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October 24, 2022
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Saint Codes

  • October 24, 2022
  • 3 replies
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Hi! I work at a digital agency, and have a client who uses Saint Codes. They want us to generate them for them to help them track performance on their campaign. Does anyone have experience with these? I'm very familiar with the Google UTM codes and how they work in Google Analytics. But not familiar with Adobe Analytics enough to know how these work. Can anyone help please? Thank you!

 

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Best answer by Jennifer_Dungan

WOW, they haven't been called SAINT for a while now 😛 (shades of my company where half the people still call it Omniture).

 

So there are a lot of ways to start going about this... first off you need to start looking at the campaign taxonomy. Are you using UTM (so that these can be read by Adobe and Google), are you using Adobe's cid (you will need to understand the formatting of the values to properly support these), are you using a mix of both UTM and cid (since Google Ads by default uses UTMs and not all companies customize this, etc).

 

I was part of a recent series in Campaign tracking, this might be a good place to start: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmyLZL5BUf8ECQzyVwwMnwqrt75CP5I57

 

 

I would be happy to help you with specifics once you have are feeling more comfortable in the general space.

3 replies

Jennifer_Dungan
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
Jennifer_DunganCommunity Advisor and Adobe ChampionAccepted solution
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
October 24, 2022

WOW, they haven't been called SAINT for a while now 😛 (shades of my company where half the people still call it Omniture).

 

So there are a lot of ways to start going about this... first off you need to start looking at the campaign taxonomy. Are you using UTM (so that these can be read by Adobe and Google), are you using Adobe's cid (you will need to understand the formatting of the values to properly support these), are you using a mix of both UTM and cid (since Google Ads by default uses UTMs and not all companies customize this, etc).

 

I was part of a recent series in Campaign tracking, this might be a good place to start: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmyLZL5BUf8ECQzyVwwMnwqrt75CP5I57

 

 

I would be happy to help you with specifics once you have are feeling more comfortable in the general space.

KalaKochAuthor
October 25, 2022

Hi! We are using Adobe only (no UTMs). Is the only way to create the creative tracking codes is to build them out within Adobe? Or can we use any key code or does that need to be generated out of AA? I have a spreadsheet template that they used last time with another vendor. It has a key column in the sheet, so I'm thinking we just need to update all the other columns to match with our creative names, etc. but not sure how the key is generated?

 

Are there any good rules of thumb to follow? Thank you so much for your help!

Jennifer_Dungan
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
October 25, 2022

You shouldn't need to create tracking codes in Adobe, rather those codes should be following a standardized format.

 

So think of UTMs for a second, you have UTM Source - which serves a specific need of the source, or UTM Campaign - which is the unique campaign code so you can tell your various campaigns apart.

 

CID is very similar, except that all of the items are passed in a single string, in a specific order, with a specific delimiter. This format (or taxonomy) is the key to how this will work. 

 

If this is coming from a previous vendor, there is likely already rules and formatting concepts in place.

 

This is an example (but not necessarily what is being used):

facebook:social:october-2022-sale

or

facebook_social_october-2022-sale

 

The delimiter can be : or _ or anything that you want... and the order of the items in this case is source:medium:campaign - but the important thing is that the use is consistent and that the order is set up properly - since you will be using Regex to parse this into it's individual parts.

 

Here is a good article: https://analyticsdemystified.com/adobe-analytics/using-utm-campaign-parameters-adobe-analytics/

 

This is why the first thing I asked about was if you had a taxonomy - since you are taking over an existing implementation... most of the processing rules should already be in place, for an existing defined CID format.

 

 

I don't know what the "key" is that you mentioned.... 

MattCoen
October 24, 2022

(Saint) Classifications are used to apply metadata to values within a report. Campaign tracking codes (passed into the s.campaign variable) are similar to UTM codes with the exception that in Adobe Analytics you use a single code rather than multiple codes.

You can set up your own format for the campaign code (i.e. channel_campaignname_etc). Once you set up the format and have data, you can use classifications to report on the components of the campaign code. You can also set up Classification Processing Rules based on the format that will allow you apply classifications to the campaign code dynamically. 

One additional trick is having a developer concatenate any UTM codes you are getting (from Adwords, etc.) and passing the single value into s.campaign.  

 

yuhuisg
Community Advisor
Community Advisor
October 25, 2022

If you're familiar with Google Analytics' Data Import feature, then SAINT, or Classifications, as they're known now, works on a similar basis.

Take a look at these Adobe help pages to learn more about Classifications:

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/analytics/components/classifications/c-classifications.html?lang=en -- the video here is a good introduction to this feature.

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/analytics/components/classifications/classifications-importer/c-working-with-saint.html?lang=en