Google Analytics can be a pain. Once you get the hang of it, they change their wording, layout, and if you do not use it regularly it takes an hour to find the data you were looking for. And everything without finally knowing if you got a student, or just another person leaving to your application server. Or, in best cases, filling out your application form.

To figure out, who in the end came to your campus you need to combine this data with your CRM.

Would it not be a dream to just get the successful traffic sources directly from your CRM? As opposed to trying to combine two sources, which are not supposed to get combined? (see Google Analytics Terms)

It is possible, but you need your IT team on board to cater to your privacy laws. Storing the referrer page along with the name of your visitor might need the consent of the visitor.

What you need to do for this is basically “copy” the old Google Analytics “_utmz” cookie and make it your own. This enables you to forward the source information from the “_utmz” cookie via a hidden field or a public one (depending on your privacy laws) directly into your CRM.

When this is done you can download your CRM data, create a pivot table from it and check what number of your students came from which traffic source originally.

It won’t give you good insights:

  • When a visitor deletes the cookie and then comes back to your site
  • When a visitor comes via a different browser i.e. tablet vs. laptop or from an internet cafe

Thanks for taking the time to read our blog post on shortcutting Google Analytics. At faethe.marketing we have been helping schools to increase student enrollments since 2010. If you are looking to recruit the best matching students for your programmes with minimal cost and effort, feel free to reach out to us.