Hi,
We're currently in the process of defining our channels and tags, but I'm not sure on how to best structure them for reporting purposes.
From what I know, a channel is a specific type of tag that's used for reporting purposes, and the tag is automatically inserted under Setup tab when creating a new program.
1.) A program can as many tags as needed, but is there a point in which this becomes unmanageable?
2.) What happens if we had an excessive amount of overly specified channels? How would that effect reporting?
3.) It seems like Marketo 1st wants to pull reports by channel and then use other tags and not the other way around?
Thanks for your help!
Tom
Hi Tom,
1.) A program can as many tags as needed, but is there a point in which this becomes unmanageable?
In my openion, what and how many tags you should use depends on your business practices and how do you report on your marketing programs.
Apart from manageability, we need to evaluate how a tag will be used and would it help to analyze, slice/dice, and improve program performance.
Typically 5 tags or less might work better but there might be instances where you need more.
2.) What happens if we had an excessive amount of overly specified channels? How would that effect reporting?
Again, what and how many channels you should use depends on your business practices and how do you report on your marketing programs. How many and what 'delivery mechanisms' do you have for your Marketing programs.
Overly specific channels might help in the instances where you have business practice where you need specific 'progression statuses'. Otherwise, try to 'fit' specific needs in a common channel with generalized progression statuses.
If you have a distributed, or big team using Marketo, too many similar sounding channels might create incorrect channel use for your programs.
3.) It seems like Marketo 1st wants to pull reports by channel and then use other tags and not the other way around?
Channel reporting helps you to understand how leads moved within a program from progression status to the next progress status.
While tags are just attributes that simply describe these leads and can be used to further slice and dice to understand what might be common in leads that moved in progression in certain way.
One 'almost' analogy is Channels have 'behavioral' insights while tags give you 'descriptive' (almost like demographic) insights.
Hope this helps
Rajesh
This is not quite right:
The next challenge is do you want to align the Channel or Lead Source to the Program Channel or use a Tag to handle that as well as the Asset Type? There's no perfect answer here, but I'd suggest creating Program Channels that align to Lead Source and include a Channel Type and Asset Type Tag.
Hi Josh
Are you saying that is for example if Channel = Webinar, then we should have a tag called channel type = Webinar?
Any suggestion on how to report on MGL, MQL,Opps per channel per region or country in one report?
Thanks
Axel