A Guide to Site Tracking

A Guide to Site Tracking

Our site tracking feature can be an incredibly powerful part of your marketing automation. This guide tells you all about it and how to set it up.

Introduction

Site tracking records all essential actions that contacts take on any of your web assets and third-party tools. When we say “all essential actions,” we mean it.

As shown in the above screenshot, Optinize users can segment contacts according to six essential site actions:

• Has visited: targets contacts that have visited a certain URL or domain
• Has not visited: targets contacts that have not visited a certain URL or domain
• Total page visits: targets contacts who have or don’t have a certain number of total page visits
• Total site visits: targets contacts who have or don’t have a certain number of total site visits
• Abandoned cart and abandoned view
• Product viewed, collection/category view, added to cart and purchased.

Once activated all the options above can be used on our segment builder. The segment builder, which can be found throughout the platform, can be used to create a segment, trigger automation and/ or inside the automation. We encourage you to use it.

Note: If you properly setup site tracking, you do not have to create tags or use custom fields to store such data. The platform automatically stores that activity for you, and you can easily use the segment builder to target contacts accordingly.

Also, as seen in the below screenshot, you can monitor individual contact activity in the “Customer activity feed” stream on each contact record.

Why It Matters

Above all else, site tracking allows for advanced segmentation. By using the segment builder in automations, you can automate the grouping of contacts who perform actions on the sites or pages that you wish to isolate. As is the case with automations, you can also automate any messaging such contacts receive.

So, at the end of the day, site tracking empowers you to practice behavioral-based marketing. It allows you to personalize at scale and engage with contacts based on the actions they’ve taken on your web assets and third-party tools. The more targeted your marketing is, the more likely you are to achieve your ultimate business goals.

The potential worth of site tracking is immeasurable. Here are just five scenarios where site tracking data could prove valuable:

• Helps support team diagnose issues: When dealing with frustrated customers, support reps could view contacts’ site activities. Perhaps the data shows that a contact repeatedly visited the “forgot password” page. That could be the reason why the contact is upset; they couldn’t login.
• Measures the effectiveness of your websites: Site tracking allows you to assess how your web assets and third-party tools perform. Are they generating traffic? What sites are traffic coming from? What pages lead to conversions?
• Ecommerce essentials: Site tracking monitors the events on your store such as recent product view, category view, add to cart and purchased. Rather than simply following industry trends, you can use site tracking data to determine what products works best and adjust your strategy appropriately.
• Helps sales team convert contacts: Your sales team can identify contacts who repeatedly visit your product page(s) and can engage them accordingly.
• Works to tell contacts’ stories: Together with tags and custom fields, site tracking helps tell contacts’ stories. The data provides a detailed history of a contact’s unique journey with your company.

How To Set It Up

We’ve told you what site tracking is. We’ve told you why it matters. Now, let’s show you how to set it up.

The good news is that setting up site tracking is extremely easy. However, you need to understand what is needed for site tracking to work properly. If you don’t, you might think your site tracking is broken, when in reality you did not configure it correctly.

We suggest site tracking setup should be one of the first tasks you complete. To do so, you need to do three simple steps. All of them take place under the “Tracking” section of your settings page. The below screenshot demonstrates all three steps.

First, you turn on your site tracking. Then, you add your domain. Lastly, copy and paste the auto-generated “Tracking Code” into the footer of your web assets and third-party tools. Once you do that, Optinize tracks any action that contacts take on those sites and their pages for as long as they exist in your database.

Using Site Tracking Data in an Automation

We want to clarify the difference between the “Actions” category and the “Site & Event Data” category that appear in the segment builder.

The “Actions” condition refers to actions contacts take on messages you send via Optinize. The “Site & Event Data” condition is the one that pertains to site tracking. Use it to leverage actions that contacts take on your external web assets and third-party tools.

Closing Remarks

We hope you’re now as excited about site tracking as we are! The feature is powerful and can take your marketing and sales automation to the next level.

Still confused? Feel free to ask us questions in the comments. Also, let us know what you use site tracking for!