Web Analytics Connector Scenario

Learn how a fictitious company, Northern Trail Outfitters, uses the Web Analytics Connector to share tracking information between Marketing Cloud Engagement and a third-party web analytics service.

In this example, Northern Trail Outfitters (NTO) wants to compare the effectiveness of a new campaign against an existing campaign in converting subscribers to online buyers. To identify which campaign resulted in web page activity, NTO uses Web Analytics Connector to automatically append the campaign ID to URLs in emails. This information identifies the campaign that the email is part of so NTO can identify which campaign is generating more traffic.

In Parameter Manager, NTO decides to include the campaign code in email links using the format et_cid=[campaign code].

After it’s enabled, NTO includes the campaign code during the Send Wizard for an existing campaign by entering wc1 in the Additional Info field. Links in this email automatically contain this string at the end of the target URL: et_cid=wc1.

Next, NTO creates the campaign and specifies the new campaign code. When creating an email for the new campaign, NTO enters the new campaign code in the Additional Email Attributes field. Links in this email automatically contain this string at the end of the target URL: et_cid=wc2

NTO creates two groups from the mailing list. The first group receives emails from the existing campaign that includes URLs tagged with et_cid=wc1. The second group receives emails from the new campaign that includes URLs tagged with et_cid=wc2.

As subscribers click email links, the web analytics service shows which campaign drove webpage traffic. This tracking is based on the et_cid value in the target URL of the link. The web analytics service continues to track the activities of the subscribers. For example, it can indicate whether a site visit resulted in a purchase and if so, what the purchase value was. NTO uses this data to compare the effectiveness of their campaigns.

NTO expands their campaigns with SMS messages and Social Forward functionality. They include the campaign codes in URLs to track clicks from those sources, which expand their understanding of campaign effectiveness.