The first thing we have to say is that the name of the Google Analytics connector for Pardot is confusing, it makes you understand that it will connect Google Analytics and Pardot and do some data transfer, but it is not that, it actually does something more "simple"; what it does is retrieve the utm variables from the URL of the form's containing page.
The Google Analytics connector for Pardot, what it does is retrieve the variables utm -utm_campaign, utm medium, utm term and utm content-, if they exist, and they will appear later if a lead is generated (when it is created), within its file of leads. Specifically, when activating the connector, those fields will be created and if they are present they will be filled.
Logically, this is just an example:
The operation is simple, Admin -> connectors
It is very common to find media in sources, sources in media and things like that. Now, if we want to have a clear standard, let's follow the guidelines that Google itself gives us:
If you want to facilitate the task of creating the UTM, you can use the Google "builder" page
The data is stored as "First touch", that is, if when creating the lead it exist, it is collected by Pardot. Otherwise, those fields will be empty now and forever.
If you activate this option, you will have a good mess of campaigns in a very short time, because you won't have control over the creation of some URLs. So, usually the best way to have control over your campaigns it is to deactivate it and assign the campaigns by automation (if you do not do it, they will go to the generic campaign of Website Tracking).
Something very typical is that we install the connector, we do our first test and...nothing!, we try again just in case, and...nothing!
When this happen, I bet you are using iframes, that is, embedded forms, and therefore you will have extra work (you or your IT department).
To solve this issue, it is not easy, or it does, it depends on the options you have.
The iframe URL must have the UTMs already, or you won't we able to capture them. So the options are:
We will deal with these topics in later articles, since it is a case that frequently occurs in Pardot implementations.
In conclusion, sometimes it costs more than expected to have this information, but you know the new king is the ROI (not because in French king is written like that, but because it stands for return on investment) and if we want to have deep analysis of what our investments bring us, we recommend that you make the effort.
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