GUEST COMMENT Five ways tag management can cut customer frustration

Retailers are constantly looking for ways to increase brand loyalty and awareness through deeper customer engagement. One of the ways to achieve this is for them to take greater control of the data available across all their online platforms, including web and mobile sites, and use it to better communicate with the customer. Improving the overall customer experience can be achieved through data management, or more specifically in this case, tag management.

Tag management solutions have been widely adopted by the retail sector, yet understanding the impact that the increasing number of tags can have on consumers using a brand’s website should be at the heart of any data management strategy, and therefore the wider marketing strategy. By understanding the importance of managing website tags effectively and efficiently, marketers will not only be in a position to improve website performance, but this increased digital marketing agility will better position them to action data initiatives and target customers more appropriately.

Here are five ways that tag management can help to improve the online experience for the consumer and increase overall loyalty to a brand:

Improved website latency

In simple terms, latency is the speed at which a website functions, or the time it takes for a particular webpage to load. A Tag Management System (TMS) allows for dozens of online marketing vendor tags to be replaced with a single tag, meaning content can be delivered much quicker to the end user. Ensuring customers can navigate between the different pages of an ecommerce site within milliseconds rather whole seconds is vital in this increasingly competitive environment. Retailers such as Fingerhut in the US have reported up to a 49% increase in page load speed across their check-out process from deploying a tag management system across their ecommerce site. A one second delay in page load speed can reduce conversions by 7%, so this is where tag management is critical.

Personalisation of content

Tag Management Solutions have evolved considerably in the past few years to form a foundational layer in the digital marketing technology stack. This is driven by a TMS’ ability to unify, enrich and segment data from multiple online sources and feed it back to designated solutions to fuel real-time personalisation initiatives. This arms the digital marketer with an extremely powerful weapon – the ability to deliver personalised content based on the consumer’s behaviour and preferences faster than ever before. Ensuring the customer receives messages tailored to them in a timely fashion will not only boost brand loyalty, but also have a large impact on conversion.

Re-engaging with the customer

Now content can be personalised, but how can a marketer regain the attention of a customer who has navigated away from the site, either intentionally or after being distracted by another site? This same data enrichment and unification functionality can be used to fuel re-marketing initiatives that increase conversions and revenues. For example, having correlated the customer’s data touchpoints, tag management technologies can now facilitate instant messaging to consumers who have either paused or abandoned their shopping session. Businesses are reporting that they can now send offer emails to consumers who abandon their shopping basket significantly quicker than in previous processes that could have taken days. This initiative is a big step for ecommerce and is set to transform the way that retail businesses communicate with their customers.

Ensuring a brand is open for ‘business as usual’

As online shopping becomes the norm, it is vital that a brand’s ecommerce platforms are fully functioning and available around the clock. Faulty vendor tags can cause problems such as delays in page loading times or – worse still – a fault that prevents a purchase from being made. More often than not, these issues require the help of the IT department and can take hours to resolve, which can potentially cost huge sums in lost revenue. Thankfully with the help of a TMS, marketers can control and adjust vendor tags instantly and independently of other tags across their site. This means that once a faulty tag is identified, it can be switched off immediately and the site can continue to function as normal ensuring consumers can benefit from a smooth online experience.

Improved data governance

With the proliferation of tags across a site, it is important for retailers to be able to retain control of their data and ensure they are able to maintain the integrity of their site. Until now this has largely been undertaken with exhaustive assistance from the IT department, but tag management enables marketers to take control of this process. If brands can show data integrity and compliance with current e-privacy legislation, this can only serve to boost consumer confidence as users will rest safe in the knowledge that their data is being handled correctly.

While data management technologies have been around for some time, the main purpose of a modern-day tag management approach is to provide a data layer that allows marketers to correlate the data produced by their digital vendor tags based on specific parameters, which they themselves can choose. To keep customer frustration to a minimum, the key attributes of such a platform should be rapid deployment, data integrity and marketing agility. After all, consumers who can navigate a brand’s website effectively and benefit from relevant targeted content will ultimately enjoy a better customer experience, resulting in improved conversions and ROI for the brand.

Mark Wood is VP Sales EMEA, at Tealium