Digital Analytic Best Practices on Site Promotions

Creating Site Promotions (cm_sp) Links

For Digital Analytics (DA) to receive session activity, cm_sp parameters must be appended to the end of the desired onsite link. Tagging links will not only enable tracking, but it will also allow you to differentiate between links in reporting.

DA Tracking Code Generator

DA provides a tracking code generator for faster link creation. The tracking code generator can be used to create site promotions destination URLs.

The Tracking Code Generator can be downloaded from the DA interface. Once logged into DA, in the left-hand navigation click on Admin > Tracking Codes Generator. The tracking code generator has a excel file template that should be used when generating links.

More information on how to format and append tracking codes by using the Tracking Code Generator can be found at: https://help.goacoustic.com/hc/en-us/articles/360042516054-Format-and-append-tracking-codes-by-using-the-Tracking-Code-Generator

Site Promotions reporting and best practices

The Site Promotions report allows you to measure the success of onsite links or onsite promotions that reside on multiple pages or placements on your website. Hierarchical categorization allows you to track impressions, clicks and conversion performance for dynamic promotions, A/B tests, and provides aggregate activity for navigation, links, or banners across your website.

Site Promotion tagging parameters must be appended to the end of the destination URLs on links that you want to track in the Site Promotions report. Three parameter values are used to create a Site Promotion link. By appending cm_sp, the site promotions parameter tracks Promotion type, Promotion, and Link.

Each parameter value should be separated by -_- and spaces between words are represented by %20 or + sign. Each value within the cm_sp parameter is required. If you do not need to use all three site promotion parameters, you can pass null or NA but do not leave any site promotion parameter values blank.

The Site Promotions report will display the specific DA Page ID where the site promotions link was clicked automatically.

3 Site Promotions Parameter Values:

1) Promotion Type
2) Promotion
3) Link

Below are Site Promotions (cm_sp) naming convention and destination URL examples.

Tips:

1. When writing your parameters be aware not to use ampersands (&) in the HTML code. Having an ampersand in your code signals to HTML that a new “argument” is beginning and forces a premature cut off of the parameter. When the application is cut off midway, only parts of the required parameters are present and in effect will “break” the link. As a result, data will not show up in the desired report.

2. You can review a report in DA that allows you to see invalid or broken cm_sp links. The most common reasons for broken links are malformed URLs or redirects stripping off the parameter values.

In DA click on Standard Workspaces > Behavior > Invalid Site Promotions to access the invalid report. It is recommended that you review the invalid report on a weekly or monthly frequency.

More information on the how to troubleshoot and correct links that appear in the invalid reports can be reviewed at https://help.goacoustic.com/hc/en-us/articles/360042984813-Invalid-tracking-links-reports

FAQs:

Question: Is there a limit on the length of Site Promotions parameters. What happens if this is exceeded?

Answer: The character limit for each of the three values in a Site Promotions parameter is 256 characters. Link Clicks that contain component values more than 256 characters will truncated to 256 for data storage and reporting.

The whole URL cannot exceed 1024 characters. If the URL does exceed 1024 characters, it will be truncated.

Question: What characters are allowed in the Site Promotion parameters?

Answer: If you use special characters in your parameter values, ensure that the characters you use are supported in Digital Analytics parameter values. Digital Analytics supports the following special characters for use in tracking code parameter values.

Question: In the Site Promotions report I can edit the metrics and add in a metric called “SP Impressions. How is data for this metric collected?

Answer: This is an optional metric you may choose to populate data for in the Site Promotions report. Data for SP Impressions metric is defined by what is being passed in the Link Impression tags implemented on a page.

Learn more about Link Impression tag by reviewing the following links:
https://help.goacoustic.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043009933-Manual-Impression-tag

https://help.goacoustic.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043009833-Managing-and-tracking-on-site-marketing-links

Question: What options are available for exporting data collected by the cm_sp parameter?

Answer: A user can leverage the Site Promotions full list report to export all data to excel or CSV. The Site promotions data can also be exported by creating an API request by clicking on Menu > Export > API.

Additionally, Site Promotions data can be extracted from in the Digital Data Feed (DDF) in the Site Promotions Click file. Detailed information this DDF file can be found at: https://help.goacoustic.com/hc/en-us/articles/360042515094-Raw-data-in-the-Digital-Data-Feed-files#a15

As Pereion's Digital Analytics Practice Leader, Kate Fox has 15 years of experience working with clients on their web analytic requirements, including implementations, updates, training, and analytic best practices. Additionally, Kate is certified in both Acoustic Digital Analytics and Google Analytics.