Know Your Tags – It’s The Law

Policies like the EU Privacy Directive, (effective in the U.K. from this Saturday, May 26th), and U.S. Do-Not-Track related bills are swiftly gaining traction. Companies and online marketers will be under a microscope to ensure they are respecting consumers’ tracking  wishes and keeping their  personal information protected. They will now have to work closely with third party tracking vendors to ensure the right tags are being added, removed, and managed in compliance with these new laws and regulations.

The real question is, do marketers truly understand the impact tags and tracking tools on their webpage will have on their brand and compliance with privacy laws? Continue reading

ePrivacy: an Opportunity to be Open with your Customers

We hosted the TagMeet ePrivacy Summit in London last week and we were delighted to be joined by three brilliant speakers, Nick Stringer of IAB, Damian Scragg of Evidon and Bill Beckler of TagMan customer lastminute.com –  all of whom touched on some hot button issues regarding privacy and the new EU Privacy Directive to be enforced on May 26th.

Nick Stringer

The summit kicked off with Nick Stringer’s presentation, “Preparing for the revised ePrivacy directive.” Nick, who serves as the IAB’s Director of Regulatory Affairs, gave a concise glimpse of the EU Privacy Directive, why it’s being enforced, and what businesses need to do to be compliant. Nick advised that in order for the UK to continue as the most advanced internet economy in the world, customer data must be used responsibly and transparently to empower the consumer. Businesses should know what’s going on, be clear and transparent, deliver prominence, and know that “context is king!”

Damian Scragg

Evidon knows all about empowering the customer. Just ask Damian Scragg, managing director at Evidon (our new partner). Evidon has done the impossible – making privacy “sexy” by empowering consumers and businesses to see, understand and control data online. In light of the upcoming EU Directive, Damian advises businesses to audit and continually monitor tracking across sites, review privacy policies and consider a cookie policy, and deploy consent solutions.

 

Bill Beckler

The summit wrapped up with Bill Beckler, Manager of Marketing Analytics at lastminute.com, who had an interesting take on the EU Directive: The new Privacy Directive isn’t at all a negative! It’s actually a great opportunity for website owners/ecommerce executives to provide clarity and information around what’s happening behind the scenes of web pages (i.e. tracking, cookies, etc.)

It was clear from the presentations that Tag Management can play a huge role in how website owners handle ePrivacy and companies will need to get smart on how they manage their cookies and tags if they’re going to comply with new privacy directives.  In light of all this, what makes TagMan a great tool is that it makes compliance with privacy laws and directives seamless. It was great to hear from a TagMan client that unlike the archaeological dig it may be without Tag Management, TagMan makes auditing easy and clear to understand.

Check out the presentations by clicking here.

TagMan Partners with Evidon to Provide Universal Privacy Tool

Today, we are pleased to announce our partnership with Evidon, a company with an established reputation for providing privacy and compliance solutions to digital clients.

Our customers want the ability to manage their tag and cookie data activities seamlessly and efficiently. Thanks to this new partnership, our customers can customize the privacy messaging and functionality they offer to their website visitors, specified to their business needs. We believe users will benefit from this privacy tool, which will let them control their data collection preferences.

As our CEO, Paul Cook, explains, “This partnership enables us to combine the best of both systems and offer a highly sophisticated, integrated privacy tool for our clients. The new ePrivacy Directive and other privacy regulations around the globe will make website owners directly responsible for the control of tags and cookies related to privacy. We want our client to have full control through this tool in order to remain compliant.”

Check out this diagram that explains the partnership or check out our press release for more details.

What Web Analytics Tools Are Used Amongst the IR500?

Web analytics tags are one of the many tags that can be managed easily with a Tag Management System, and we have noticed the diversity and growth of them as we implement new tags for our clients or help them switch providers.  Here Erin Polka shares her research on the growth of clickstream analytics.

Erin Polka, iPerceptions

Guest Blog by Erin Polka, Marketing Director, iPerceptions

In November 2011, we at iPerceptions analyzed the top500 retail websites to determine how many were using web analytics tools. Online retailers are recognized leaders when it comes to integrating new web applications. A fast-growing, conversion-driven group, their choices often foreshadow those of other industries.

Our research found only 2% of IR500 is not using webanalytics tools with Google Analytics is still the major provider. But, interestingly we also found, the use of other, lesser-known clickstream and other web analytics tools is increasing. Let me share the 5 top charts of this research with you. Continue reading

Four Things Marketers Should Ask IT About Their Website’s Performance

Slow Loading Tags

Slow Loading Tags

According to a recent article in NY times Impatient Web-Users Flee Slow Loading Sites, 400 milliseconds is too long. Thirty-seven percent of consumers find performance issues when visiting a website unacceptable, and 86% of users will leave a site after having bad experiences, according to another study from Compuware.

When it comes to tracking what consumer’s are doing on websites, marketers need to use many third-party tags from web analytics, email, search, ad servers, online testing, behavioral targeting, social media, and more. These systems get very complex and often use Javascript which can slow pages down, making it harder to track conversions especially when the user experience has been compromised. See this Compuware Load Testing Infographic to view key findings from their survey and learn exactly how slow tags, that result in poor page performance, negatively impacts your bottom line. In fact we proved in our recent study that, “Just One Second Delay In Page-Load Can Cause 7% Loss In Customer Conversions.”

Continue reading

How To Protect Your Site in the Era of Tag Bloat

We announced last week our exclusive partnership with Digital Fulcrum which now allows any tag to run through our tag management system asynchronously. Adam Figuiera discusses in this guest blog post the issues of 3rd party tags and what to consider.

Guest post by Adam Figuiera, Product Marketing Manager, Monetate 

Adam Figueira

The web is awash in tags. From analytics to ad serving, website testing to channel optimization, marketers use an ever-increasing number of third-party solutions for improving and measuring the customer’s website experience–and to make the process for doing so easier.
But can too much of a good thing actually be bad? Indeed it can, and one might accurately term the last five years as the Era of Tag Bloat. However, the marketer’s challenges extend beyond just the number of tags necessary for running a modern website.

Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, website JavaScript tags can have split personalities–enhancing a marketer’s knowledge and the visitor’s experience when everything performs properly, but showing their evil side when things don’t go as planned. Continue reading

Q&A: Stéphane Hamel on Tag Management – Part 1

The word “guru” is an overused one, but when it comes to web analytics, Stéphane Hamel is undisguisedly worthy of the title. An all-round online analytics advocate, Stéphane is also director of strategic services at Cardinal Path, an educator and a prolific speaker.

We caught up with him to discuss tag management in the context of web analytics, organizational change, and implementation best practices. Continue reading

Need a Tag Management System? Find Out with Forrester’s 6-Step Assessment Framework

For better or for worse, JavaScript-based web measurement is here to stay.

JavaScript tags have become a cornerstone of code for Web analytics, online testing, behavioral targeting, affiliate marketing, ad serving, search marketing, and more. Without an efficient, flexible and adaptive tag management system, managing what can easily become dozens and dozens of individual pieces of code can become, according to a recent report on tag management from Forrester Research: Continue reading

How Do You Know If You Need a Tag Management System?

Is your web site – or web team – suffering under the weight and complexity of JavaScript tags and social media buttons?

A good question, yet one many marketers, web analytics and IT departments are ill equipped to answer. To help them address this critical question, Forrester Research has developed a six-point tag audit and tag management scorecard to help all parties involved determine their level of tag management risk. Continue reading

Q&A With Bryan Eisenberg, TagMan’s Newest Advisory Board Member

tagman advisory board member bryan eisenberg

Bryan Eisenberg

Speaker, best-selling author, columnist, digital marketing pioneer and more, Bryan Eisenberg has become something of a legend as a digital marketing pioneer, web metrics guru, and all around advocate of digital marketing best practices.

He’s also is the newest member of TagMan’s advisory board (see seperate press release). We sat down with him to discuss why he feels the tag management issue is an important one now, and what role he’ll play in moving the company forward. Continue reading