Push Notification Best Practices: Measure Effectiveness with Cross-Domain Pixel Tracking

Have you ever wanted the ability to track your subscribers’ actions across multiple domains? If so, today is your lucky day! We are excited to unveil our latest pixel tracking feature that lets you do just that.

This is a big deal if you’ve got other websites you manage, including any branch off websites that are connected to your main brand. For example, you may send users to a different website with a different domain in order to purchase products or schedule appointments (such as schedule.yourwebsite.com). Previously, the only thing you could track was if a user clicked to go to those sites. Now, by installing our tracking pixel, you can track their actions at those sites and monitor what is going on. Pretty cool, right?

The Tracking Pixel

The tracking pixel itself is very easy to set up and install- head to your dashboard to get started. Click the ‘Advanced’ tab and then ‘Tracking Pixels’ to create your first pixel.

To create your pixel all you have to do is input a Category and Action. Optionally, you can also include a label and value, just as you are used to doing with setting up custom events. Essentially, the tracking pixel gives you the ability to track a custom event in the same way you are used to, just with the added benefit of tracking it at a different domain than the one your subscribers have opted-in at.

The above example shows what the set up would be to track the custom event of an item purchased. Set your category as ‘item’ and your action as ‘purchased’ and hit update pixel and you are all set. Input the code at the new website and you will start tracking events there even though your subscribers aren’t subscribed to web push notifications there. Be sure to place the code at the appropriate page of the site in order to properly track the event (say on a thank you page, for example).

Results

Once you’ve set up your pixel, you can view results on campaigns that are set up to track custom events. For example, say you run a web push campaign asking users to schedule a free consultation. If a user clicks, they are sent to your scheduling website to select the time that works for them. Previously, your results would show you how many people clicked your campaign (in addition to how many notifications were sent).

While that is still good data to look at to measure the effectiveness of your campaign, wouldn’t you also like to know how many people actually signed up for an appointment? Set up your pixel to track scheduled appointments and you’ll be able to see how many people converted (in this case, the conversion is that they scheduled an appointment).

This latest feature gives you the ability to gain more information about your subscribers and actions they take at your websites as a result of your web push campaigns. Your analytics will be more complete and the info you track can then also be used to build more robust segments or set up new triggered notifications in the future. You can read our documentation for more information on setting up tracking pixels.

Other Updates

 Our push notification tracking pixel is the big update we wanted you all to be aware of. However, there are a few other new features we have been working on as well!

• Auto Hide Notifications: You already have the option to have a notification expire after a certain amount of time. Now you also have the ability to have your notification disappear after a certain number of seconds. Typically, notifications persist on a person’s screen until they are either dismissed or clicked. With Auto Hide enabled, a notification will appear and then disappear on its own after a specified amount of seconds. Turn this feature on in the ‘Settings’ tab when creating your campaign.
  

• Track Clicks as Events: You now have the option to track notification clicks as a custom event. Having this data can be useful for your analytics and also gives you the option to use as a trigger for a triggered notification. You can find this feature by clicking ‘Websites’ in the sidebar. Hit edit next to the website you want to set up and click the ‘Miscellaneous Settings’ tab to enable.
  

• New Segmentation Options: Two new segmentation options are available for you to consider when building your campaigns. Segment users who have never clicked a campaign or segment users who have clicked at least one campaign.
• Conversion Window Setting: You now have more control over conversion reporting with web push by defining a certain amount of time (in days) to attribute a conversion back to a web push click!

That’s all for now! Are there any new features you’ve been waiting patiently for? Let us hear your ideas! Comment below or send us a message.

If you are new to Aimtell and web push, go ahead and start your 14-day free trial.