How does the conversion attribution work in Google Analytics vs. Reloadify?

Conversions are one of the most important metrics to keep up in e-commerce. We will compare the methods of Google Analytics vs. Reloadify.

Google Analytics uses Cookies to update their conversions.

👉🏼 For example: A customer receives an email from an online shop, opens the email and clicks on the link of a product. Google detects that a purchase has taken place and that the customer bought the product by clicking on the link in the email. The email is the source of the conversion.

It becomes more complicated as customers use different devices to open emails, view products and purchase them.

👉🏼 For example: A customer receives an email and opens it on the smartphone. By clicking the link in the email the customer views the product but they do not buy the product.

Later on the customers opens their laptop and searches directly on the website to buy the product they saw in the email campaign. The campaign worked; the customer bought the product. If you as an online shop owner, search for this transaction in Google Analytics, you will see that the source of conversion is "direct access" instead of "email campaign". In Google Analytics it's not yet possible to track the right source of conversion.

Through the regular distribution between mobile and desktop use, the example is more the rule than an exception. How does conversion work in Reloadify?

Reloadify uses a combination of the email address, the unique account ID and tracking, to avoid the tracking problem of Google Analytics.

We use a "Last-Touch-Attribute Model", which means that we save the last opening of an email or clicking on a link in an email as a conversion.

At the same time we use an "Email Conversion Period", to track the right source of the conversion. This means we're able to add a conversion to the email campaign, if the customer opened or clicked in an email and bought the product in the following seven days.

👉🏼 For example: A customer opens an email, which was sent on May 2 and clicks on the link, but doesn't purchase anything through the smartphone. On the following weekend, on May 4 the customer buys the product on their laptop. This conversion will be allocated to the email campaign of May 2.

Since 1 June 2019, Reloadify tags every email that is sent with UTM tags. This ensures that Reloadify is displayed as a campaign in Google Analytics, which allows you to also find your email campaign data in Google Analytics.