Critical Tag Management Basics for Experience Businesses

Adobe Stock / SidorArt

In 2009, the average enterprise website used two technologies. These technologies might have been a video player, remarketing pixel, or an analytics solution. To install these technologies, lines of JavaScript code, known as tags, are embedded in the code of web pages. Today, the average enterprise websites has 20 different technologies and the burden to effectively and intelligently manage these technologies — and all of the tags associated with them — has never been heavier.

For businesses to deliver top-notch customer experiences, the technologies used to deliver those experiences must work well, work together, and be easily managed.

Tags 101: tagging basics.

Tags point your web browser to different content or functionality. One tag might activate a video player, another a chat service, or the tracking of a certain customer behavior (like clicking on a button). In short, tags are what make your web technologies run. When you use Adobe Analytics, tags are used to measure key metrics on a page. If the tag isn’t there, the analytics platform doesn’t have anything to analyze.

The difficulty with tags is that they often need to be updated when the underlying technology is updated. If you have a single tag on a single web page, this isn’t a problem. But many companies have hundreds of web pages, each with dozens of tags. As a result, even simple updates can take weeks, or even months to implement.

Given the rapidly increasing customer expectations we see today, it’s unlikely brands can optimize for one increasing expectation before the next is already upon them. The result is that it’s nearly impossible to keep up and offer always-exceptional digital experiences through manual processes.

Tags 201: benefits of tag management.

As brands work to keep up with increasing customer expectations, tag managers can accelerate how quickly brands can make changes to improve the customer experience. Before tag managers, brands had to manually go in and add code to add new functionality. With tag managers, brands can create a rule that speeds up this process. For example, if a brand has a thousand web pages, a tag manager can be used to create a rule that pushed a tag to all of them instead of a developer going into those 1,000 pages and manually typing the new code in precisely the right spot.

Tag management systems give brands a user interface where they can fill in fields and, based upon what was put in those fields, the tag manager will inject the right JavaScript into the right place on web pages. Tag managers do the heavy lifting, enabling brands to spend less time managing tags and more time marketing and driving more business.

Tags 301: two common myths.

Myth 1: With a tag manager, IT isn’t needed.

This is false. The most successful brands are those whose marketing, analytics, and personalization teams form a healthy partnership with IT. It’s when each of these teams and IT work together that brands are best equipped to deliver exceptional customer experiences.

Myth 2: Free tag managers can’t handle enterprise needs.

The two most popular tag management systems on the market are complimentary. And one of them, Dynamic Tag Management, has thousands of customers representing some of the world’s largest and most successful brands — including Fortune 500 companies like AIG, McDonald’s, Morgan Stanley, Nvidia, Salesforce.com, Starwood Hotels, and Tyson.

Graduation.

Tag management isn’t about tags — it’s about delivering great experiences.

The implementation of a tag management system might seem like a lot of work in the short term, but the payoff comes quickly in the form of better allocation of technical resources; faster, more impactful digital properties; and better data-gathering capabilities — all of which translate into better customer experiences.

Tags may seem like a small matter, but they make a huge impact. The companies that are ready to embrace and utilize tag management systems will be the companies that meet and exceed customer expectations, earning attention and loyalty for the long term.

To see the other three common tag management myths, read more in our #ProjectLaunch series.