End-user guides:: Managing Web Channel campaigns – Emarsys

This feature must be enabled for you by Emarsys Support, and requires steps 1 and 2 of the Web Extend Data Collection Scripts to be implemented.

Further reading

Web Channel - Troubleshooting

As a quick reminder, here is the onboarding video about Managing Web Channel Campaigns:

Campaigns tab: Campaign priority

On the Campaigns tab, your campaigns are listed in order of priority, the topmost item having the highest priority (value = 1).

Priority determines which Web Channel campaign is displayed for customers who are targeted by more than one campaign. It is to prevent you from overloading your contacts with personalized website overlays.

If a customer is targeted by more than one Web Channel campaigns of the same type and with the same placement, they will only see the one that is found higher in the priority list.

A high-priority campaign will be skipped only when a condition preventing it from displaying is fulfilled. Only then will the campaign next in the priority list start showing for the same contact.

A customer can see multiple Web Channel campaigns in the following cases:

If you have multiple ribbon campaigns with different placement on the same page.
If you have multiple embedded campaigns in different zones on the same page.
If you have different types of Web Channel campaigns on the same page. For example, if you have a ribbon, an overlay and an embedded campaign on the same page, then a customer can see all of these.

To demote or promote your campaigns in the priority list, proceed as follows:

Click Set Priority.
Select the campaign that you would like to promote or demote in the priority list and click the or icon accordingly.
When you are ready, click Finish Prioritizing.

Dashboard tab: Monitoring Web Channel performance

To monitor the performance of your Web Channel campaigns you can see an overview on the Web Channel Dashboard.

The following metrics are available:

Impressions – The number of times the web campaign was displayed.
Actions – The number of clicks or form submissions the campaign received.
Recent activities – The engagement events of running web campaigns registered in the last 2 hours. If more than 100 events have occurred in this period, only the last 100 are listed here.
Recent campaigns – Lists all running web campaigns.

To see reporting, click next to their name on the Campaigns tab.

Reporting page

Here you can see how your individual Web Channel campaigns performed. This page displays a breakdown of the impressions and conversions of the campaign on desktop and mobile. Revenue tracking is not available, use Google Analytics for these purposes.

Web Channel reporting cannot differentiate between desktop and mobile impressions in Visual Editor-based campaigns. This works only for HTML campaigns.

Zones tab

In case of creating an Embedded campaign, for the zone selector feature you can create a new zone or select from the existing zones under this tab.

Click Create Zone in the Zones tab. Optionally, you can search in the list of existing, pre-created zones.
Select your Domain in the drop-down list, where you want to set your zone.
Define your Zone name.
Under Show in the Zone, you can define an element to which a CSS rule applies. Alternatively, you can select an area with your cursor.
Click OK.

Activating a campaign

You can instantly activate a new campaign you have just created by clicking Save and Activate in the Scheduling step of the campaign editor.

Or if you want to activate a draft or ready campaign, click next to their name, go to the Scheduling step and then click Activate.

The time required for activating your campaign may occasionally increase significantly. Our developers are aware of the issue and are actively working to fix this.

It is recommended to test your Web Channel campaign after activation.

Be aware that currently, Test mode in the Content step of the Web Channel campaign creation flow provides you a preview function only.

Editing campaigns

You can edit a campaign by simply clicking next to their name on the Campaigns tab.

You can edit a campaign at any time if its status is draft or ready, but you cannot edit a running campaign. If you need to edit a running campaign first you have to stop it.

Stopping a campaign

To stop a campaign, locate it on the Campaigns tab, click next to their name, navigate to the Scheduling step, and then click Stop at the top right-hand corner of the window.

The time needed for stopping a campaign may temporarily increase significantly, even to as high as a few hours. Our developers are working to fix this.

Tracking Web Channel content events

You can track the content events of your Web Channel campaign by using Google Analytics. If your website has Google Analytics integrated, every Web Channel campaign type sends the following event structure automatically:

{
 eventCategory: 'Webmessage',
 eventAction: type,
 eventLabel: campaignId
};

Type can be:

loaded: When a campaign is loaded for a user, but conditionally filtered out, for example, the targeted cart value has not been reached yet.
impression: When a campaign is shown on any part of the website.
click: When the user clicks on a campaign.
cancel: When a user closes a campaign after impression. Note: This is only applicable to closable campaigns.
submit: When a user submits a form.

You can disable the automatic event sending by adding the following JavaScript snippet to your website:

<script>
EMARSYS_GA_DISABLED=true
</script>

To add JavaScript lines to your Web Channel campaign use the HTML editor.

For the proper Google Analytics syntax, see Know Your Analytics Platform.

Adding custom Google Analytics events to Web Channel

You can add additional Google Analytics events to any blank Web Channel campaign in the HTML editor. If Google Analytics is loaded on your site, you only need to add a <script> tag in the campaign with your event. Use the following script to trigger the event when the campaign is loaded on the site:

<script>
  ga('send', {
    hitType: 'event',
    eventCategory: 'Videos',
    eventAction: 'play',
    eventLabel: 'Fall Campaign'
  }); 
</script>

If you want to trigger an event when a specific action happens (e.g., a visitor clicks a button), include the Google Analytics command in a function and call it. In the following example, the Google Analytics command is called when the button is clicked:

<body>
  <div>
    <a data-wps-href="#" onClick=myFunction()>Send Google Analytics event</a>
  </div>
  <script>
    function myFunction() {
      ga('send', {
        hitType: 'event',
        eventCategory: 'Videos',
        eventAction: 'play',
        eventLabel: 'Fall Campaign'
      }); 
    }
  </script>
</body>

If you do not have Google Analytics integrated on your site, you can still send events if you load Google Analytics within a campaign (as desribed in Add analytics.js to Your Site). The following script is an example:

<script>
(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
})(window,document,'script','https://www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');

ga('create', 'UA-XXXXX-Y', 'auto');
ga('send', 'pageview');
</script>

Add or call any additional event scripts after the Google Analytics loader.

Testing a Web Channel campaign

In the Content step of the Web Channel campaign creation flow the Test button in the upper-right corner enables you to preview your newly designed Web Channel campaign in a new tab or window.

You can preview the mobile version of your campaign without using a mobile device. For this, use your Web browser's built-in mobile device emulator. You can select a mobile device type to emulate it then load your campaign page. For example, select Google Chrome's Device Mode and select a mobile device where you would like to test your campaign layout. After having selected a mobile device, refresh the page. For detailed information, see Google Chrome Device Mode.

You need to upload a separate HTML content for desktop and for mobile browsers. You can select the platform by clicking the respective icons above the HTML code input block. If you do not enter any mobile content the Web Channel campaign will not be shown on mobile devices, or, conversely, if you do not add any desktop content, it will not be displayed in desktop browsers.

Important!
Test mode is not applicable for the following:

Display frequency settings: Frequency settings are not taken into account in test mode. Even if you set a frequency setting, the ad will be displayed on all pages. To test the frequency settings you can use URL filtering with published campaign, see Testing live a Web Channel campaign.
Filters: Currently filters are not supported in test mode. If you use various Segment criteria or session filters in your campaign, remove them before testing your Web Channel campaign. If you don’t use filters, you may allow the Web Channel campaign some time to render in test mode.
ESL: Emarsys Scripting Language (ESL) code is not evaluated during testing.

Testing live a Web Channel campaign

To perform a live test on your Web Channel campaign after activation, perform the following steps:

Go to the General Settings page of your campaign.
Click Edit Filters under Browsing session filters.
Specify a set parameter that the website URL needs to contain.
Activate your campaign. Wait until the campaign status is set to Running on the campaign overview page.
Open the campaign in the web browser with the specified parameter in its URL.
Check if the campaign is appearing according to the additional settings.

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Web Channel