Manage marketing channels

Last update: 2024-01-25
  • Created for:
  • Admin
NOTE

For general information on Marketing Channels, see Get started with Marketing Channels.

To maximize effectiveness of Marketing Channels for Attribution and Customer Journey Analytics, we have published some revised best practices.

Analytics > Admin > Report Suites > Edit Settings > Marketing Channels > Marketing Channel Manager.

Add or enable marketing channels in the Marketing Channel Manager. For report suites that have no marketing channels, an automatic setup lets you create several channels for you, along with their rules. You can edit predefined channels to suit your needs, or create your own (up to a total of 25).

Adding channels to the Marketing Channels page is done independently of creating rules on the Marketing Channel Processing Rules page. You associate rules with channels when creating the rule.

Here are guidelines for creating channels:

  • Plan ahead by making a list of all your channels, so that all of your visitor hits are categorized to the right channel.
  • Include channels for the categories of Internal hits.
  • Include a catch-all “Other Campaigns” channel, to be placed after paid channels and before organic channels.

Prerequisites

Add marketing channels

Add marketing channels in the Marketing Channel Manager.

NOTE

You cannot delete a channel. If you do not want to use a channel, you can disable or rename it, and preserve it for later use.

  1. Click Analytics > Admin > Report Suites.

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

    If you select multiple report suites, select a template that copies settings from the template to the selected report suites.

    See Apply template report suite settings to multiple report suites.

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

    If your report suite does not have channels defined, the Auto Setup page displays.

  4. On the Marketing Channel Manager page, click Add Channel.

    This option is not available when 25 channels are defined.

  5. Click Save.

  6. To configure rules for the channel, click Marketing Channel Processing Rules.

    See Create Marketing Channel processing rules.

Apply channel settings

There are various settings that can be applied to each channel on the Marketing Channel Manager page.

Field Definition
Enabled Enables or disables this marketing channel.
Channel Name The friendly name of the marketing channel.
Override Last-Touch Channel Lets you choose whether to override an existing, persistent last-touch channel with the selected channel. If you select this checkbox, any channel (including Direct and Internal) would override an existing last-touch channel. The result is conversion being attributed to a channel that might not deserve credit. For example, this option can ensure that the Direct channel does not receive credit for conversion if the user had previously been acquired via the Natural Search channel.
Channel Breakdown Lets you break down a channel by this value. You can add possible channel breakdowns (subchannels) when creating marketing channel classifications.
Type Specifies how the user came to your site. You can select Online or Offline. Use Online channels for visitors who come through a search engine or email campaign. Offline channels apply to visitors who found your site through newspaper coupons or magazine advertisements. Offline channels usually include data imported through reporting Data Sources. See Data Sources. See Add Offline Data.

Override best practices

It is a best practice to uncheck the override last-touch option for Direct and Internal channels, so that they can’t take credit from other persisting last touch channels (or each other).

Define channel rules

Before channels and channel data can be displayed in the report, create the channels and the underlying rules that process data. You can also specify how long you want the visitor engagement period to last.

Adobe provides several predefined channels during an automatic setup that you can edit to suit your needs. Additionally, you can modify this setup and define custom rules within Marketing Channel processing rules.

NOTE

Adobe recommends that you set up your report in a report suite that you can use as a template for testing purposes. You can use the template to apply channel and rule sets globally to one or more production report suites.

See Apply Template Report Suite Settings to Multiple Report Suites.

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