If you have a marketing channel that you want to track that is not represented in the Default Ad Channels - such as affiliates, influencers, or discount codes - you can create a custom marketing channel to track it.
1.) Click the Channel Settings button on the main sidebar navigation, then click the Create Custom Channel button.
2.) You will be taken to the New Channel page where you will create your custom channel. First, give your new channel a name.
3.) Next you want to populate your channel with Segments. Segments contain the configuration that tells ThoughtMetric what traffic to match to your custom channel. Every custom channel must have at least one segment. There is no upper limit on the number of segments. Segments usually represent subsets of the channel. For example if you are creating a custom channel to track influencers, you would want to add a segment for each one of your influencers.
There are 5 Segment Types to choose from:
UTM
Referrer
Path
Discount Code
URL parameter
UTM Segment Type
The UTM segment type is used to track a marketing channel based on UTM parameters. To use this segment type, first select the UTM option from the Segment Type dropdown. Then enter the utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_term, and utm_content strings that you want to track into the corresponding text boxes. For example if you want to track the following url https://mystore.com?utm_source=influencer you would enter the string 'influencer' into the utm_source text box.
Referrer Segment Type
The referrer segment type is used to track a marketing channel based on the referrer domain. For example you could use this segment type to track traffic from a specific website such as reddit.com or wsj.com. To use this segment type, first select the Referrer option from the Segment Type dropdown. Configure the segment by entering the referring domain name that you want to track into the Referrer Domain text box. If you want to track sales coming from https://reddit.com then you would enter reddit.com into the Referrer Domain text box.
Path Segment Type
The path segment type will track campaigns based on the URL of a landing page. For example if you are driving traffic to https://mystore.com/taylorswift as part of an influencer campaign you can use the path segment type to track this by entering 'taylorswift' into the Webpage Path text box.
Discount Code Segment Type
The discount code segment type is used to track campaigns based on discount codes entered at checkout.
URL parameter segment type
The url parameter segment type is used to track campaigns based on parameters in the URL. An example use case would be to track an affiliate network that adds affiliate parameters to the url. For example if your affiliate partner directs traffic to https://mystore.com?aaid=zOGRz You can track this campaign by entering aaid=zOGRz into the URL Parameter text box.