How to prevent GTM zombies

infecting your data!

THE FOLLOWING TALK IS BASED ON A REAL IMPLEMENTATION IN 2015. THESE SLIDES

ARE BASED ON "PROJECT COMPLETION DEBRIEF" DOCUMENT. SOME DETAILS REMOVED FOR CONFIDENTIALITY. PLEASE DOWNLOAD THE

INTERACTIVE TEST bit.ly/residentslides

NO ZOMBIE WERE HARM (MUCH) IN THE

MAKING OF THIS PRESENTATION.

Download link… bit.ly/residentslides

• You are an Elite Analytics Agency (EAA) specialising in GA and GTM implementations and clean-up operations.

The Analytics Agency

• You pitched & won a new client. The client is Umbrella Corporation a global publishing brand.

• But, there was a 1 condition…

The Client

• The client requested that the detailed GTM audit is replaced with a preliminary audit (i.e. just a surface scan).

• The project worth £45K pounds!

Contract Condition

…You agree to this condition

Contract Condition

The hidden truth…

- Umbrella Scientific Marketing Dept have been using on GTM since its inception since 2012. They are early adopters & have good intentions.

- However, they have been accidentally making human errors (Zombies) and technical mistakes (IT Booby Traps) at a frequency & scale you have never seen before!

Background

The hidden truth…

- There was a hidden clause in your contract that says you must complete within 3 months - otherwise you wont be compensated.

- The project has started, there`s no exit clause - you are locked-in. The only way to escape is to complete the implementation.

- There are 5 mini-tasks to reach complete. For each task you get wrong Umbrella removes -5% from your project bounty.

Locked-in cause & Deadline

- If you are unsure you have a hint button.

- To get help from your friendly GTM assassin

The Good news

Terminologies

People: Zombies = Brainless Marketers

Zombie Examples

- Using 20 tags rather than 1 tag + lookup tables

- No normalised GTM container naming structure

- 74 tags used to trigger the pageview rather than 1 All page rule.

- Changes made straight to LIVE!

- IsDebug=True blocking trigger broken!

The best way to heal Marketing Zombies is through upskilling and processes.

• Training makes them less likely to become zombies.

• Processes mean that accidental zombies are quarantined. e.g. Using a separate DEV & LIVE container is an excellent preventative process.

Healing

Tools: IT Booby Traps = Technical Mistakes or Pit holes

IT Booby Traps

- 3rd party GA integration tools issue

- Inline jQuery scroll tracking script outputting gaq.push

- Double pageviews from Inline pageview & GTM pageview

- System auto-upgraded to V2 interface whilst working on account

- CMS is 8 years old

Fixing

- Experience: learn from peoples mistakes.

- Changing the system helps (e.g. auto-events are safer than jQuery listeners)

- Automation: GTM/GA api and GoogleSheets api

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1: When migrating to universal do you Setup Parallel Tracker or Single

Tracker?

Parallel Tracker

Single Tracker

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2. When setting up a GTM JavaScript Error tracker which profile do you

send it to?

Existing UA Account

Different UA Profile

Does not matter as GA filters used

to include/exclude errors

ErrorTracker not needed

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3. Your A/B testing tool is sending GA non-interactive event hits to all

trackers on every page - how should you fix this using GTM?

Rename trackerNames

Rename "ga" > "ga2" object

Hint

Turn-off A/B testing tool integration within tool settings. Update A/B testing tool integration to output Custom Dimension (not events)

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4. You have exceeded Hit limit in due & received warning from

Google. How can you reduce the limit without spending any more money?

Enable 10% client side sampling on secondTracker

Disable 1% speed tracker

Buy GA premium

Use a filter to exclude all event hits

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5. How do you enable Cross Domain tracking from clientdomain.com to

cart.com via GTM?

use userID based “session unification”

update htaccess file

Hint

GTM native link function

clientId setting in GTM and JSmacro script

Thanks!

Agh.. I wonder what

time is lunch?

Special Thanks to…

…and thanks for the hits!

A few more degrees to the right &

I`ve got him!

Answers crossDomain tracking into cart.com but not using .htaccess patch (specific use case) https://plus.google.com/117298997433687198127/posts/R5r3Bp88ir7 Accidentally bad GA integrations (e.g. A/B testing tool called Monetate send 3x hit limit) https://plus.google.com/117298997433687198127/posts/BWx5fwQVHsW Using _initData to reduce Hits during a migration https://plus.google.com/wm/1/117298997433687198127/posts/McER3buexek GTM Blacklisting but allowing JS macros https://plus.google.com/117298997433687198127/posts/aVKq1NjMjBG isAdBlocked customDimension http://83.223.104.160/~searchph/_testing_script/_____natgeo/gtm-code-examples/25_dl_pageSubCategory_120events.html GTM JSmacro performance tip https://plus.google.com/117298997433687198127/posts/2TVMsVAtaMU GTM QA trick to end 70 event in one go using GTM timer https://plus.google.com/117298997433687198127/posts/aiKNGTW5pnn PII patch using GTM https://plus.google.com/117298997433687198127/posts/YQ9hraiLh7k