You can measure how much Ad Grants contributes to your fundraising efforts by tracking the unique values of each conversion, such as one-time donations or event ticket purchases. If you use FrontStream to process donations on your website, this guide will help you install transaction-specific conversion value trackings for each donation you receive. This tracking helps you have a more accurate sense of how many donation dollars your Ad Grants account helps you raise.
In the sections below, we'll show you how to track transaction-specific values on your website and Frontstream pages.
Before you begin
Here's what you'll need before you can set up conversion tracking for transaction-specific values on your website and FrontStream pages:
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An Ad Grants account: Don't have one yet? Follow these steps to set one up.
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A Google Analytics account: it’s at no cost, and if you don’t have one, follow these steps to set one up. Please be sure to complete the final step: Copy and paste your Analytics code as the first item into the <HEAD> of every webpage you want to track.
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A FrontStream account: please contact FrontStream Help Center if you need help with your fundraising event page or donation form
This article goes right to the setup instructions. To learn more about how conversion tracking works and why to use it, read About conversion tracking.
Step 1: Link your Google Analytics Account to your Google Ads account
Your Ad Grants account can use information from your Google Analytics account to help improve the performance of your ads. To link your account, follow these instructions.
If you use Adwords Express, the changes you make to your Google Ads account will carry over to your Adwords Express account, please proceed as instructed here.
Step 2: Set up a custom FrontStream URL
In order to track your donors’ path from (step 1) seeing an ad to (step 2) visiting your website to (step 3) completing a donation or registering for an event, your nonprofit needs to set up a subdomain such as https://secure.yournonprofit.org/.
Follow the instructions at FrontStream Help Center to set this up.
Step 3: Add your Google Analytics account to your FrontStream Account
You can use one Google Analytics account to track behavior on and between your website and your FrontStream donation pages.
Follow the instructions for adding Widgets at FrontStream support to add Analytics to your FrontStream pages.
Step 4: Enable eCommerce tracking in Google Analytics
You can use a feature called eCommerce tracking to track the donations you receive on FrontStream. First, we’ll need to enable the feature in your analytics account. To do that:
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Click Admin, and on the far right side, confirm that the view column corresponds to your fundraising website.
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In the VIEW column, click Ecommerce Settings.
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Set Enable Ecommerce to ON. [There is no need to enable “Enhanced eCommerce.]
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Click Next step.
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Click Submit.
For more details on this feature, please find help here.
Step 6: Add your subdomain to the Referral Exclusion List
When a donor crosses from your primary domain (yournonprofit.org) to your FrontStream page at your subdomain (secure.yournonprofit.org), Analytics interprets that as the donor having been referred by your first domain to your second domain, and Analytics creates a new session. This doesn’t accurately reflect your donors’ experience, so we recommend setting up an exclusion list.
Please follow the instructions for implementing a referral exclusion list, adding any subdomains you may have for donations, special events or merchandise.
Step 7: Enable Conversion Tracking in your Ad Grants Account
Please note, it may take 24-48 hours after enabling Ecommerce tracking in Analytics for all of your goals to be available for import into your Ad Grant account.
Enable conversion tracking in Google Ads, with the following steps:
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Click on the tools button
in top right corner and select Conversions (under Measurement)
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Click the
button in the top left corner to add a new Conversion
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Select Import
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Select the radio button “Google Analytics” and continue
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If you have correctly turned on Ecommerce tracking in Analytics, you will see a conversion called “Transactions.” Select this and any other Conversions you have set up in your nonprofit’s Analytics account
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Select Import and Continue
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Click Done
You will now be able to see which ads, keywords, and campaigns are leading to donations, as well as the donation value attributed to each. If you would like to further name and customize the settings of your transaction conversions, please follow the instructions here.
Step 8 (Optional): Bid over the manual bid limit of $2 by enabling “Maximize Conversions”
Congratulations! You’ve done the hard part, and now you can benefit immensely by letting Google Ads find more potential donors. This can be done by enabling a Maximize Conversions bidding strategy.
Here’s how:
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Navigate to the “Campaigns” section of Google Ads on the left-hand menu, below “Recommendations” and above “Ad Groups”
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Select one or more campaigns that are aimed at driving donations in the data view.
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In the edit panel, click the Edit link in the “Change bid strategy” section.
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Select the “Maximize Conversions.”
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Click Apply.