The basic Web Analytics Integration allows users to track website activity after links are clicked in their emails.

Website activity includes items customers place in a shopping cart, products they viewed, and where they go from your website.

Use the advanced Web Analytics Integration to add event data from your website, such as Purchases or Cart Abandonment, to Acoustic Campaign to leverage this data in emails. The advanced integration can also send email metrics, like opens, to the Web Analytics tool to augment reporting.

What do I need to get started?

Enable your web analytics software, such as Digital Analytics, Adobe Analytics, etc. If you purchase an advanced integration, an Acoustic Campaign Professional Services team member will begin the integration process.

How does the integration work?

There are three possible points of integration between email marketing applications - Acoustic Campaign and web analytics products, such as Digital Analytics and Adobe Analytics.

1. The first point of integration automatically tags links in Acoustic Campaign emails. This enables your analytics package (select the Enable Site Analytics Automation option) and adds the append string.
   1. Used to send information to the analytics product that the customer uses for reporting purposes.
   2. Acoustic Campaign org admins enable an interface to the web analytics package by configuring the Site Analytics Append String within the Integrations area of Acoustic Campaign. This allows Acoustic Campaign to pass identifiers for reporting and data exchange to the web analytics package.
   3. This is a one-time configuration and will be discussed in greater detail within the Enable Web Analytics Integration section of this article.
2. The second point of integration provides the exchange of recipient-level data from the analytics product to the Acoustic Campaign. An Acoustic Campaign Professional completes this advanced integration for you.
   1. Sends emails to your contacts based on their actions and behaviors. Examples are when a customer abandons an item in a shopping cart, browses specific web pages, or purchases a product.
   2. The files are used to update an activity relational table in the Acoustic Campaign.
   3. Marketers can then create campaign emails that are sent based on a trigger from the actionable data imported from the feeds. After these emails are set, they run on a set frequency that usually corresponds to the upload of new records from the analytics package data feeds. (Marketers can send automated emails or emails without using automation, also known as 'one-off emails'.)
3. The third point of integration is Acoustic Campaign's ability to push daily email metrics out to the vendor reporting module so that marketers can view the results.

Note: This is also part of the advanced integration and is specific to customers using Adobe as their web analytics package.

• Allows Acoustic Campaign to push aggregated email metrics to your analytics vendor's reporting module on a daily basis.
• These metrics give marketers the ability to get a complete view of a marketing campaign, from the visitor's actions and behavior after they click-through from an email.

Configure the append string

The "append string" is appended to links within your emails which allow tracking to be reported back to the analytics provider. This append string is a default that appears for each vendor. You can customize the append string based on your needs. You can also include extra URL parameters if you use custom tracking on other sites.

1. Open Organization Settings.
2. Select Integrations.
3. Select Edit. The Update Integration page displays.
4. Select the check box next to Enable Site Analytics Automation.
5. Select the Site Analytics Package drop-down to choose your package. Choose Other if your solution is not listed.
6. In the Website Domain area, enter all website links in your email that you want to track activity. There is no limit on the number of sites you can track, but you must separate each link with a comma.
7. In the Exclude Domains text box, enter any sites that you do not want to track. For example, you might want to track the activity on your company website but not your company blog site.
8. The Append String for Hyperlinks area is populated automatically based on which package that you choose.
9. When finished, click Save.

What to do next

The following is a list of personalization variables that can be used within the append string:

• %%EMAIL%% (Email Address)
• %%RECIPIENT_ID%% (Encoded Recipient Id)
• %%LIST_ID%% (Id of the Database, Query, or Contact List the email was sent to)
• %%MAILING_ID%% (Id of the Sent email)
• %%MAILING_NAME%% (The 'friendly name' of the email)
• %%MAILING_SEND_DAY%% (Day of the week the email was sent)
• %%MAILING_SEND_DATE%% (Date the email was sent)
• %%LINK_NAME%% (The name of a Hyperlink)
• %%<<Column Name>>%% (Any Campaign database column name, as added to the database)

In addition to system values available for personalization, you may also use the %%WA_MAILINGLEVEL_CODE%% to specify a value when you are sending the email. Before you test, make sure to add a value in the field. To do that, fill out an input box for Analytics ID (as shown below). For a standard scheduled email, it's under step 2 on review and send.

Your site allows you to pass a variable through their CameFrom feature. The CameFrom code is carried through the visitor's session on your website and allows you to track where the visitor came from before purchasing.

For example, adding &CAMEFROM=%%MAILING_NAME%% to the append string setting or manually to a hyperlink records the name of the email in CityCool.

Configure more than one site analytics package per organization

At the present time, it is only possible to configure one analytics package per Organization. However, you can manually edit the link append string to add additional parameters that other analytics packages may need. For example, you can add UTM for Google and sp_rid for Omniture. 

Create a query using the relational table data

After the relational table is added to Acoustic Campaign, you can create queries to send emails that target your customers.

1. Create a query based on the relational table data.
2. Include Acoustic Digital Analytics or Adobe Analytics relational table data in a Campaign email.
3. After the query is created, it's time to insert the relational table data into the Campaign email.

Follow these steps to create a query using the relational table data.

1. From the Edit Mailing Template page, go to the Mailing Body tab to edit your email.
2. Create a relational table query within the email. This query will define what content will go in the email. Click the Relational Table icon.
3. Select Create Relational Table Query.
4. Select the CM Relational Table that is associated with our database.
5. Click Select.
6. Enter a Name for your query.
7. Click OK.
8. Enter a query criteria. In this example, we'll show what was in the customer's shopping cart. Select the Activity Date item as our first criterion and leave the operator as Equals.
9. Click Value and select Current Date. This time, let's query for the current date - 3 days. This will target customers who abandoned their cart 3 days ago.
10. Click Add.
11. Select Activity Type and leave the operator as Equals.
12. Enter a Value of ABAN to target customers who abandoned their carts.
13. Click Add.
14. Click Save & Calculate, then Submit.
15. Now, in the email body, select the Relational Tables icon again and click Insert Relational Table Data to select the query we just created.
16. Select a Relational Table Query to use with your email template. Let's select the CM Mailing Query we just created within the email.
17. Click Select.

The next step is to select Insert Markup to define the layout of the Relational Table Data to be displayed. This creates a generic outline containing fields from your Relational Table. You can insert the fields you want to include in the email from the relational table.

Advanced integration

To allow advanced integration with Web Analytics, you need to complete these requirements in your Acoustic Campaign organization:

• A master database used to associate to a relational table.
• The ability to create a relational table query to insert data into an email template.

Optional:

Enable Custom Catalogue for your organization. Custom catalogs provide detailed reporting data about the products, such as the exact item a customer abandoned or viewed as well as a link to a picture of the item. This additional data can be used in your re-marketing email templates.

To create an advanced integration:

1. Open Create Group from Automated Messages.
2. From the Automated Messages page, enter a Name for the group.
3. Select the contact source.
4. Click the Queries radio button to choose the query that is created earlier.
5. Select a query.
6. Click Select.
7. Next, you must select an Event Trigger for this message. This email is required to go out on a recurring daily basis to our query so choose Recurring emails as the trigger.
8. Select Save Draft at the bottom of the page.
9. Assign, schedule, and automate the email.

Follow these steps to create an automated email.

1. Go to Email > Emails & Templates.
2. Select an email. This is the email inserted in the Relational Table Data.
3. From the Edit Email Template page, confirm that the Contact Source is the same that was assigned to the Group of Automated Messages.
4. Click Send.
5. Select Automate send email as the send option.
6. From the Automate an email Send page, scroll down to assign the email to a Group of Automated Messages.
7. Select the Assign Email to Existing Group of Automated Messages radio button.
8. Select the group you created.
9. Now, determine the schedule.
10. Click Submit.
11. Click Automate.

Follow these steps to activate the automated message.

1. Select the check box next to the email.
2. Click Activate.
3. Go back to the Pending tab and select the check box next to the email again.
4. Select Activate from within the Pending tab.
5. Click OK to confirm that you want to activate the email.

The Group is active and continues to send the email at the specified time.