Tracking Conversions Using Twitter’s Pixel

Conversion tracking is one of the most valuable aspects of Twitter advertising. It allows you to track your website's actions that drive value for your business. If you're advertising on Twitter, you need to know if your promoted Tweets are getting you favorable returns.

Without Twitter conversion tracking in place, it will be difficult for you to determine whether you are seeing a return on your ad spend. Keep reading to learn all the details on how to use this valuable tool.

But what exactly is Twitter conversion tracking? Let's discuss this next.

What Is Twitter Conversion Tracking?

Twitter allows you to measure the number of users performing a specific action after viewing and engaging with your ads with its conversion tracking tool.

Conversion tracking allows you to measure which of your ad campaigns drive actions such as site visits, sign-ups, and purchases. It provides you with the off-Twitter measurement capabilities to understand your direct-response ads' performance so that you can cost-effectively acquire customers.

You can track user conversions and tie them back to ad campaigns on Twitter using a conversion tag. It allows you to optimize your campaigns to meet your cost-per-acquisition (CPA) goals.

There are a variety of website actions you can measure with conversion tracking. You can select one or more depending on the actions you are looking to drive with your Twitter ad campaign:

• Site visit: A Twitter user visits a landing page on your website.
• Purchase: User buys a product or service on your site.
• Download: A twitter user downloads a file like a white paper or software package, from your website.
• Sign up: User signs up for your services, newsletters, or emails.
• Custom: A custom action that does not fall into one of the categories mentioned above. Twitter's conversion tracking gives you a 360 view of conversion attribution.

Now, head on to the next section to learn how to set up Twitter conversion tracking.

How To Set Up Twitter Conversion Tracking

The Twitter conversion tracking tool gives you a full view of conversion attribution. Compared to other third-party analytics systems that you may have been using, Twitter's conversion tag allows you to track conversions attributed to mid and upper-funnel engagements like:

• Tweet expands
• Retweets
• Favorites
• Replies
• Follows
• Impressions

With that said, here's how to set up Twitter's conversion tracking tool.

1. Select A Website Tag

Twitter has two reliable conversion tracking options that let you measure your paid campaigns' success: the Universal Website Tag and the Single Event Tag:

• A Universal Website Tag is a one-code snippet installed on your website pages to track multiple actions or conversions.
• A Single-event Website Tag is a unique snippet code to track a single website conversion on a website.

I recommend using the Universal Website Tag because it simplifies the tagging process and tracks a user's journey across your site.

You may need a Single-event Tag to track conversion for a non-page loading event like white paper download or a registration form submission in rare cases.

2. Create And Install Your Site Tag

Follow these steps to create and install a site tag:

• Step 1: Log into your Twitter ads account.
• Step 2: Select Conversion Tracking under Tools.
• Step 3: Review and agree to the Terms and Conditions.
• Step 4: Click the Generate a website tag for the conversion tracking button. 
• Step 5: Paste this code snippet just before the closing or inside a container tag or tag management system:

3. Set Up Your Conversion Event(s)

You need to create your conversion event after you install a site tag. What does a conversion event mean? It means that you're ready to tell your site tag what you want it to track. 

If you chose a single-event tag, this is where you'll create that too.

• Step 1: Click the Create new conversion event button on your Twitter ads account.
• Step 2: Complete the form.

4. Add Your Conversion Event In Your Twitter Ad Campaign

You can add a conversion event from the campaign form after you created it. 

• Step 1: Choose Create a new campaign from your ads account.
• Step 2: You will be prompted to fill out your ad group details after filling out the campaign details.
• Step 3: Select Website conversions under Optimization preference while creating ad group details. Doing so will create a new field called Key conversion metric, where you can choose your conversion event.

How To Know If Site Tags Are Tracking?

Installing a site tag is just the beginning. You need to make sure that it is doing its job by tracking actions on your site.

Here's a list of options on how to know if a site tag is tracking:

Option 1: Verify The Status Of Your Site Tag

Go back to the Conversions tab in Twitter Ads to verify your website tag's status once you've installed the tag code.

Pay attention to the three different site tags status: 

• Tracking: Twitter received pings from the site tag within the last 24 hours.
• Unverified: Twitter has not received any pings from the site tag yet.
• Dormant: Twitter has not received any pings from the site tag in the last 24 hours.

Option 2: Use Twitter Pixel Helper Extension

Consider using the Twitter Pixel Helper extension to debug your conversion tracking setup further. This extension allows you to quickly see whether the Twitter tag is firing on a particular page and what parameters are sent to Twitter.

Option 3: Verify That Your Site Tag Is Placed And Working Properly

Your site tag starts transmitting data to the Twitter Ads UI (User Interface) the first time someone visits your tagged web page.

Your site tag doesn't need to be "tracking" in Twitter’s UI to collect data. If you encounter issues with your site tag or want to be thorough, complete the steps below to examine the code from your site and verify that it is placed and working correctly:

If you're using Google Chrome:

• Step 1: Click to the drop-down menu on Chrome: View > Developer > Developer Tools > Network.
• Step 2: Type "Twitter" in the filter search box and then reload the page.
• Step 3: Look for Twitter conversion tags and then match the pixel ID to the ID from our Ads UI.
• Step 4: Check that it's a conversion tag. It should look precisely like the syntax in the Twitter Ads UI.
• Step 5: Check if the status column says "200".
• Step 6: Check if there are two pixels installed, one for desktop and one for mobile.
• Step 7: Container tags should also show here.

If you're using Mozilla Firefox:

• Step 1: Click to drop-down menu on Mozilla Firefox: Tools > Web Developer > Network.
• Step 2: Sort by "Domain" and then reload the page.
• Step 3: Scroll down and then look for "analytics.twitter.com" and "t.co."
• Step 4: Look for Twitter conversion tags and then match the pixel ID to the ID from our Ads UI.
• Step 5: Check that they're conversion tags. They should look precisely like the syntax in the Twitter Ads UI.
• Step 6: Verify if the status column says, "200."
• Step 7: Verify that there are two pixels installed, one for desktop and t.co for mobile.
• Step 8: Container tags should also show here.

Analytics For Website Conversion Tracking

Reporting for website conversion tracking becomes available in the "Campaigns" tab after setting up a website tag. You will notice the number of conversions driven at the Twitter Ad campaign and relevant metrics like: 

• Impressions
• Engagements
• Spend
• CPA

Select "Customize Metrics" to see results for your conversion events.

In the "Conversions" section of customizable metrics, choose the conversion event types you want to see. 

You can also download a .csv file of this website analytics under "Export Data" within Twitter Ads Manager.

The Twitter Ad campaign dashboard will display conversions by type. For instance, if you are interested in tracking two different kinds of purchases, you may want to create one as a "purchase" tag and another as a "custom" tag to report on the two independently.

Otherwise, the downloadable .csv gives you an option to sort conversions by event name. Post-view and post-engagement conversions are also sorted out separately. To do this, choose "Website Conversions by tag" when exporting your metrics.

And that's how to track conversions using Twitter's Pixel!

Don't forget to check out the recommended section below to learn more about Twitter conversion tracking. 

Recommended Twitter Conversion Tracking Resources

• Twitter simplifies conversion tracking & audience segmentation with universal tag
• How to Use Twitter Website Conversion Ads
• How to Advertise on Twitter: A 7-Step Guide to Using Twitter Ads

So what do you think about this article? Are you ready to track conversions using Twitter's Pixel?

Leave a comment below and let's discuss.

As always, it will be a great honor if you think this article is worth the SHARE.

Header image courtesy of Jumpstory.

About the Author Tim Fitzpatrick

Tim Fitzpatrick is the President of Rialto Marketing. At Rialto Marketing, we help service businesses simplify marketing so they can grow with less stress. We do this by creating and implementing a plan to communicate the right message to the right people. Marketing shouldn't be difficult. All you need is the RIGHT plan.