Web Channel helps you increase your marketing campaign performance to drive retention, increase repeat purchases, and turn your anonymous Internet users into loyal customers by adding a crucial touchpoint to the channel mix: your website.
Have a look at a brief and portable summary of this channel along with some relevant customer testimonies.
If you are interested in learning more about Web Channel, please enter your details to request a demonstration.
Product documentation
Overview
- Before you start working with Web Channel
- Web Channel SPA support
- The Web Channel campaign creation workflow
Use cases
- Web Channel - Use cases for Overlay campaigns
- Web Channel - Use cases for Embedded campaigns
- Web Channel - Use cases for Ribbon campaigns
Editors
Campaign overview
Creating campaigns
- Selecting your campaign template
- Campaign settings
- Content
- Placement
- Web Channel Content Blocks
- Session Filters
- Trigger & Scheduling
Campaign-specific settings
- Creating an Embedded Web Channel campaign
- Creating an Overlay Web Channel campaign
- Creating a Ribbon Web Channel campaign
- Creating a Web Channel campaign for Automation Center
Reporting
Testing
Troubleshooting
- Checking and fixing unacknowledged errors in active Web Channel campaigns
- Why is my new Web Channel campaign not visible?
- I cannot submit forms used in my Web Channel campaigns
Managing campaigns
Training material - Visible for Signed-in users only.
As a quick reminder, here is the onboarding video about Web Channel:
What is Web Channel?
Web Channel allows you to display highly customizable marketing content on your website. Using the customer information available in your Emarsys database; real-time session data and historical CRM data, you can build personalized campaigns that appear at the right moment for the right audience.
How does Web Channel work?
Web Channel allows you to create even multiple campaigns targeting specific customer segments by displaying personalized HTML content on your website. When visitors belonging to the segment arrive at your website they will see customized content you designed specifically for them. You can select the group of pages where you want to display this content as well as the frequency at which you want it to appear.
Only visitors who belong in the selected segment will see your Web Channel content.
Why should I be using Web Channel?
As an online marketer, you are putting so much time and effort into communicating the right message to your customers, by creating tailor-made offers that they cannot refuse or by telling them in a personally addressed email just how much you’ve missed them. But, even though you’re sending out the right messages and showing the right ads, are you also delivering that same type of personalized communication on your website? For more information with recommendations and examples relating to the use of the right Web Channel campaign, see Before you start working with Web Channel.
Getting started with Web Channel
To work with Web Channel you must start with implementing the Web Extend data collection scripts. You can track visitor interactions on your website and process this information to serve validated data to various Emarsys applications with the Web Extend data collection scripts.
First, you must have completed steps of the Emarsys data collection scripts implementation guide:
You can check the health status of your implementation on the Predict Data Sources page. Other than that, it requires no IT implementation effort on your side.
Multiple domains can be added to Web Channel, but the domains need to share the same Merchant ID header and the same Contact Identification via Web Extend.
Browser support
On Windows desktop and macOS, Web Channel is supported on the current and the previous two releases of Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox and Safari. On mobile, we support Safari on iOS 8+ and Chrome on Android. On other platforms and browsers, Web Channel is not officially supported.
Web Channel - FAQ
Can my Web Channel campaign be connected to one domain only?
Yes. Even though an account can use more than one domain, a Web Channel campaign can only be connected to one. If there are more domains configured for the account, you need to select the one you want to use for the campaign. If you want to run a campaign on more domains, you can copy it and select another domain for the new campaign. For more information, see Campaign settings.
Can I have more than one active Web Channel campaign?
Yes, it is possible to have multiple active campaigns. For information how where to see your active campaigns, go to Web Channel campaigns overview.
Can I have a Web Channel campaign with multiple languages?
Yes, you can create your Web Channel campaign with multiple languages, according to the following options:
- Create your new Web Channel campaign and specify the language of your website language.
- Alternatively, you can use different Digital Ads segments to target visitors with different language preferences.
- Create multiple campaigns with various languages and set a filter to the languages.
How does Emarsys decide which version to show to visitors, If I have created Web Channel content in multiple languages? Does it depend on the website’s language or the CRM data?
You can either specify the website language when you create your campaign, or use different Digital Ads segments to target visitors with different language preferences. You can create multiple campaigns in different languages, so you can filter to the languages. For more information, see General Settings.
Can I add Predict Web Recommendations to the Web Channel campaign?
Yes, you can add Predict. For detailed information, see Web Channel - Uses cases for Embedded campaigns.
Can I edit JavaScript or HTML code in the campaigns for desktop and for mobile?
Yes, you can. For information, see HTML editor.
Can I add Open Time Content (OTC) to a Web Channel campaign?
No, you cannot add OTC to Web Channel campaign. For information, see Before you start working with Web Channel.
Can I add content via API to a Web Channel campaign?
No, it is not possible, yet. For more information on the supported features, see Emarsys features with Web Channel.
Can I track Web Channel revenue on the reporting pages?
No, it is not possible, yet. You can use Google Analytics for these purposes.
Can I have performance or page load issues when loading Web Channel content?
No, you cannot. All the JavaScript snippets are asynchronous, and no element of the infrastructure can slow your website or affect the visitor experience in any negative way, even in the case that the service is completely unreachable for the visitor (e.g. due to network issues). The worst case scenario is that Web Channel campaigns will not be displayed, without affecting the rest of the page.
Can Web Channel identify visitors who are not logged in into your website?
Web Channel cannot identify visitors on its own. Web Channel relies on Predict for identification. For a contact to be considered identified, it has to exist in the contact database and has to be identified during visit. The setEmail
or the setCustomerId
command needs to be executed for Web Channel to learn the identity of the visitor. For more information about those commands, see Identifying users with Web Extend.
Depending on your Web Channel setup, contact data might be specified in the URL. In this case, a Web Channel campaign is displayed when a contact clicks a tracked link. However, the campaign appears only when the contact clicks the specific link, once they navigate away, they will be handled as unidentified contacts until they log in. Please note that navigating to the site by clicking a tracked link does not ensure consistent identification.
For more information, see How Emarsys Identifies Your Contacts?.
Can Web Channel target unidentified visitors?
Yes, those not identified successfully can be targeted separately.
Can I create delayed campaigns, where the pop-ups appear after a defined period?
You can create delayed Overlay campaigns. For more information, see Creating an Overlay Web Channel campaign.
Can I conduct A/B test Web Channel campaigns?
A/B testing is available for campaigns with Automation Center and Interactions audiences, by using the A/B splitter node. For the rest of the recipient source options, a solution is planned, but it is not supported yet.
Can I be sure that the Web Channel campaigns are not shown to already subscribed people?
Target your unidentified visitors and set the Display frequency to "Recipients can see this campaign only once". However, it is possible that your visitors sees the campaign on a different device.
If you are using the campaign via multiple channels, it is recommended to include the Web Channel campaign into an automation program, and restrict the participation settings of the program.
What is the wps-user-session cookie and what does it do?
The wps-user-session
uses local storage along with Emarsys first-party cookies to track user sessions. This approach is becoming more common as the industry moves away from relying solely on cookies for tracking.
Here's how it works:
-
Session Tracking:
wps-user-session
monitors which marketing campaigns have had an impression in the current browser within the last 30 minutes. - Local Storage: This information is stored locally on the user's device using local storage of the browser.
- Stored Data: The data consists of a list of campaign IDs and the timestamps of when the user saw the campaign, in UNIX timestamp format. Only impressions within the last 30 minutes are saved.
For more information, learn more.