Setting Up In-Market Zip Code Analysis - a Use Case setting-up-in-market-zip-code-analysis-a-use-case

In this use case, we will configure the system to bring in zip codes, classify them as in-market or out-of-market, and then use this data in Analysis Workspace so that we can see the effectiveness of our geo-targeted marketing campaigns.

Transcript
Hey everybody, this is Doug. In this video I want to show you a cool use case for using ZIP Codes and postal codes to do in-market analysis in Adobe Analytics. So here I am in Workspace and this is kinda the goal and we’ll actually take it even a step further, but we want to be able to see how our in-market versus out-of-market ZIP Codes are doing for sign-ups or for whatever else we are trying to get them to do on our site. Again, I have really low demo data here but that doesn’t matter. We are going to build this out and kinda go step by step to show you how to do this. So since we’re gonna use ZIP Codes or postal codes, the very first thing we need to do is set that up. So I’m gonna go to my Report Suite Manager, that’s simply by going to Admin and then Report Suites and I have my list of Report Suites here so for that Report Suite I’m gonna go into Edit Settings, General, and General Account Settings. And I wanna set this ZIP option to “Use geo zip when s.zip is not passed.” So outta these different selections, the one I wanna use for this use case is to use geo zip on all the different pages where I don’t pass in an s.zip. I can pass in an s.zip and it’ll override it, but on most of my pages I’m not passing in a ZIP Code and so in that case I wanted to use the geo zip and on my Sign-Up page I’m not getting a zip, so I wanted to use the geo automatically. So that’s the first thing, I want to use that setting on the Zip Option in the admin console. Okay, so that’s number one. Next, I will still be here in the Admin Console and I’m just going to click on, well mouse over, Edit Settings again and I’m gonna go to Conversion, and I’m gonna go to Conversion Classifications.
Now if you’re not familiar with Classifications, think of them as real-time metadata reports for any given data that you’re bringing in, and so the metadata that were gonna bring in is going to apply to the ZIP Code. So I’m gonna select ZIP Code, and you’ll see that I’ve actually created three Classifications here. So the way that you would do this is, you would just have ZIP Code there and you would mouse over this and choose Add Classification. And then right here where the Name is I would type in In-Market Status as I’ve done down here and I didn’t really need City or State because that’s coming in through geo anyway, but definitely In-Market Status and you can ignore the rest of these fields in here when you’re creating a new Classification. So you’d type in In-Market Status, hit save, and that way you would have a Classification, or a metadata for ZIP Code and then we would save that, and that would give you the ability to upload these values. So let’s take a look at where I did that. So next, I would go to Admin, and Classification Importer and certainly you could use Classification Rule Builder in a lot of cases, but it’s very hard with ZIP Codes because you know, there’s no rhyme or reason to the ZIP Code that ties a certain number to a place. So in ZIP Codes you’re probably gonna just have to do the Importer. So I’m gonna click over to that, I have that open, and so first you would go to Browser Export, choose your Report Suite, and select the Data Set which in this case again, Zip Code, and then just export the file. What you’re downloading is a Classification file that you’ll be able to populate, and so I’m not worrying about these limitations of how many rows and time, those kinds of things, I’m just leaving those as is and selecting Export File. Now let me jump over the file, this is a tab-delimited text file, this is not an Excel file, is a tab-delimited text file that downloads and what it did not have in it was the data over here for In-Market Status, and so any of the ZIP Codes that have had data come in will automatically be in this file. If you have additional ZIP Codes that you plan on marketing to, you might need to add them to column A and then again you can fill out any other columns, especially the In-Market or out-of-market Status column. And I’ve made up these values just to say out-of-market or in-market, so for this given marketing campaign, I am going to market to a very specific place, in this case, clearly, it is Salt Lake City. So this is where my marketing is going to be focused for this campaign and so I am going to set that as in-market. Now the Classifications are retroactive so later on, if I come in and I’m going to do a marketing campaign in Chicago, then I can change this to in-market and change everything else to out-of-market, so that I can again do in-market analysis at that point, just for my campaigns in Chicago. So that’s this use case using Classifications to denote whether a certain location based on ZIP Codes, is either in-market for this campaign or out-of-market. Okay. So in any case you’re going to fill that out with in-market or out-of-market or whatever values you wanna see in the Report and then you’re gonna upload that back into Analytics. Now you need to save this file as a tab-delimited text file, in fact it’s a little trickier than that even. When you do a File, Save As, when you’re saving this file, make sure that you’re gonna save this as a Windows, or as you can see here MS-DOS Formatted Text file, and not as a Mac formatted text file or even not as a tab-delimited text file on a Mac computer, because it’s a little bit finicky and it’s looking for the Windows format of a tab-delimited text file. So there’s your little hint, that if you’re on a Mac, make sure you save this tab-delimited text file as a Windows or MS-Dos Formatted txt. So that’s what I’ve done and saved this as that tab-delimited text file, in that format. Then I can simply go back over to the Classification Importer, and click on Import File and then I can import this file. Of course, I’ve gotta select my Report Suite, that’s the right one, I’m gonna upload this for ZIP Codes, and then I’m gonna go choose my file and click Import. You’ll definitely want to click this “Overwrite data on conflicts”, that sounds scary but it just means “Yes, I’m updating my data.” So go ahead and click that. If you want it to reopen again after it is uploaded, then you can do that again, it’ll download that Classification file. But I don’t really care about that one personally because I already saw my file, I don’t need to download it again, I just uploaded it. But definitely select this top one here “Overwrite data on conflicts” and that means update my data. And then when you import it it’ll ask you “Are you sure?” And then you can say “Yes,” and then you’re good to go. So you will upload this Classification information again, putting in this in-market or out-of-market data into the database for the different ZIP Codes and what that will allow you to do is to go back and run those Reports based on the In-Market Status, this data that you have uploaded. Now one note, you will have to be a little bit patient, because the Classification data is not real-time uploaded, it’s real-time reporting, but the upload does take maybe a day or two sometimes for that data to actually come in and for these values and for this data to be in your Reports. But again once it’s in there you’re doing this data real-time and it is mapping the different Sign-Ups in this case, the different metrics to your Classification data in real-time. Now the way that I found this, again, was just going to Search Components and I type in-market and I don’t have to go that far, and you can see the one it’s gonna select that it will even show you that that is based on the ZIP Code, okay? So that’s what I dragged over to our Freeform table and then I dragged over Sign-Ups so that I could see how many sign-ups happened this month so far and you’d wanna change that based, again, on your campaign time period. And then I have this here, so I can see in-market and out-of-market and how much success on my site has come from those. Now one last thing and probably the most powerful, is that I can now right-click on in-market and I can create a segment from this selection. Now I could also go back to over to the left side and go down to segments and click a plus and then fill it in et cetera, but this is a much easier way to just click on this, right-click that is, and create segment from selection. And I can title this In-Market ZIP Codes and it’s already built it for me so. Show me all of the hits where In-Market Status equals in-market and I could now actually even grab this and take it up to a visitor. So I could say "For all the visitors who have had In-Market Status, “I want them to be part of this segment.” So now I can save this segment and it is now available for me in my Segments to put on any given Report, and I can use that throughout my project and see how this marketing, for these specific ZIP Codes, have been successful across my Analytics. So I can see how they pathed across my site, I can run any Report to see the success and see how it affected my Analytics. I hope that was helpful for you, and that this will be a fun use case. Good luck.

For additional information related to the aspects of this use case, see the following documentation topics:

Zip and Postal Codes

Classifications

Analysis Workspace

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