Get started with Marketing Channels

Last update: November 29, 2023

CREATED FOR:

  • User
  • Admin
NOTE
To maximize effectiveness of Marketing Channels for Attribution and Customer Journey Analytics, we have published some revised best practices.
Analytics administrators can manage marketing channels for their organizations as described in Manage Marketing Channels.

Marketing Channels are commonly used to provide insight on how visitors arrive on your site. You can customize your Marketing Channel Processing Rules based on what channels you want to track, and how you want to track them.

Marketing Channels revolve around First and Last Touch metrics, which are components of standard conversion metrics.

Marketing Channels workflow

Define each channel based on your business requirements.

Defining the channels you use is one of the most important components of Marketing Channels. Defining the channels can require collaboration between several individuals in your organization. Here are a few questions to consider:

  • Are you using a paid search?
  • Are you using email campaigns? Are you using multiple email campaigns that you would want to track separately?
  • Do you have affiliates that direct traffic to your site? Are there affiliates that you want to track individually?
  • Are there external campaigns that would be advantageous in tracking separately?
  • Do you want to aggregate all social networking sites, or are there any that you want to track individually?
  • Are there other channels that might affect conversion that you want to track?

A list of recommended channels can be found in Frequently Asked Questions and Examples. Create a list of channels you want to use, so that enabling and defining them is easier when you create channels.

Add marketing channels on the Marketing Channel Manager page.

After defining what channels to track, you enable them in Admin > Report Suites.

See Channels and Rules for important prerequisite and conceptual information.

See Add marketing channels for the procedure.

NOTE
If Marketing Channels have not been previously configured, the automatic setup displays. This setup provides several pre-configured channels that you can customize. Adobe recommends that you use these rules as a template. However, if you already have solid channel definitions, you can skip the automatic setup.

Configure or refine each channels’ rules on the Marketing Channel Processing Rules page.

After you create channels on the Marketing Channel Manager page, you configure the rules so that channels can retrieve and report data.

See Marketing Channel Processing Rules.

If channels were created in the automatic setup, the rules in those channels are defined. You can modify them to suit your needs.

Automatic setup for Marketing Channels

The Marketing Channel report comes with a one-time setup page to get you started. It provides several marketing channels that you can use for tracking. You can skip this setup if you feel comfortable creating channels and rules. However, Adobe recommends that you allow the wizard to create the channels for you. The automatic setup lets you see how rules are constructed, or edit them for your own purposes. You can disable or delete the predefined channels at any time.

How to run the Marketing Channels automatic setup.

  1. Click Analytics > Admin > Report Suites.

  2. On the Report Suite Manager, select a report suite.

  3. Click Edit Settings > Marketing Channels > Marketing Channel Manager.

    Step Result

    NOTE
    The Marketing Channels: Auto Setup page displays automatically when you access channel configuration applications in Admin Tools. (See Marketing Channel Manager.) This page does not display if your report suite contains one or more marketing channels. You cannot access this page again unless you select another report suite that does not contain marketing channels.

  4. Make sure the channels that you want to create are selected.

    When selected, Email, Display, and Affiliate are required fields.

  5. Click Save.