Using the Channel Builder you can match ad performance data and costs with the order/revenue numbers and visit statistics.
To understand how the Channel Builder works, look at the following article:
This article will give you an example, what a standard set up could look like.
The actual terms we use in the filters might vary a lot based on your naming conventions.
The available Channel Categories will serve as a guidelines that we organise this article by.
The priority of the channels can be adjusted in the Channel Overview by dragging the channel in the order you want it to be applied (top to bottom). Click at the bottom right corner of the channel card to move the channels around.
Again, we are more than happy to assist you in setting this up. Please feel free to reach out to us!
Paid Social
Channel Name: Facebook Paid
Channel Name: Youtube Paid
Channel Name: Pinterest Paid
Note: When we introduce our direct integration with Pinterest, the Custom Costs need to be replaced with that integration, as we can pull the costs, as well as the ad performance data, directly from there.
Influencer
Channel Name: Influencer
Channel Name: Newsletter
Channel Name: Email Automation
Channel Name: Transactional Email
Organic Search
Channel Name: Organic Search
Note: If you Organic Search is a core channel for you, you could break this down further into different types of pages driving the traffic by using the Landing Page dimension. Since this is not the case for most DTC brands, I am sticking with one channel here.
Note 2: Some brands also set the utm_medium to organic for their organic social media accounts. If this is the case for you, also need to use a utm_source filter here to match the right data.
Organic Search
Channel Name: Affiliate
Note: Again, if Affiliate is a core channel for you, you might want to break this up into the different providers you are working with.
Referral
Channel Name: Referral
Social Owned
Channel Name: Social Owned
Generic Paid Search
Channel Name: Generic Paid Search
Note: This is the most complex set up so far, so a few comments:
As Generic Paid Search can come from both Google and Bing I created a group with an OR statement that is connected the rest of the rule with an AND statement.
Most Branded Paid Search contain the word brand or something similar whereas Generic Paid Search is usually a bit more varied. So the most efficient to match into that is by making the rule that the campaign does not contain brand.
We don't need to exclude the campaign Youtube which as the same utm_source and utm_medium because it has a higher priority and therefore matches prior.
We don't have a direct integration for Bing yet, so in order to get the Bing costs attached to the channel too, you need to add them to the Custom Costs Sheet and then set a rule to match on the relevant costs through the Category column in that document.
Note 2: If you are a search-heavy brand you could split Generic Search into Search and Shopping or different types of Generic Paid Search.
Branded Paid Search
Channel Name: Branded Paid Search
Note: Again pretty complex, but mostly the same as above. Where it is different is for Shopify. Why?
This is a bit of a special scenario as orders that are not in Google Analytics likely will not have any utm information and therefore contain n/a.
But as we us Shopify as fallback, some of these orders will have information in the field Shopify Visit Source - most commonly Direct or Google.
Direct you can simple match into your Direct Channel.
The problem with Google is that you don't know if it's Brand Search, Generic Search or Organic Search. So you have two options.
Match it into the biggest existing channel which likely will be Branded Paid Search
Create an additional Channel called something like Google Fallback.
Here, I decided that I want to include these orders in my Branded Paid Search. So I took the rule I used for Generic Paid Search, only adjusting it to fit Brand, but placed that entire rule within a Group so that I create an OR statement and create another group that matches into the scenario just described.
A bit of a head scratcher, I understand that. Luckily the channel set up only needs to be done once and he are always happy to help you with that. Just reach out ;)
Direct
Channel Name: Direct
Note: Similar to Branded Paid Search so please refer to the section right above.
Additional Channel Options:
There are a few more channel options that you can configure:
Word of Mouth - if you use a tool to incentivize your customers to recommend you. Make sure that track those links and set up the channel.
Display - still running big on Display Ads. There is a Channel Category for that too.
Partnerships - not used by many, but some brands are big on Partnerships. So we have a Channel Category for that too.
Other Paid - Place for all paid activities that don't fall into any of the other.
Anything missing?
If you feel like something is missing, let us know. If it makes sense, we'll happily add it in :)