Data Analysis

Map navigation patterns for use in email marketing automation and Google Ads campaigns

Alex Genovese

07 Oct 2021 • 5 min read

One of the Behavioral Targeting advantage is the ability to organize customers based on their purchasing and navigation behaviour, such as the number of visits they have made in a timeframe or which products they have purchased in the last quarter, or which categories they prefer and if they purchase only discounted products or not, etc.

Based on this, it's possible what should to be done once interesting behaviors have been observed.

For instance:

Grouping people who have seen a specific product more than 3 times and then leave and never come back;
Grouping people who viewed the cart more than 2 minutes and then left and never came back.

We can also grouping information that allow you to create alerts to identify hidden losses. If a cluster grows over time, then there is an obvious problem to solve.

It's certainly keep an eye on problems related to the percentage of exit of the cart page through Google Analytics in the relevant section (by appropriately configuring the tracking):

The configuration related to the objectives is often left out, but it is extremely useful for analyzing hidden problems:

Contact me to know how to fix these settings by clicking here.

Mail Marketing Automation and Advanced Tracking Events

I generally use Active Campaign and through Integromat it's possible to create custom events based on specific browsing or purchasing behaviors.

Below is a video that explains really well how to create events using Active Campaign and Tag Manager.

This kind of events are mainly used to tag users who land in the e-commerce in order to carry out Acquisition or Retention campaigns.

On the Acquisition side it is possible to show, through Active Campaign or similar automation tools, pop-ups or ad hoc discounts for each type of unknown cluster.

Regarding Retention, already knowing our customers, we push them towards the re-purchase using captivating advertising messages, commercial tactics or promotions and discounts based on your score or previous purchases.

Acquisition "Game"

The most used approach is that one based on linear timing that allows to identify complex behavioral patterns and relate them to the product categorization, the navigation path and the purchasing process.

Depending on the viewing behaviors, we can already do a lot to increase acquisition and enhance:

Displaying more than X seconds / minutes on the product page;
Display more than X seconds / minutes on category;
Displaying more than X seconds / minutes on cart page with X products;
Displaying more than X seconds / minutes on the cart page with Promo;
Displaying more than X seconds / minutes on cart page no Promo;
Displaying more than X seconds / minutes on Checkout with X Products;
Display more than X seconds / minutes on Checkout with value> AOV.

How to create RFM analysis to segment customer base and make them available in Google Ads marketing campaigns

Go to Google Analytics settings;
Click on Custom Segments;
Create a new Custom Segment using as parameter "Users who have visited a specific section of my site";
Edit this selection by setting the parameters shown above and save;
Pay attention to the preview number should be higher enough to be used in your campaigns;
Select Google Ads to make it available in the Audience Segments in your account.

Retention

Always using a data-driven approach, it can analyzed the RFM segments defined on Google Analytics, or a similar one, to analyze the sessions and pageviews (clustering the "what") and cross-referencing the data with the latest purchases made in the 30 or 60 days:

Last 30 days purchase frequency lower than the average of 30% and a Cart that has a value around the AOV or Displayed category X for N minutes;
Last 60 days purchase frequency lower than the average of 50% and a Cart that has a value around the AOV or Displayed category X for N minutes.

How to create segments in Google Analytics

Follow this link to know more on how to segment the customer base.

PRO TIPS - By creating retargeting campaigns focused on clusters who have already purchased certain products, we can aim for cross-selling by intercepting the channel of origin + campaign name to show while browsing the shop, promotional banners or communication elements that continuesly referring to the promo in the entire customer journey.