okma camp - why you need google analytics · whatwe’ll’cover’in’this’sec5on:’...
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to the Our Kids’ Marke5ng Academy. Today’s we’ll be discussing Google analy5cs, what it is, why it’s important, how to install it and what informa5on it can provide you about your website.
My name is Kimberley Fowler, and I’m the content coordinator with Our Kids Media. The Marke5ng Academy has been developed to provide you with: 5ps, tools, insights and recommenda5ons to help you navigate this new digital marke5ng world. You’ll be able to walk away with ideas you can implement right away.
For those that may be aGending their first webinar, you’ll no5ce the dashboard to the right of your screen has an area where you can ask ques5ons, so at any point, please feel free to jump in with ques5ons or comments and we’ll try out best to answer them. If I don’t get to your ques5on during the webinar I’ll follow up with you via email. The presenta5on will be available on the marke5ng academy website in a few days. If you’re on twiGer, be sure to join the discussion at @mktgacademy or follow the hashtag: #mktgacademy.
Let’s get started!
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If you have a website then you have access to Google Analy5cs, which is a free tracking tool offered by Google which provides you with data that you can use in a number of different ways. Google analy5cs is a powerful tool that can be used to gather basic informa5on, or more complex reports.
This is an introduc5on to Google Analy5cs for beginners. Today we’ll be looking at:
How GA works – what is it, how does it gather informa5on? Why do you need it? – how can you use it to help your camp? How to install GA -‐ step by step instruc5ons on how to install it What informa5on can GA tell you? –standard informa5on, custom reports and
goals Addi5onal resources – where to get more informa5on Summary & take-‐aways
And again, if you have any ques5ons, please type them into the ques5on box and I’ll do my best to answer them.
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What we’ll cover in this sec5on:
What is Google Analy5cs What it can do for you How it collects informa5on
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“Web analy5cs is the measurement, collec5on, analysis and repor5ng of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and op5mizing Web usage.” – Digital Analy5cs Associa5on
GA is just a tool that provides you with data and reports. You then need to analyze this informa5on to understand the opportuni5es and ac5ons that your camp can undertake in order to get full value from your website, social ac5vity and online presence.
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Provide data. You need to use that data to: Evaluate – iden5fy opportuni5es for improvement Analyze – understand your audience and website beGer Track – what is working and what isn’t so you can fix and improve
GA gives you the data, you need to put the data together and analyze it in order to: -‐ Get insight -‐ Determine what ac5ons you should take -‐ Improve
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According to Forrester Research – when asked what was the most difficult aspect of analy5cs for their company, 53% said ac5ng on the findings.
The value you get out of GA comes from the ac5ons you take based on the data that it provides. If you don’t take ac5on you won’t get any value from your GA data.
In order to get value from GA you need to: 1. Plan (ie. let’s say you have a PDF about packing for camp, or a mailing you’d like to
send out – these require custom coding in GA in order to track) 2. Do (implement the custom coding and then send out the newsleGer, emails or
aGach it to a .pdf about packing for camp that you place on your website) 3. Study (once you have that custom code you can set up goals that will help you
understand if your campaign (.pdf, email, newsleGer) has been successful) 4. Act (if it is successful perhaps you will do these campaigns more oeen, if not
successful the data might indicate you should tweak the campaign, or try something else completely)
5. Assess (take a look at your overall goals and how this specific campaign has or has not helped you)
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1. JavaScript code is installed on a web page 2. When a browser presents a page to a visitor the JS executes and sends a string of
informa5on to Google Analy5cs (uses first party cookies to send the data) 3. GA logs informa5on and con5nuously updates reports
What are cookies? Cookies are like a memory of where you’ve been online. When you visit a website a cookie “crumb” is kept in your browser’s cache. These cookies give Google Analy5cs the informa5on it needs to calculate your website reports.
Note that data is usually 1-‐2 days delayed before showing in a report so if you want to run a report for the beginning of a month start the report on the 3rd day of the month to ensure that you have the most accurate informa5on
Note that GA data can some5mes be inaccurate. Things that can affect the accuracy of the data include:
JavaScript errors on your page Visitors can block cookies or disable JavaScript You are not tracking internal organiza5onal traffic PDFs, videos, flash, email, forms are not automa5cally tracked by GA
It’s important, then to focus on trends instead of absolute numbers (more accurate). Using ra5os and percentages will give you a beGer idea of what is happening than finite numbers will.
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Why do you need Analy9cs? -‐ Free – the info is there so you may as well take advantage of it -‐ Provides you with informa5on about your website and clients that is valuable – we’ll look at some examples of the type of informa5on you can collect and how you can use it in the next sec5on -‐ Informa5on is power – with more informa5on you’ll be equipped to make beGer decisions
Google Analy5cs is one of the most effec5ve ways to track a marke5ng campaign. It is an enterprise-‐class tool for analysing website traffic, but one that is user friendly and free. Google Analy5cs will monitor website traffic and can automa5cally alert you when there are any significant changes to the data paGern of site visitors. For example a dras5c spike or dip in traffic… so you can explore what may have caused it.
Google Analy5cs can also produce specific data on certain segments of website traffic; for example, you can assess what propor5on of visitors arrive to your site as a result of a referral website (adver5ser or partner), compared to visitors that arrive via an organic search result…. And how their behaviour differs.
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How can you use it to help your camp?
1. Gather informa9on about the families that visit your website to help you make beCer business decisions (where they are from, electronic devices they use, where they were before they visited your website)
2. Learn how families are using your website (9me of day they visit, do they follow your blog, do they interact with you on social)
3. Evaluate content on your website (is it providing the informa9on families are aKer)
4. Determine if your marke9ng dollars are giving you a good ROI (adwords, banner ads, which partnerships are working for you and which aren’t, who you should be partnering with)
5. Understand your website so you can make improvements that will: 1. Op9mize your website -‐ rank higher so you are easier to find (SEO) 2. Target the right keywords to bring the right families to your site 3. Make your website user friendly (ie. mobile website, use the best
resolu9on for tablet users or smart phones)
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1. Login or Sign up for a Google Account that is for your camp first. You will be able to give other Google Account members access to your Google Analy5cs account and data without having to provide them access to your main Google Account.
2. Login to hGp://www.google.com/analy5cs/ -‐ click Access Google Analy5cs on top right
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1. Enter the account name (go with domain.com to make it easy to see which account is for which website), your websites URL and your 5me zone
2. Do you want to share your analy5cs data with other Google products? I recommend sharing with AdWords, AdSense, Webmaster Tools, etc… but you don’t have to share your data with these products if you don’t use them.
3. Tracking Code configura5on – here you tell Google if you are tracking a single domain (domain.com), a single domain with mul5ple subdomains (domain.com, blog.domain.com, store.domain.com), or mul5ple top-‐level domains (domain.com, domain.ca, domain.org)
4. Are you using Google Adwords? If so then check the AdWords Campaigns box to link your AdWords account to Google Analy5cs to enable advanced tracking of your Adwords campaigns
5. Advanced Setup tab will allow you to track sites built for mobile phones, campaigns from providers other than GoogleAdWords
6. Custom Setup Tab allows for more advanced GA func5ons
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1. If you are just star5ng s5ck with standard configura5on, but if you need custom code then you should look at the Asynchronous Tracking Usage Guide available in Google’s help sec5on.
2. Tracking Code Installa5on – once your tracking code is configured you need to install it on your website. The way you do this will change depending on your website’s platorm. If you use WordPress then some themes will come with admin panels that let you copy the GA tracking code into fields designed for tracking scripts. If you have a WordPress theme without an admin panel op5on find the part of your site’s template before the closing </head> tag in the actual HTML code (usually in the “header.php” file). If your website is just a collec5on of HTML pages install your tracking code before the </head> tag of each page you want included in your Google Analy5cs data
The types of tracking code have changed over 5me: If you already have Google Analy5cs installed on your website find out what code you are using… There are 3 op5ons:
1. Tradi5onal Synchronous code – ga.js (installed in footer, it tends to cause slow load 5mes)
2. Asynchronous code – ga.js or dc.js (installed in header, doesn’t slow the page load as much – used by most websites)
3. Universal Analy5cs is a new measurement protocol (public Beta at the moment) and is the next genera5on of Google Analy5cs code. If you are new to Google Analy5cs I recommend you use this new code (analy5cs.js to replace ga.js). Some of the advantages include being able to sync offline and online data, can use 20
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Now, let’s talk about the type of informa9on you can get about your website.
Standard repor9ng – is the standard informa9on that is included in your Google Analy9cs account. For most websites, the informa9on included in standard repor9ng is more than enough to get the insight that will help you make decisions in order to improve. Examples of standard reports include -‐ Where your visitors come from -‐ How long they stay on your website -‐ What content they like the most
Custom reports – customized informa9on you have asked Google Analy9cs to collect and report on for you. Usually you need to install a custom GA code on a webpage that you’d like to do custom repor9ng on. Google Tag manager makes this possible without having to go to a developer to create the custom code for you.
Let’s take a look at some examples of the reports you can run in GA and what they look like.
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Here’s a quick look at a simple GA dashboard. You can set this up however you like, to show you what’s most important to your business goals.
In this one, we see: • Daily visits to the website • Average 5me visitors spend on the website • The goal conversion rate.. Which is a value you always want to aim to increase.
We’ll discuss goals shortly. • Different traffic types (organic, paid search, referral traffic…) will tell you
informa5on like whether people are coming to you from search engines, being linked from other sites, or going directly to your site
• Time on site broken down by country • And conversion rates by source of traffic
What else can Analy5cs Do? What keywords are people using to arrive at your site? Does your site content and goals match what people come to it looking for? If not, you need to change your content or change your marke5ng. Which pages get the most views and how long do people stay? Popular pages can be a guide for what layout or content your users like.
Let’s have a quick look at the basic values that analy6cs provides us about our website in standard reports
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Visits: These are the total number of visitors that arrive at your website within a given period of 6me. What’s important to know about visit’s is that they expire aBer 30 minutes of inac6vity, or at midnight.
For example, If you leave for lunch for 31 minutes, and leave a website open on your browser. When you return, your visit will be counted as a new visit New visits are always also counted when you arrive using a different source. For example, If you come via a referral source (a link from another website), then do a Google search and click the website link, these are counted as 2 different visits, although it’s the same person.
Some referrals are treated differently however! – If someone visits your website first, then visits a site and is linked back to you, the 30 minutes does not start over again. It’s treated as one visit.
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The Audience reports are designed to provide insight into: Who makes up your audience (loca5on, language, custom variables) How that audience reaches and consumes your site (technology, mobile) Loyalty and engagement (behavior)
Loca9on You want informa5on about visitors from the areas you already target in your adver5sing, but you should also know about traffic from other geographic areas whose visitors exhibit a natural interest in your camp.
Technology & Mobile Understanding the technologies visitors use to reach and consume your site lets you fine tune current versions, and plan upcoming implementa5ons. For example, you want to be sure your site is fully func5onal in current browsers, but you also want to stay abreast of the extent to which visitors are migra5ng away from desktop to mobile browsers, and plan your development accordingly.
If you see more than 20% of users browsing your website on mobile, it may be 5me to look at a mobile friendly website.
New vs Returning Visitors This report gives you a quick look at the ra5o of new to returning visitors by number of visits and percentage of visits. You can dig a liGle deeper into the numbers to see if the content and pages that new visitors look at is different from return visitors. Or the engagement value of new vs returning visitors.
This is an important stat to look at when segmen5ng your referral traffic from paid adver5sers. Are they con5nuously sending you repeat visitors… the same family, or are you geyng a qualified stream of new visitors that are looking at your cri5cal
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Here’s an example of two different reports for New vs Returning visitors.
On the right, you can see that only 30% of visits are from returning families, but that the returning visitor engagement level is higher, making up nearly 43% of total pageviews to the site.
You can do the same for Organic search traffic vs paid search traffic Referral traffic vs search traffic Or compare different referral traffic sources And so on.
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At the boGom of the audience menu, there’s a preGy cool visitor flow, which outlines how visitors flow through your website. Looking site wide gives you an overall trend, but the real value comes when you break it down into segments again. So look at each of your referral sources, look at your search traffic vs your direct traffic or new vs returning visitors.
You can also see what pages have higher / lower drop off rates. When you scroll over each segment, it will show you the URL and %’s for each.
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One quick report I want to men5on is the real 5me tracking.
Real-‐Time allows you to monitor visitor ac5vity as it happens on your site. The reports are updated con5nuously and each pageview is reported seconds aeer it occurs on your site. For example, you can see: • how many people are on your site right now, • their geographic loca5ons, • the traffic sources that referred them, and • which pages they're viewing.
With Real-‐Time, you can immediately and con5nuously monitor the effects that new campaigns and site changes have on your traffic. Here are a few of the ways you might use Real-‐Time: • monitoring whether new and changed content on your site is being viewed • see whether a one-‐day promo5on is driving traffic to your site, and see which
pages these visitors are viewing • monitor the immediate effects on traffic from a blog/social network post or tweet • immediately verify that the tracking code is working on your site
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We looked at audience reports, now let’s look at traffic reports.
Source: Every referral to a web site has an origin, or source. Possible sources include: “Google” (the name of a search engine), “facebook.com” (the name of a referring site), “Camp Wrap Up NewsleGer” (the name of one of your newsleGers), and “direct” (visits from people who typed your URL directly into their browser, or who had bookmarked your site).
Medium: Every referral to a website also has a medium. Possible mediums include: “organic” (unpaid search), “cpc” (cost per click, i.e. paid search), “referral” (a website linking to yours), “email” (the name of a custom medium you can create), “none” (direct visits have a medium of “none”).
Keyword: The keywords that visitors searched are usually captured in the case of search engine referrals. This is true for both organic and paid search. If the a visitor is signed into a Google account, however, Keyword will have the value “(not provided)”.
Campaign is the name of the referring AdWords campaign (if you are running paid search ads) or a custom campaign that you have created.
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This is a quick look at the overview graph of traffic sources. It breaks down the total visits, and what percent are coming from which sources. Now that’s good to track, but again, you want to dig a liGle deeper into each of the mediums and sources.
At the top there. You see I’ve highlighted the EMAIL op6on. For any report you pull in Google analy6cs, you can set up an automated report to be sent on a daily, weekly or monthly frequency to you or your team. Because we’re all busy, this is an easy way to look at your data without forgeVng about it.
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Keep an eye on your referring website traffic. You want high numbers, but also qualified visitors. People that stay on your website.
When analyzing the quality of each referral website, aim high… except for bounce rate. If you remember, bounce rate is the percent of people that only look at 1 page. So if a referral source is sending you lots of traffic with a 80% bounce rate, that means only 20% of the visitors are staying and exploring your website.
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This is what a typical referral traffic source report looks like I’ve highlighted some of the important elements such as the pages viewed and 5me on site.
Referral Traffic
The informa5on in this report lets you see which domains (and which individual pages in those domains) are sending traffic to your site, how much traffic they are sending, which landing pages are the most popular referral des5na5ons, and the extent to which those referred visitors interact with your website.
If you're trying to build a traffic stream from referrals, you want to know which domains are successful sources. For example, if you're pos5ng videos on YouTube in order to raise brand awareness, you want to see whether those videos are driving visitors to your site, and consequently whether youtube.com shows up as a top source of referrals.
If you’re doing online adver5sing it’s important to track the traffic levels from your expected sources, but this report also lets you see whether there are unexpected sources, such as a review or news story you didn't know about, or a popular blogger who discovered your site.
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Keep an eye on your referring website traffic. You want high numbers, but also qualified visitors. People that stay on your website.
Let’s do a poll – in the example above, which referral source is more valuable?
Answer – Referral source 1’s visitors are interac5ng with the site and Referral source 2’s are not.
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It’s a good idea to track your camp name to monitor your brand awareness. This is a capture of an organic search traffic report for the term EXPO. What is shows us, is a high spike in people searching for EXPO around our private school and summer camp expo events.
What it shows us is that people heard about the event somewhere (magazine, newspaper, flyer, friend…) and are now doing a search for it online It gives us an idea of the effec6veness of our offline campaigns.
And every year, we ideally want to grow and increase this branding and trend. You can do the same for your camp name, or a key word or phrase you use in your marke6ng materials.
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Another rela5vely new report with Google is the social traffic report. And if you’re doing any social marke5ng, this is an important report to review.
Increasingly, people engage with, share, and discuss content on social networks. Eighty percent of interac5ons with content take place on sites other than the content owner’s website.
So, it’s likely that most people become aware of and interact with your blog posts, videos, and ar5cles on websites other than your own.
How do you measure the impact and effec5veness of your social networks? Start by analyzing referral sources, conversions and pages shared. ____________________________ Extra info incase of ques5ons….
The Social Overview report allows you to see at a glance how much conversion value is generated from social channels. The Social Value graph compares the number and monetary value of all goal comple5ons versus those that resulted from social referrals.
A visit from a social referral may result in a conversion immediately or it may assist in a conversion that occurs later on. Referrals that generate conversions immediately are labeled as Last Interac9on Social Conversions in the graph. If a referral from a social source does not immediately generate a conversion, but the visitor returns later and converts, the referral is included in Assisted Social Conversions.
Social Plug-‐ins If you have Google "+1" and Facebook "Like" buGons on your site, it's important to know which buGons are being clicked and for which content. For example, if you
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Here is an example of a social networks report that will tell you popular networks and measure visitor engagement. It’s not enough to just have visitors on your site, you want those visitors to engage with your site in order to meet your goal conversions. As an example, you may have lots of people visi9ng your site from Facebook, but if they aren’t actually contac9ng you, or downloading a camp registra9on package then you aren’t conver9ng your visitors to clients.
(Defini5ons in case people have ques5ons)….
Sources: As your content is shared and people come to your site, it's important to understand how visitors from different social sources engage with your site.
Conversions: Shared content URLs become the entry points into your site, driving traffic from social sources. Measuring the conversion and monetary value of this traffic will help you understand the impact of Social on your business.
Pages: People increasingly engage with, share, and discuss content on social networks. It’s important to know which pages and content are being shared, where they're being shared, and how.
Social Plugins: Adding Social Plugin buGons to your site (for example, Google "+1" buGons) allows your users share content to social networks directly from your site. Your social plugin data shows you which content is being shared, and on which networks.
The Social reports allow you to analyze all of this informa5on together and see the complete picture of how Social impacts your business. Social Reports
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Another sec5on of standard repor5ng is Content also called Behaviour in the new GA platorm – depending on your version you may see one or the other.
Analyze this data to get insights about your website’s layout and content: Is your layout user friendly? How well is your content being received? (high or low bounce rate, page views, 5me on page) What search terms do people use to find you? In-‐page analy5cs will give you a heat map to see where people are clicking on each page Is there a problem naviga5ng through your site?
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In some of the slides I talked a bit about goal conversions… or you may have seen goal conversion rates. First however -‐ You must define goals in order to track goal conversions
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In web analy5cs, a conversion is the comple5on of an ac5vity on your site that is important to the success of your business. For example: a completed sign up for your email newsleGer (a goal conversion) a comple5on of a contact form, or a purchase (a transac5on, some5mes called an ecommerce conversion)
Goal Conversions First -‐ You must define goals in order to track goal conversions. Goal conversions are the primary metric for measuring how well your site fulfills business objec5ves. A goal conversion occurs once a visitor completes a desired ac5on on your site, such as a registra5on or download. You'll be able to see the conversion rates and number of comple5ons for each goal you have set up. Once you've set up goals, you'll also be able to see how all your channels work together to create conversions with Mul5-‐Channel Funnels.
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Google has 4 types of goals, however the primary one that is easiest to implement and track is the URL des5na5on goal.
This is when a specific loca5on, like a web page (or virtual page) or an app screen, has loaded. For example, a Thank you for registering! web page or app screen may be a des5na5on for a lead genera5on campaign.
To set up goals, you go to your admin tab in the top right corner, and click on the tab GOALS. You’ll be able to set goals up in this area and can set up as many as you like. How to set up goals is outside the scope of this webinar, however you can find full details at google analy5c support.
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Use Goals to measure how well you meet individual objec5ves. Goals and Funnels are a versa5le way to measure how well your site or app fulfills your target objec5ves. You can set up individual Goals to track discrete ac5ons, like transac5ons with a minimum purchase amount or the amount of 5me spent on a screen. A Funnel lets you specify a path you expect traffic to take to reach a Goal. Combining Goals and Funnels helps you analyze how well your site or app directs people towards your target.
Each 5me a user completes a Goal, a conversion is logged in your Google Analy5cs account. If you set a monetary value for a Goal, you can also see the value of conversions. You can see the Goal conversions rates (i.e., the Goal comple5on rates) in the Goal Reports. You can also analyze Goals conversions in other reports, including the Visitor Report, Traffic Reports, Site Search Reports, and the Events Reports.
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Let’s summarize what we’ve learned today.
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Please email me for more resources or if you have ques5ons …
Please answer the following survey ques5on –
Would you be interested in aGending an Intermediate Google Analy5cs webinar where we get into some of these reports in more detail?
2. Analy5cs videos and webinars hGp://www.google.com/analy5cs/iq.html 3. Analy5cs help centre hGp://support.google.com/analy5cs/?hl=en 4. Defini5ons of data filters hGps://support.google.com/analy5cs/answer/1034380?hl=en 5. Informa5on about sampling hGp://www.clickinsight.ca/about/blog/long-‐tail-‐keyword-‐analysis-‐sampling-‐google-‐analy5cs 6. Informa5on about custom campaign tagging hGp://www.clickinsight.ca/res/google-‐analy5cs-‐resources/google-‐analy5cs-‐custom-‐tagging 7. Analy5cs status update hGp://www.google.com/analy5cs/status#hl=en 8. Google Analy5cs' twiGer feed hGps://twiGer.com/googleanaly5cs 9. Ar5cles on Google Analy5cs hGp://www.clickinsight.ca/res/google-‐analy5cs-‐resources 10. Blog about Google Analy5cs hGp://www.clickinsight.ca/about/blog/category/google-‐analy5cs
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Any ques5ons? Email me….
Thank you for joining me for this webinar. Remember the slides will be available online at www.ourkidsmedia.com/marke5ng
We also offer a number of other webinars….
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I want to men5on that we’re hos5ng a camps and programs membership overview webinar on Wednesday October 9th from 12 – 1pm. To register for this free webinar please visit:
hGps://www3.gotomee5ng.com/register/625126390
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It was great hos5ng you today, and I hope you can join us for our future sessions! Please visit www.ourkidsmedia.com/marke5ng/camp and be sure to sign up for our upcoming webinars.
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