Web Behavior targeting allows you to target a group of email recipients based on their on-site behavior.
Web Behavior targeting requires a connection between the email recipient and the site visitor. These connections are called cross-channel profiles. Monetate establishes a cross-channel profile when the email recipient clicks an image it's served via a click URL. Monetate assigns the recipient a unique identifier and builds a cross-channel (email and Web) profile.
Benefits of Web Behavior Targeting
Web Behavior targeting allows for uniform and personalized sessions for all email recipients when they arrive on your site. Some benefits include the following:
- Site personalization based on products and categories the recipient recently viewed
- Consistent creative content when an email recipient navigates from an email to your site
Where to Find Web Behavior Targeting
The Web Behavior target options, Products Recently Viewed and Category Recently Viewed, are available in Target based on on the Email Builder page.
Preparing for Web Behavior Targeting Experiences
Before you can use Web Behavior targets in email experiences, Monetate must build enough cross-channel profiles (email to Web) to make an experience worthwhile and the data meaningful. Monetate builds a profile each time an email recipient clicks an image that it served in the email. You can take certain measures to help build cross-channel profiles.
Creating an Email Experience Without any Targeting or Personalization Selected
This method is the easiest way to build profiles, especially if you don't have any other plans for email experiences yet. When Monetate instead of your email service provider (ESP) serves an image, cross-channel profiles develop when a recipient clicks that image. You can use these profiles for future Web Behavior targeting experiences.
To create an email experience without any targeting or personalization, create a new email experience and then select SHOW NOTHING for the default content.
Don't select any options from Target based on.
From here, build the experience by adding an image and then sending the email through your ESP. Each time a recipient clicks the Monetate–served image, the platform builds a cross-channel profile.
Creating a Targeted or Personalized Email Experience
Email experiences that use targeting or personalization also build cross-channel profiles. You don't have to do anything extra to build profiles with targeted or personalized email experiences. Just send them out like you normally would, and Monetate takes care of the rest.
Determining Web Behavior Targeting Readiness
After you send a few experiences to build cross-channel profiles, submit a support ticket using the Kibo Technical Support portal (kibotechsupport.zendesk.com) or contact your Account Manager to determine your account's Web Behavior experience readiness. Monetate uses a scale of one to five and makes this determination based on the total number of profiles built and how recent those profiles are.
Once Monetate has given approval for Web Behavior targeting, you can follow the progression outlined below.
Suggested Web Behavior Targeting Experience Progression
There are five basic levels of granularity for Web Behavior targeting experiences. You should start with the least granular targeting options to reach the broadest base of email recipients. As the profiles develop more in-depth information, you can move towards more granular targeting options. Here is a list of options, from the broadest to the most specific.
- Viewed brand or set of categories — For example, target recipients who viewed North Face products or products in the camping gear category
- Smaller group of categories — For example, target recipients who viewed products in the sleeping bags, tents, and jackets categories
- Category — For example, target recipients who viewed products in the jackets category
- Product type — For example, target recipients who viewed North Face men's jackets
- Product — For example, target recipients who viewed the North Face men's Nuptse jacket