Jennifer Warner-Green is the head of Learning & Adoption at Marin Software. She has worked in digital marketing for 13 years, including three years on the agency side and 10 years at Marin, first as a Customer Engagement Manager before moving over to the training space in 2015. In her role, she has created content for the knowledge base, in-app guided tours, certification courses, training webinars, and much more. Outside of work, Jenni enjoys traveling, reading, working on her novel, and hiking with her two dogs, Churro and Corndog.
Let’s face it, URL tracking parameters are an essential part of the digital marketing experience but can be tricky and time-consuming to get right. So we’ve made it easy with the upgraded URL Builder in MarinOne. Best of all, the built-in autocorrect automatically identifies and fixes URLs incorrectly set up.
The MarinOne URL Builder allows you to create, apply, and manage Tracking Templates, Custom Parameters, Redirects, and more across publishers and tracking solutions in MarinOne. Currently, the MarinOne URL Builder supports Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! Japan. In addition, it automatically handles encoding if you are using redirects and makes managing custom parameters a breeze.
Think of your URL tracking templates as the building blocks for your tracking. Typical integrations see one tracking template used for one set of query string parameters.
The URL Builder makes managing redirects simple. You can customize your URL by specifying the precise redirect you plan to use and any encoding.
If you use Single or Double redirects, you will also have the option to use the corresponding encoding.
As you build out your landing page, redirects, and custom parameters, you will see your Template Preview start to build out at the bottom of your tracking template.
This template is a combination of three things:
Google Custom Parameters allow you to specify URL snippets (in the form of key/value pairs) that can be substituted by Google when Google serves the ad. Custom parameters will only be substituted into a Tracking Template when explicitly referenced.
For example, if your Tracking Template is: http://www.example.com?mkwid={_mkwid}
And your keyword custom parameter is {_mkwid}=abc123; the URL in the ad for that keyword will contain the resolved custom parameter: http://www.example.com?mkwid=abc123
where abc123 represents the specific object (Keyword, Placement, Product Group, etc.).
Bulk Upload can set Custom Parameters for any Google objects. However, by defining them in the URL Builder, you can let Marin add them automatically. Because Custom Parameters can contain URL snippets that differ across objects, most custom parameters defined in the URL Builder will be Marin Macros.
To set up the URL Builder so that all keywords are given a custom parameter containing Marin’s unique tracking parameter, you would define: {_mkwid}=[uniq_id] in the URL Builder, and the appropriate value will then be substituted into each keyword when the URL Builder settings are applied. The example keyword’s [uniq_id] resolved to “abc123” in the case above.
The URL Builder can apply URL settings to objects when they synced into Marin. This automatically adds tracking and corrects mistakes when campaigns sync into Marin. Set your Autocorrect preferences to On, Off, or Warn; these settings will apply to your entire MarinOne Client Account.
Want to learn more about MarinOne? Take a 3-minute product tour here.
Why recreate the wheel? New ads are often similar to existing ads. The powerful Copy Tool in MarinOne lets you easily copy campaigns, groups, keywords, creatives, and placements across accounts and publishers. You can also apply Find and Replace during the copy process.
The Find and Replace feature is also available as a standalone tool, allowing you to quickly make changes to your ads without editing each one individually or dealing with downloading and uploading bulk files. Instead, simply input the text you'd like to find and the text you'd like to replace, then MarinOne will handle the rest. When managing large campaigns with many different assets, such as RSAs, Find and Replace can be a big time saver.
Used side by side, the copy tool and find and replace functionality allow you to turn a single permutation of an ad into many different permutations featuring updated brand names, product types, headlines, description lines, display URLs, and more.
Want to learn more about MarinOne? Take a 3-minute product tour here.
