Seligent newsletter UTMs best practice/process

Mar 10, 2016

Agenda

1. Overview of caching/server load performance with the Expression Engine platform
2. Best practice for UTM variables in newsletter urls
3. Review of automated generated UTMs in Seligent vs manual UTMs
4. Testing UTMs
5. Hearst Node in UTMs

   

 

EE Server performance Review

Currently on the sites like GH that use the Expression Engine platform, we are seeing a issues with newsletter urls creating too much load on the server and crashing the site during a mail out

 

Issues

1. Complex urls with empty UTM variables cause the EE platform to try and parse/build  these urls and create too many requests against the database to try and cache these urls
2. Hearst Node variables in urls for sites without this integration create too much load agains the database
3. Combination of traffic spike from the newsletter mail out and too bots/spiders crawling these unique urls creates too many requests/load against the database
4. Not enough testing of new UTM variable generation by Seligent and editorial

 

Brands of Expression Engine

1. Good Housekeeping
2. Mens Health
3. Women's Health
4. Red
5. Elle UK (In the process of moving to MediaOS

 

 

 

 

Newsletter UTM urls review

Taken from the most recent newsletter from GH: 10 tricks to stop thinning hair

 

http://www.goodhousekeeping.co.uk/news/why-the-1960s-was-the-best-decade-to-grow-up-in?utm_source=crm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=GDH_04032016&utm_content=_&utm_term=_

 

utm_source=crm

utm_medium=email

utm_campaign=GDH_04032016

utm_content=_ 

utm_term=_

 

 

Testing

1. What testing are we currently doing with Seligent newsletter development?
2. Within the development team, any new functionality we release goes through QA/UAT and based on the recent GH outages we would like to apply the same for Seligent
3. Working with the QA dept to develop more in-dept testing of Seligent

 

 

Hearst Node

To track Hearst Node, there is a DEV piece to integrate this functionality before it can be added to newsletter UTM urls.

 

Currently Mens Health is the only site that supports Hearst Node

 

Automated vs UTM generation Review

Based on the most recent newsletter, we are seeing empty UTM variables for UTMs automatically generated by the Seligent platform, could we explore:

 

1. Not generating UTM variables that are empty in the platform
2. Genrating campaign names that are easier to associate in GA

 

Automated UTM url example

http://www.goodhousekeeping.co.uk/news/why-the-1960s-was-the-best-decade-to-grow-up-in?utm_source=crm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=GDH_04032016&utm_content=_&utm_term=_

 

utm_source=crm

utm_medium=email

utm_campaign=GDH_04032016

utm_content=_ 

utm_term=_