Email Campaign Tracking Codes

Some tracking codes in the footer of a commercially sent email are easier to decipher than others. It's like geek speak for marketers. With these, and appropriate ecommerce tracking with Google Analytics 360, companies can see how much, if any, revenue is generated by campaigns. It's usually paired with the assumption of "last touch" revenue source, where the last marketing activity a customer takes before a purchase is how credit is applied to a specific inbound or outbound methodology, be it from SEO, email, a product page on a website, a direct mail catalog SKU number, etc.

Here is an example. This comes from the Starbucks Rewards program, and their tracking code is just below the body of the email and above the footer; though many organizations place this tracking code in the AMP Script (if using a Salesforce product) and some place this below the footer/disclaimer text.

The tracking code text reads: Ref: 21-15-ANO-1-0-0-EM-SR-NA-ALL

Loosely, this reference translates to: ?? - ?? - ?? - 1 - 0 - 0 - Email - Starbucks Rewards - North America - All

I thought that the first two digits were the year of the broadcast, but Starbucks Rewards emails from 2020 also have this 21-15 starter tag. And, it's not sequential to time-order. There are campaigns that ran in January 2020 with the starter tag of 21-14 and emails that were sent in October 2020 with the starter tag of 21-13. So, maybe a campaign type? 

The middle "1-0-0" I think a null code placeholder. Here is a tracking example from their "Starbucks for Life" rewards campaign: Ref: 21-13-SFL21-1-0-0-EM-SR-NA-US

The easiest way would be to just ask someone who works for Starbucks marketing. But this is more fun. These tracking codes aren't meant to be memorable; but they are a good way for marketers to attribute sales revenue and customer engagement through email-to-store or email-to-mobile-order sales.

In contrast, retail stores with ecommerce websites often use coupon codes as tracking codes that are static and can be used by anyone whether or not they are a rewards customer; and as such, the coupon code variations reflect a simple code (e.g., holiday20, welcome10).

The Holiday Kindle Reading List

Ahh the holidays. A time when it's so cold and/or rainy outside that you just want to curl up with some blankets and a good book, or in this case a digital slate packed to the gills with ebooks checked out from various county libraries. I wonder if Los Angeles County ever audits their customer database. I mean, I don't exactly live here, but my relatives do and that's really all that was needed to get an online library card. Each metro area has a slightly different configuration of available ebooks, audiobooks, and magazine subscriptions. I have to use a different app (Flipster) to read magazines that my own county library subscribes to. Multnomah County Library allows you to read magazines in a browser directly from the OverDrive app.

Onward, to the books! Here's what's in the Kindle:

E-Books:

• 6 Disciplines of Agile Marketing by Jim Ewel
• The Influential Product Manager (how to lead and launch) by Ken Sandy
• Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland
• Unvarnished by Eric Alperin and Deborah Stoll

Audiobooks:

• Hacking Marketing (agile practices to make marketing smarter) by Scott Brinker
• A Field Guide to Lies and Statistics by Daniel J. Levitin
• We Fed an Island by Jose Andres

The best part about the Overdrive app for public libraries is that you can download all the chapters of the audiobook to your smartphone or tablet; then listen to them on the airplane.. or wherever.

Industries most impacted by the pandemic

The following industries have been most affected by the pandemic impact on supply and demand in the US:

• Travel and hospitality: The travel and hospitality industries have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic. This is due to the fact that people are traveling and staying in hotels less due to the pandemic.
• Retail: The retail industry has also been affected by the pandemic. This is due to the fact that people are shopping less in stores and more online due to the pandemic.
• Manufacturing: The manufacturing industry has also been affected by the pandemic. This is due to the fact that there are supply chain disruptions and factories have had to slow or even stop production due to the pandemic.
• Food and beverage: The food and beverage industry has also been affected by the pandemic. This is due to the fact that there are supply chain disruptions and restaurants have had to close or reduce hours due to the pandemic.
• Healthcare: The healthcare industry has also been affected by the pandemic. This is due to the fact that there is an increased demand for healthcare services due to the pandemic.

It is important to note that these are just a few of the industries that have been affected by the pandemic impact on supply and demand. There are many other industries that have been affected, and the impact has varied from industry to industry.

Things you should know about Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the latest version of Google's analytics platform. It was released in October 2020 and is a significant upgrade from the previous version, Universal Analytics (UA). GA4 is designed to be more flexible, scalable, and privacy-focused.

Here are some of the key differences between GA4 and UA:

• Data model: GA4 uses an event-based data model, while UA uses a session-based data model. This means that GA4 tracks individual events, such as page views, button clicks, and form submissions, while UA tracks sessions, which are groups of related events that occur within a certain time period.
• Attribution modeling: GA4 offers a variety of attribution models, while UA only offers a few. This means that GA4 can give you a more accurate picture of how your marketing efforts are driving conversions.
• Privacy: GA4 is designed to be more privacy-focused than UA. This means that GA4 collects less data about users and makes it easier for users to control their privacy settings.

Persona Marketing vs Account-Based Marketing

Thanks to the rise of Marketo and its plethora of early adopters, the company has pushed the concept of why to switch (from Pardot, Eloqua, etc.) with Account-Based Marketing. The content language of which speaks to the many pain points of commonly used marketing automation tools. The fact of the matter is that both concepts require a lot of content to be created just to make a decent waterfall or drip marketing campaign.

Persona-based marketing really looks at data segmentation as its main focus for generating content for different decision makers and influencers in customer lifecycle management. For example. when targeting K-12 institutions as a software developer of an educational platform, your buyer personas may include superintendents, edtech buying consortiums (NY does this, for instance), principals; and the influencers may include teachers, students, and perhaps even PTA groups, if they are involved with new technology purchases or adoptions within a school district. It's also used by electronics manufacturers as well that sell direct or through distributors into businesses. With persona-based marketing, not every persona that is targeted with marketing content is a viable buyer. Most are information seekers and will eat up valuable production time creating digital content assets for their insatiable appetites. But, it is all good in the long run because these people are very vocal within their own organizations if they really like what you have to offer.

With both styles, your market strategy for reaching out to customers is based on a few firmographic segmentations to start: industry/vertical markets, revenue, location

Marketing Automation : AutoResponders

In this weekend's newsletter browsing, I scanned through a few headlines from Retail Dive and found that our local Powell's Books announced they were discontinuing use of Amazon.com for distribution of books. If you're a small business, Fulfillment by Amazon is probably not the way you want to go. The fees will eat up any profit you're hoping to gain for each item you list and advertise on the Amazon platform. But, this post isn't about FBA or supporting local retailers.

As part of the ad interstitials on Retail Dive, Validity offered a guide titled "Email Marketing for Retailers: The Complete Guide to Maximizing Your Email ROI". Looks intriguing, so I clicked. Got the guide and two autoresponder messages. The first had a subject line of "Your requested content: Email Marketing for Retailers". This is fine and expected. The email does everything right. It acknowledges that a request was made, includes a link for the PDF guide, and has other helpful information about the company's publicly available digital resources.

However, what immediately followed was a second auto-responder with the subject line of "Your Sender Score is step one." with content about welcoming and thanking me for checking my sender score.. which I did not do at all. Let this be a reminder to you about copying existing campaigns to repurpose for future campaigns, whether you use Pardot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud (aka ExactTarget), HubSpot, or other marketing automation tool. I can tell by the subdomain of the email content that Validity uses Pardot. Anyhow. Just a note of caution.

The execution looked flawless ... until I received that second irrelevant email.

I can also imagine that the second email was part of an engagement drip campaign, intended to start as soon as any content was downloaded by a prospect. So that is entirely possible as well.

If you want your own retail emails to keep their momentum and mindshare, don't make simple mistakes like this. Don't just assume that someone wants to hear of your other offerings right after they downloaded unrelated content from your website or marketing campaigns.

It's kind of rude. Heck, I haven't even finished reading the guide.

Commuter Podcasts

When I use public transit to commute from Vancouver to Portland, I could nap.. or I could fill my head with other things, such as podcast content. It's a 40 minute ride in the morning (provided that I hop on a bus before 7am) and an hour ride home (if I leave downtown Portland at 4pm), of course this is the inflexibility of the express bus that C-Tran (Vancouver) has; however, with the plague of humanity outside, transit travel is bit disrupted with travel times. I aim for podcasts that are about 30 mins to an hour long. I typically listen to business podcasts in the morning, and something fiction/sci fi/horror in the afternoon. It's likely that Android smartphones have the function as well as iPhones, but with the Podcasts app, I can download podcast episodes and then just listen on the go without having to rely on cellular data for podcast listening when away from wifi. Links are to the show's website, if one exists.

Non-fiction, less than 30 mins:

• Indicator by Planet Money
• Planet Money
• The Journal (by WSJ and Stitcher)
• Negotiations Ninja
• StoryCorps

Non-fiction, 30 mins to an hour:

• Slate's Negotiation Academy: Negotiate Anything
• Hidden Brain
• How I Built This w/ Guy Raz
• Freakonomics Radio
• Special Operations Medical Journal (field medicine)

Non-fiction, about an hour or longer:

• Tactical Breakdown (this features Canadian law enforcement)

Fiction, 30 mins to an hour:

• Levar Burton Reads (sci fi/fantasy)
• Penumbra (sci fi/fantasy)

A side note: If you have financial or company data on your phone, don't connect to public wifi even if your bus or train has it. Just saying. Better be safe than sorry after the fact.