UTM Tracking & Variance in CRM Reports

For a lead generation campaign, conversion is a lead which gets an entry in your CRM application. If Google ad campaign is reporting a conversion, you should ideally also see a corresponding entry in your CRM application. It should always be a regular practice to match these numbers and check if the campaign is delivering as per expectations or not. In general, conversion in ad campaigns will report a higher number than corresponding number of entries in CRM applications. 15% of variance is generally acceptable; let us try to understand why. ?

When do we get an entry in CRM? We get an entry in CRM application when the following conditions are met: ?

1. Campaign is using UTM parameters at all levels: Account, Campaign, Ad group, Ad, Sitelink etc. This will ensure that no ad is delivered without UTM parameters or UTM parameters are always there in Ad URLs. If an ad has UTM parameters, CRM will capture the lead as sourced from the campaign. Vice versa, if the UTM parameters are not present in the Ad URL, CRM will not attribute that lead to be coming from AD / Campaign as source.?

2. Your tracking mechanism is well in place: Your website or landing page should have your tracking code and there should be a configuration to pass the UTM parameters from the URL to CRM. Any missing connection in between will lead to a data mismatch. Google Ads will still count that lead as a conversion but CRM will not attribute that properly. ?

3. Your user clicks on your ad and submits the lead form in a single session: If the entered sequence of events, from the ad click to landing page visit to lead form submission to data capturing - all takes place in the same session, numbers will match between Google Ads report and CRM application. By any chance, if the user closes the window and reopens in between, data mismatch may happen.?

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Click Through Conversion & View Through Conversion: These are the most common types of conversions in Performance Marketing campaigns. ?

1. If a user clicks the Ad and submits the lead enquiry, whether in a single session or in multiple sessions in a pre-defined timeframe, Campaign / Ad reports will count these conversions as Click Through Conversions. ?

2. If the Ad appears on the User’s screen but the User does not take any action immediately at that point of time, but later visits the website and completes the conversion action within a pre-defined time frame, Campaign / Ad reports will count such conversions as View Through Conversions. ?

Click Through Conversions when completed within a single session, gets attributed by CRM as originated from Ad Campaign. Rest of the two scenarios - Click Through Conversion spanning across multiple User sessions, and View Through Conversion irrespective of any number of sessions - will not be reported by CRM as originated from Ad Campaign. CRM may attribute these leads as Organic or Referral?depending upon some other factors.? ?

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For all such reasons, conversion reporting in Ad Campaigns is usually higher than what gets captured by CRM. Performance Marketing teams accountable for ROI use various strategies for narrowing these gaps. Not all such strategies are good for business. We will discuss these details in our next article.

With contributions from Rakesh Ranjan

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