value goals

Contact / donate / book event / social share

$100

Value per activity

Medium value goals

Self-help articles / view support / online tools

$25

Value per activity

Low value goals

General pages / social media account view

$1

Value per activity

Engagement evaluation

Values of all the goals are added together to

represent the quality (as well as quantity) of

engagements:

– Total engagement value of all activity

• eg $10,500

– Engagement ratio (total engagement value ÷ total

number of engagements) to allow campaigns of

differing sizes to be compared

• eg $4.50 vs $6.25

The benefits

• Clearer picture of overall online engagement

health

– drops in traffic ≠ drops in engagement

• Compare different campaigns of the same topic

• Compare different topics per audience segment

The result:

Where to start

1. Source support with Google Analytics

– Campaign tracking

– Goal setting

– Reporting

2. Map all your online activities (goals)

3. Group and score all the online activities with

organisation stakeholders to get buy-in

4. Build and test in Google Analytics

5. Report, evaluate and compare all campaigns

and activity using engagement score

Thank you

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Midlands Networking Group

6 October 2016

Birmingham

#ccmidlands

Demonstrating

the value of communications