Auto-tagging is a term we are all somewhat familiar with, but Marketo Measure has its own auto-tagging functionality that is crucial for granular ROI reporting. I see Marketo Measure users skipping this step sometimes, so I’d like to explain why it’s important to ensure it’s enabled.
We’ll begin with a quick description of what it is… Marketo Measure's auto-tagging functionality automatically appends the ends of your ad URLs with the custom parameters needed by Marketo Measure. Note that Marketo Measure only offers this for the 4 platforms we have integrations with (Google Ads, Bing, Facebook, LinkedIn).
So, when an ad is created, Marketo Measure will append the appropriate custom parameters to the end of the URL behind whichever UTMs or tracking you have in place already. Please be aware that this auto-tagging is not appending UTMs, rather it is appending custom parameters that ensure Marketo Measure can pull the correct data from the ad platform. And don’t worry about any conflict or overriding, Marketo Measure's auto-tagging won’t interfere with the tracking you’re already doing!
One of the obvious benefits of Marketo Measure's auto-tagging is that it removes the potential for human error (someone forgetting to deploy the parameters or adding the wrong information). But the most significant benefit, in my opinion, is that it allows for ROI reporting at the Campaign level. Without Marketo Measure's auto-tagging, you will not be able to have clean Campaign level ROI reporting for your Google Ads/Bing/Facebook/LinkedIn efforts. To me, that is a huge reporting opportunity wasted!
I’m often asked why you can’t get Campaign level ROI reporting for these platforms without Marketo Measure's auto-tagging in places so here is the technical reasoning — without auto-tagging, the cost Marketo Measure is downloading won’t line up to the exact campaign value. For example, let’s say we have a LinkedIn campaign called “EOY Promo 2024” and we don’t have Marketo Measure's auto-tagging enabled but UTMs are being used. What would happen is:
- Marketo Measure would download the “EOY Promo 2024” campaign and costs from LinkedIn
- Without auto-tagging, Marketo Measure doesn’t have the customer parameter to pull the Campaign value directly from LinkedIn
- Instead, we would just see the UTM_Campaign value. For example, maybe that’s something like “EOY-Promo-2024"
- The UTM_Campaign value would show up as a separate line item in the cost table so then the cost doesn’t associate with the campaign directly.
So the takeaway here is if you care about Campaign Level ROI, be sure to enable Marketo Measure's auto-tagging. There is a lot of value in having costs tied to the appropriate campaign.
See auto-tagging information here for more details and the specific custom parameters added to each platform’s ad URLs.
Last Updated 4/5/2024
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