Introduction
Web Behavior Segmentation is only available as a pilot feature since March 1, 2020 and requires a signed Pilot Service Order (SO). For further details on the feature and how to enable it in your account, contact Emarsys support.
As this feature is currently on Pilot release it might happen that some of the functions appear, disappear or change without further notice.
Web Behavior Segmentation is based on visitor interactions on your website that you can collect using Web Extend. For example, it allows you to personalize content for visitors who purchased items of a certain value, viewed a product in your webshop, or visited pages of a certain category.
New to Web Extend?
- Read more on how it works in the Web Extend - Overview article.
- Web Extend requires an initial setup on your website to work. For details, see Web Extend Data Collection API and Implementing the Web Extend data collection scripts.
How do Web behavior segments work?
Web behavior segments rely on data collected by Web Extend. Web Extend is a prerequisite of using Web behavior segments. Web Extend collects events from your website that describe activities (mostly eCommerce), such as product page or category views, cart activities, purchases and tags. These events often reference the product catalog and only contain a catalog id that cannot be used for Web behavior segmentation.
Web behavior segment templates use custom tags to:
- describe activities without referencing the product catalog and
- support non-eCommerce use cases such as content and travel.
You have to add custom tags to your website besides the existing Web Extend events that describe your business cases and needs. Here you can see several examples of data that you should send as custom tags and how to create segments by using these custom fields.
Why should I be using Web behavior segments?
Web behavior segments allow you to react to your customers’ behavior observed on your website. By using Web behavior segments, you can:
- define crucial touch and action points in your sales funnel,
- send custom events as they occur with Web Extend and
- create historical segments that are available in the Automation Center and on other channels.
You should consider using Web behavior segments if you would like to:
- track your customers across your website,
- record the activity of your contacts and
- retarget your customers on another channel based on their activities recorded in the previous year.
As opposed to the existing Emarsys solution related to recording your visitors’ behavior, Web behavior segments:
- are not limited to the last session,
- do not aggregate session behavior data with a couple of contact fields and
- enable you to use custom data.
Use cases for Web behavior segments
Travel
Let’s say that you have a travel agency and would like to reach your website visitors who:
- are identified by their email addresses and
- searched for a last-minute holiday on the French Riviera in August.
However, you have not yet informed these contacts about your last minute offers.
| General Web behavior template | Data integration with available criteria |
|---|---|
Visitors with tag custom_search in the last 90 daysWhere:
|
|
Other use cases
You can reach contacts who:
- searched for a flight, hotel, package or cruise with a certain check-in/departure or check-out/arrival date in order to remind them that they have abandoned their cart.
- booked a flight, hotel, package or cruise with a certain check-in or check-out date in order to sell ancillary products related to their journey.
- searched for a specific airline, destination or hotel chain in a city.
Content
Let’s say that you have several print and online magazines and you would like to boost cross-selling. In this case, first, you have to identify visitors who are interested in a specific topic so you can recommend topics from another magazine to them that might catch their attention.
| General Web behavior template | Data integration with available criteria |
|---|---|
|
Visitors with tag
|
|
Other use cases
You can:
- reach contacts who like to read specific content categories or tagged articles in order to offer them a similar or upsell another magazine.
- reach contacts who clicked a link to know who visited your landing page by clicking a banner.
- reach contacts who downloaded a white paper in order to follow up them with the case.
- reach contacts who started to watch a video but did not finish it on your site in order to remind them.
- reach contacts who visited a site, played a video or downloaded something multiple times in order to offer similar content or further engagement possibilities to them.
- fire a custom tag when a visitor scrolls down to a content block on a page and reach contacts for whom the block was visible on the page.
eCommerce
Let’s say that you have a jewelry web store and would like to reach identified visitors who searched for a specific product category or brand, and sorted the products listed on the page by their price in ascending order.
| General Web behavior template | Data integration with available criteria |
|---|---|
|
Visitors with tag Where:
|
|
*When using Web behavior segmentation, customers define their own tags.
Other use cases
You can reach contacts who:
- like to read articles belonging to specific categories or tagged articles on a blog in order to offer them product categories from your web store.
- viewed a product category but did not purchase anything from your web store.
- viewed a specific brand’s product pages.
- searched for a product category and sorted the products listed on the page by their price or customer rating in ascending or descending order.
- abandoned their cart during a flash sale in order to offer them the product at the same price on a different day.
- added an item belonging to a certain category to their wishlist in order to advertise items belonging to a similar category.
Known limitations
Web behavior segments cannot be created based on standard Web Extend events
You can only create Web behavior segments based on custom tags. Once these are ready, you will need to create fewer custom events and more sets of data will be available out of the box.
Available events, tags and attributes are not displayed in the dropdown
Therefore, you have to be familiar with the exact name of the event, tag or attribute you would like to use. If you misspell the name of an event, tag or attribute, then it can lead to errors.
When typing the name of the event, tag or attribute please consider that these names are case sensitive.
Conditions are grouped by the AND operator and cannot be branched/nested, multi-select or comma-separated values are not supported
Therefore, we recommend using combined segments for complex use cases. It might happen that you have to create many segments when you would like to create a complex segment that covers multiple conditions.
Web Extend events and tags cannot be used for personalization
Currently, you cannot personalize Web Extend events and tags. When it will be available, it will allow you to send truly one-to-one booking and abandoned cart reminders with all products or services bought, searched for or viewed, and in some cases, you will be able to send reminders related to the last URL viewed by a contact.
Web behavior segments can only contain already identified contacts
Providing contacts with treatment on another channel still requires a certain level of identification (i.e. most often the email address). Web behavior segmentation will support targeting unidentified (i.e. anonymous) contacts when the same functionality will be available in Web Channel.
Processing Web Extend events, creating a session, identifying a user in a session and loading that data into the Data Platform can take up to 3 hours
Currently, it can take up to 3 hours to process Web Extend events, create a session, identify a user in a session and load that data into the Data Platform. If you would like to react to real-time web events, then we recommend using the Interactions.
Creating a Web behavior segment
To create a Web behavior segment, proceed as follows:
1. Select Contacts > Segments, then click Create segment.
2. Choose Web behavior segment in the pop-up.
3. Give your segment a name and add a description to it.
This can help you identify segments easily on the Segments page.
4. Choose a Web behavior segmentation template. You can choose from the following templates:
- Visitors who viewed pages in category - Select the timeframe, category and occurrence. This template is based on the Web Extend event category.
-
Visitors who added items to the cart with a value - Select the timeframe and value of the visitor's cart. The currency is the default defined in your account.
- This template is based on the Web Extend event cart.
-
Visitors who viewed content - Select the timeframe and tag criteria. Tags allow you to collect data in the form that suits your particular use case. This template:
- is based on the custom tag
content_pageview, - contains predefined items that are used in general,
- you can add custom attributes (as string values).
- is based on the custom tag
-
General Web Behavior - This template is based on any
custom tag. You can add any custom attributes by using this template. You can filter contacts by specifying how many times a contact triggered a custom event in the last X days.
- The timeframe of the General Web Behavior template is limited to 180 days.
- This segment will not return those contacts who did not trigger the specified tag. To do so, you need to create a combined segment that includes all contacts whose opt-in value is
TRUEand excludes those ones who triggered the event with the specified tag at least once.
To create a segment that contains contacts who triggered a custom tag between 0-3 times, you need to create a combined segment that includes contacts whose opt-in value is TRUE and excludes those ones who triggered the specific custom tag at least 4 times.
5. When you are finished, click Save & Apply.
Open Data
Web behavior segments use raw Web Extend events as data source. Web Extend events are uploaded to the Data Platform after session identification.
For more information on data available via Open Data, see Web session tags.
