Channel set up for Website Pages

[Carrie_Lawson]

I have come to the decision that a new channel should most likely be set up for our website pages.  My question is how is everybody setting these up?  Is there a best practice document around setting up additional Channels?

[Anonymous]

Hey Carrie -
Setting up a new channel is in Admin > Tags > New > Channel.

As for the concept of having a channel for website pages. Can you explain the logic here? What is the need for the granulatity of reporting of knowing who has visited a specific page?

I've found that in this world of Big Data, just because we can report on everything, doesn't necessarily mean we should. If there's no conversion/engagement target for a specific page, then I question the validity of creating a program with individual campaigns. Why not just increase their score by a point? 

[Carrie_Lawson]

My reasoning is this.  We advertise thru magazines via online, print, eblast..., we send eDM's with links, with forms, without links, without forms..., we also have our website that has multiple demo pages, forms, white papers...etc.  Each of these tracks progress differently.  Some if they open the email then it was a success if there is no link or any form to fill out.  Some may be a success if they fill out a form or perhaps if they only click a link.

Using the channels is the best way i  know to break out the different ways we advertise and be able to report the success rate on those separately and much easier.  My director requests pretty granular reporting and using different channels for the many different ways that we advertise appears to be the best way to do this.

Is there a better solution for this other than using Channels?

[Anonymous]

Hmm. I do agree that Channels are the best way to track successes. But no where in all of the things that you said did you mention straight website pages. 

If I had a download behind a form for a white paper, case study, ebook, etc then I would use a channel like content, not website. Under what you described "website"  would be like visiting the product page vs the who we are page. If you're talking about advertising, then i think the channel should be advertising, or social media. etc. 

At the end of the day, if you aren't talking about revenue, then you're not pushing the conversation to the right thing & declaring your seat at the decision making table. You're just showing that buttons get pushed, but in reality it doesn't mean much.

So please, create all the channels you want, you certainly can. But data for data's sake, isn't a board level report. I never report on opens/clicks as they don't matter. 

[Carrie_Lawson]

clicks/opens may not matter to some, but they matter to us as we like to know where the buck stops so we may be able to prevent them from halting and convince them to move thru the gate.  i am not looking for "Board Level Reports"...just Director, Manager, and Vertical Manager reports.  They all wish to see the data sliced and diced so many ways and i wish to accomodate their wishes.

Perhaps i am not explaining myself very well and i appologize for that.  Everybody uses terminology a bit different and it means something different to each company/department.  I guess the best way to explain it is advertising or product chowcase categories.  If you advertise or provide info about several products 10+ different ways/avenues....what is the best way to track all those different areas that leads come thru to engage with us.  Is Channels the way? Tags? Tokens?

I am very new to Marketo and an open discussion is all i request so i can gain some better understanding as to the direction i should go.

[Anonymous]

I'd use hidden fields on forms and use URL parameters on each individual link. if you have one landing page with a form, and then 10 different sources, you don't want to have to create the landing page 10 different times in order to make one for each channel. 

http://URLtoMYpage.com/?utm_source=SOURCE1&utm_medium=MEDIUM1&utm_campaign=SAMEcampaignNAME
http://URLtoMYpage.com/?utm_source=SOURCE2&utm_medium=MEDIUM2&utm_campaign=SAMEcampaignNAME
http://URLtoMYpage.com/?utm_source=SOURCE3&utm_medium=MEDIUM3&utm_campaign=SAMEcampaignNAME

Then use Google Analytics to look at that one campaign name and which of the sources drove the most traffic. The hidden fields on the form will capture which source converts the best. 

http://community.marketo.com/MarketoDiscussionDetail?id=90650000000PMGlAAO