Tag Management

How Tag Management Streamlines Analytics and Conversion Tracking Across Your Digital Ecosystem

In the early days of web analytics and website measurement, tracking website activity was entirely dependent upon having access to a web page’s source code and installing snippets of JavaScript to track activity. The analyst’s relationship with the web development or IT team was critical in determining how robust and in what time frame your WebTrends, Google Analytics, or Omniture SiteCatalyst reports would have data available to report from. Even with a solid working relationship, overruling priorities and limited bandwidth could delay the availability of key data for an analyst or for the entire digital team by several weeks or months.

Since the advent of tag management solutions like Tealium, Adobe Launch, and Google Tag Manager over the last few decades, there is now no doubt that tag management is the backbone of a successful digital analytics strategy. While still a tough subject-matter expertise to find, marketers, analysts, developers, and digital teams alike have come to rely on the skills of a tag management team for all of their digital marketing and digital analytics tracking needs.

While tag management has come a long way since its inception, professionals in this space still require good working relationships and collaboration in order to succeed. The narrative from tag management vendors is that their solution can completely eliminate the need for IT support while seamlessly integrating with your content management system or code base, after following a few simple steps. The reality is that tag management requires advanced subject matter expertise across several practice areas in the digital space, in order to have a robust, healthy, and successful digital marketing and digital analytics tracking framework. Analytics Metal specializes in precisely this subject matter, helping to deploy thousands of tags, triggers, variables, marketing pixels, advanced or custom JavaScript snippets, and even custom HTML scripts that help power advanced A/B and multivariate tests.

How Tag Management Works, and Why It Matters

In a nutshell, tag management is a type of software technology that allows website owners and marketers to create tags for website and mobile app measurement. Interested parties can also deploy custom HTML and JavaScript tags and install digital marketing pixels from Amazon to Zoom, and any CDP or programmatic media buying software. Tag management works by first installing a snippet of JavaScript code across every page or screen that you want to track, and, via that same JavaScript snippet, deploying other snippets of code to track the activities performed by users and sending that data back to your Google Analytics GA4 property, your Adobe Analytics property, or platform of need.

A. The Tag Management Platform

Whether you’re using Google Tag Manager, Adobe Launch, Tealium, Ensighten, or something else, there is a central-command system for managing all marketing pixels, JavaScript snippets, and tags for each website or mobile app your organization is looking to measure. After the “global” tag management JavaScript tag is installed, the vast majority of the work in tag management will be within the platform’s digital walls. You would see the platform’s name appear on (multiple!) tabs across the screens of many at the team at Analytics Metal.

B. The Global JavaScript Snippet

The global JavaScript snippet that you will need to have installed looks something like this, borrowed from one of our test Google Tag Manager accounts:

(Note: there are tagless / server-side tagging options that are also available in the marketplace that would affect if any tags would need to be installed in the first place).

C. Tags, Triggers, Variables, and General Functionality

Once JavaScript snippets as shown above are installed, your tag manager can begin to configure tags (what you want to track), triggers or rules (when and how you want to control how your tags work) and variables, which can power triggers and allow for dynamic inputs. There are a significant number of built-in testing and building features that truly help to establish just how important a solid and reliable tag management team can be.

This is also where all of the support for privacy consent software like OneTrust happens. As mentioned earlier, online privacy and consent are major focus areas for lawmakers and large tech giants, who are walking a tight-rope between consumer data and consumer consent in today’s digital landscape. Integrations between platforms like Google Tag Manager, Adobe Launch, and Tealium and online consent platforms like OneTrust yet again place tag management as a critical functional area in digital analytics and within the digital space in general.

D. The Data Layer

One of the key concepts in tag management is the ability to read and to “push” data elements that your organization is looking to track via what is commonly referred to as the Data Layer. It is not something that a website or mobile app user can see, but it is something that your tag management team can read, access, and - sometimes with the help of a web developer - can push additional data back to an analytics platform or marketing account.

Being able to push objects to the Data Layer for tag management is vital if your organization needs to track more complex and more “out-of-the-box” app or website features, like some non-YouTube video interactions, specific types of forms or sign-ups, and eCommerce purchase details. Sometimes, additional code is needed on key sections of your digital journey, so that a tag manager can create tags for data capture. One generic example of an additional snippet of code is shown below, once again taken from one of our test Google Tag Manager accounts. In this example, we need the below code to execute on an eCommerce confirmation or “thank you” page, after payment is successfully submitted and an order confirmation screen is shown to the user:

The team at Analytics Metal has been accessing, reading, and creating variables that leverage additional data pushed to the data layer for several organizations of varying degrees of complexity.

E. Quality Control, Versioning, and Publishing

As the tag management work is progressing - and especially after all of the code snippets and tagging work has been completed, a full round of quality assurance and testing takes place, to ensure that data is flowing in to the platform of choice correctly (and, to ensure that nothing that was done is breaking the site or causing an error in your organization’s mobile app in any way). Most of the tag management software in the marketplace today have built-in testing and versioning controls available, that help to streamline work and help reduce the possibility for errors. Our Analytics Metal team takes this stage very seriously, treating it as a “go / no-go for launch” NASA-style rocket launch from Cape Canaveral, FL.

The team at Analytics Metal possess several thousands of hours, equating to several years of experience in tag management, including consulting with clientele on the best platform for their needs, establishing version control and naming convention policies, advanced troubleshooting with responsive design technologies, and more.

Let’s have an initial conversation so that we can determine how best to help you and your organization with all of your tag management needs. Analytics Metal has the expertise, knowledge-base, and available bandwidth to help your organization prosper with your tag management efforts.

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