Multiple channels = multiple truths
In the campaign space not many companies go it alone, and will often engage multiple agencies and partners across different channels. While this approach ensures you have specialists working across every aspect of your campaign, it also means multiple measurement methodologies and partners with preferred frameworks. DFA, Google Analytics, Marin, Media Mind along with others all provide great data and capability, and from a page code (and tracking code) perspective all happily coexist with each other. However, if you’re the campaign owner you need to confirm which of these you consider to be your combined source of truth.
Communication is the key
Assuming your central platform is SiteCatalyst, this needs to be clearly communicated out across your partners and agencies. Definitely encourage the use of all other platforms to measure campaign performance, as data from multiple platforms is all valuable data and may provide unique insight. Just be clear that final campaign evaluation will be based on the received SiteCatalyst data. Given the more custom nature of SiteCatalyst code, your agency or partners may not always be familiar with how it works, and have limited access to the data, so may not be that enthusiastic about using SiteCatalyst.
“Be clear that final campaign evaluation will be based on the received SiteCatalyst data”
Tools to make it easier
Most of these platforms have tools available that you can use to make it easier for you and your agencies and partners to combine the data from different sources. Doubleclick for Advertisers (DFA) provides a predefined Genesis integration with SiteCatalyst so that click through, view through and media cost metrics are fed into SiteCatalyst. If using Google Analytics there’s a comprehensive set of utm_campaign, utm_source and utm_medium tracking parameters already live. You can set up SiteCatalyst to use a combination of these values as the campaign tracking code, or as a backup tracking code if a SiteCatalyst one is not present. If you’re using Adobe Tag Manager to deploy your SiteCatalyst code, v2 containers are capable of triggering tags based on url rules.
My advice is to tackle the platform conversation early, and depending on how long term your partner is, open up your SiteCatalyst instance and involve them in SiteCatalyst training across both reporting and implementation.
Read more on Why the data is there to be used in my next tip, and take a look at all 5 of my tips for successful campaign management.
