Measure Internal Campaigns with Participation metrics?

[jp_behrens]

I like the concept of measuring Content Velocity discussed here, but I'm not used to using Participation Metrics so I hope there's a Participation Metric guru out here that can help shed some light on my doubts... 

I am wondering if we can do a similar analysis but for conversion-related reports, specifically Internal Campaigns? 

Instead of understanding which page influences customers to view more content as Content Velocity does, the idea is to understand which internal campaigns do a better job at influencing customers to trigger the buying process. In a real-life application, this will help determine which campaigns should be featured in more prominent locations of the site.

Say you have the following internal campaign report setup: Merchandising eVar with Allocation First, Expiration Purchase. Captures internal campaign code from URL after customer clicks on banner. If customer nagivates away from the destination page you overwrite the internal campaign code with a non-value. If customers clicks on a different internal campaign then the value is overwritten with the new code... At the same time you enable Participation on the Cart Adds and Order events.

We can generate the following in the context of the internal campaign report:

• "Cart Add Participation / Visits" = measures influence of internal campaigns to lead customers to add products to cart. The first internal campaign clicked will get more cart adds than subsequent campaigns, and since customers have to click a campaign in order to record a visit to it, this means a higher number here is better.

To tie this back to purchases:

• "Order Participation / Cart Add Participation" = measure efficiency of an internal campaign to influence a purchase in terms of all cart additions generated after clicking an internal campaign. A higher rate is better. 

Since Participation Metrics are calculated on per visit basis, these metrics would only be relevant to cart additions and purchases that happen in the same session that customers click on the internal campaign. Also, the participation metric will give credit of cart additions and purchases that happen outside the internal campaign product finding method. This means the expiration and allocation of the eVar no longer apply when looking at these calculations (I also think the non-value would would not be useful in the context of these metrics), but I think this can help gauge which internal campaigns lead customers to both add more products to cart, and to place a purchase on your site. Plus if you have SAINT classifications to identify the location of the internal campaigns, you could also measure which location on your site is better to feature internal campaign banners to influence orders.

Maybe this is completely out of the mark and/or too complex, but what do you think?

Thanks!

[AdamGreco · Accepted solution]

Jean-Paul,

I think you have some issues in your logic here.  If you are using Merchandising, you should not need to pass a non-value when they move away and keep in mind that the internal campaign will only get a value if it drives them to a product (and s.products is set).  Also, if the usr sees a second internal campaign and you are using first touch merchandising, it will not replace the first campaign code if they see the same product and will set the latest value only if it is a new product.

But for Participation, you can see Participation on your Merchandising eVar by asking Client Care to enable it, or you can do what I prefer, which is to set a new sProp when visitors click on internal campaigns and capture the codes there and enable Participation on that custom sProp for your two events.

[jp_behrens]

Hi Adam,

I should've been more specific. The eVar is conversion syntax merch, so I'm setting it on the page right before the product page together with a dummy s.products value (to get internal campaign clicks and product clicks in the same report like you discuss here). Hence the non-value for when customers navigate away from the internal campaign destination page by either browsing, or performing a search, etc.. I understand the First allocation will not overwrite if there is a new campaign code and the visitor opens the same product, but for this particular eVar I want to give credit to the first code since that is how customers originally found the product.

I'm able to see the participation metrics in my eVar. What I'm really looking for is validation on using the participation metrics in this fashion. 

I think "Cart Adds Participation / Visits" is sound since I'm really just replacing the Page Count Participation and Visits from the Content Velocity blog post, but I'm interested in tying this to purchases. The point is to give internal campaigns a more generous attribution without implementing another similar report that might confuse users (albeit Participation Metrics will probably be met with glazed eyes ...)

After thinking on it more, "Orders Participation / Cart Adds Participation" doesn't sound like it makes sense. If a customer clicks on two internal campaigns and add products in between both campaigns, the first one will have a higher amount of cart adds participation than the second one. At purchase both internal campaign codes will get 1 order, so the first campaign will have a lower rate...

Instead what about: "Orders Participation / Internal Campaign Clicks" = measures the influence of internal campaigns to generate a sale regardless if product was found directly from the campaign destination page