Effective Marketing Data Collection

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Effective Marketing Data Collection
ObservePoint Tag Auditing CompanyData Quality Assurance Platform
Effective Marketing Data Collection
ObservePoint Tag Auditing CompanyData Quality Assurance Platform
I talk a lot about Adobe’s tag management solution. That’s my job, and it’s also my passion. But I hate it 
when companies struggle with implementing tag management for reasons that are avoidable. There are two 
critical needs that every enterprise has but no tool or system can address: data governance and 
management.
It matters not if you have the best implementation or the best group of analysts out there. If you don’t have 
a handle on your data governance and a management process that is flexible as your digital assets change, 
you will have problems.
Effective Marketing Data Collection
ObservePoint Tag Auditing CompanyData Quality Assurance Platform
The premise that data governance should look like a presidential address to Congress, where the leader 
spells out governance objectives, is a commonly held belief. However, the data governance process used by 
many companies is more like a crowdfunding event where everyone chips in their contributions. Is that an 
effective approach? No! (And not for the obvious reason: lack of directional focus.) The outcome of a poor 
data governance policy is a landfill of data – a massive, jumbled mess of pretty much useless information.
There is a way out of the data landfill and back to a place where you can uncover the nirvana of 
digital intelligence and be able to use the data you’ve collected data to find real and actionable insights 
you believe in. How do you get on the right path to this data governance nirvana? I have worked with many 
companies helping them on this journey, and while the trip is different for everyone, there is a set of core 
elements your data governance plan should have.
Data Governance: A Presidential Address?
Effective Marketing Data Collection
ObservePoint Tag Auditing CompanyData Quality Assurance Platform
Here are what I see as the fundamental elements of a solid governance plan:
Resources
Who are all of the stakeholders in your organization that need to be sold on the governance plan (or at least 
agree to the steps involved)? Have you met with them all? Do you plan to keep meeting with them to 
update on changes or modifications to the plan? Hint: you should.
Workflow
How is workflow managed? You need to have request tracking, response processes, testing, all within 
defined task sets. And there needs to be accountability within the workflows. Read another way: blame. 
Who is responsible for maintaining or enforcing this data governance plan? Does that person have the right 
clout within your organization to do this job or will he or she be railroaded, pushed around to the point 
where they are not able to be effective?
Core Data Governance Elements
Effective Marketing Data Collection
ObservePoint Tag Auditing CompanyData Quality Assurance Platform
Important to workflow is quality assurance. Too often, QA – real QA – is an afterthought, treated like a 
formality as part of user acceptance. Testing is simply checking off a box and moving on to the next step. 
But if you do not have a well thought-out test plan and a defined process for what steps to take when things 
break or fail testing, you are just begging for problems.
Infrastructure
You’ve got to have the right support systems in place to facilitate the tag management process. Is there a 
workflow management system in place? Does coding documentation exist in a fluid, collaborative, and 
accessible location? Or is your infrastructure documentation sitting in someone’s email inbox or buried 
somewhere on their hard drive? Make sure organizational infrastructure is in place before you bite the bullet 
on a TMS solution.
Core Data Governance Elements
Effective Marketing Data Collection
ObservePoint Tag Auditing CompanyData Quality Assurance Platform
A key component of governance is data management. I don’t mean managing the data you have captured in 
your analytics tool of choice, but rather the management of data or meta information in your digital assets.
Most of the time when I sit down with a client, the data and meta information they want to track looks like a 
kid’s playroom at the end of a play date – stuff is everywhere. The floor is covered with mismatched toys, 
game pieces, doll accessories, etc., all sitting around in no particular order. The same holds true when you’ve 
got disparate assets coded with no semblance of order.
The key items you want to track and measure are in that pile somewhere. Can you easily find them and 
track with specificity? Or are you tracking everything you see in the hope that you’ll later be able to sift 
through the bits and bytes and find what is really important to your business?
Data Management: Are You Coding to Succeed?
Effective Marketing Data Collection
ObservePoint Tag Auditing CompanyData Quality Assurance Platform
When you pull reports in your search for insights, you want data lined up so it is easier to read and digest. 
That takes effort. Unfortunately, most digital teams don’t put that same effort into organizing the 
data before they collect it.
Chances are good that your IT developers don’t know (or care) what an s_prop or an eVar is. And why 
should they? They don’t want to make their work more complicated and confusing for the next developer 
that comes along and has to work on the code. Set a product ID to something that makes sense for anyone 
who looks at the code (yourcompanynamedataobject.productId, for instance). Then you can tailor your 
analytics code or TMS system to pull that data object into the data library.
Data Management: Are You Coding to Succeed?
Effective Marketing Data Collection
ObservePoint Tag Auditing CompanyData Quality Assurance Platform
Yes, it takes a lot of time, energy, and money to properly set up a solid data management plan and structure 
on your digital assets. And, yes, you will get push back from IT, at first. But when you are done, you will 
have created a very nice, clean, and easy-to-update data layer that is able to be consumed by any tool or 
script in a much more reliable and stable method that is more resistant to site layout changes. Or you can 
try and sort through that pile of toys…um, data…on your site to get those pieces of data you really need.
Put Governance and Management at the Front of the Line
So, with all this said, you can probably see that you’ve got to have a solid plan in place before you even look 
at a tag management system. Of course, I’m biased and think our tools are the best. But honestly, no TMS 
solution – not even Adobe’s Activation – will function effectively without planning how you’re going to use it.
Data Management: Are You Coding to Succeed?
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