Marketing Channels report
The Marketing Channels report provides a high-level overview of the referral sources that direct traffic to your website. These sources can include marketing vendors grouped into distinct channels such as Email, Paid Search, and Affiliates, and the standard channels of Natural Search, Referring Sites and Direct Load.
Access the Marketing Channels report from the Reports menu in the side navigation pane (Reports > Marketing > Marketing Channels). This report helps you to understand which channels (paid and unpaid) drive the most traffic and have the best conversion rates for your website. By using Attribution windows, a user can understand the historical referral sources that led the customer to activities, such as sales, page views, conversions, and so on, on your website even when those referrals did not occur in the same session as those activities. This allows you to analyze which channels are most effective at acquiring new visitors, influencing decisions throughout a consideration period, or driving conversion across sessions to your website.
By default, the Marketing Channels report consists of four main referral channels
- Marketing Program
- If there is a valid MMC tracking parameter on the destination URL, the referral is counted into the All Other MMC Vendors marketing channel. Use MMC parameters to separate paid traffic from unpaid traffic.
- Search Engine
- If there is no MMC tracking parameter and the referring URL matches a recognized search engine, it is counted into the Natural Search marketing channel.
- Referring URL
- If there is no MMC tracking parameter and the referring URL does not match a recognized search engine, it is counted into the Referring Sites marketing channel.
- Direct Load
- If there is no MMC tracking parameter and no Referral URL information, the referral is counted into the Direct Load marketing channel. This channel also includes URLs that are typed directly into the browser by a visitor and favorite/bookmarked URLs.
With Digital Analytics you can manage MMC vendors to group the vendors into distinct channels such as Email, Paid Search, Advertising, Affiliates, and Price Comparison. Any MMC vendors that are not assigned to a specific marketing channel remain in the All Other MMC Vendors marketing channel.
You can manage your marketing channels using the Manage Marketing Channels page ().