Sitecore ECM how to track the same user's activities in different target audiences

Question

We are using Sitecore 6.5, and the Email Campaign Manager 1.3.3 rev.130212 is installed.

Currently, when i add a Sitecore user, for example 'UserA' to multiple target audiences, lets say 'TargetAudience_A' and 'TargeAudience_B', after I send out these two target audiences, 'UserA' clicks the link in the email which comes from 'TargetAudience_A', then the link will bring user to the site, user visits several pages, Sitecore Analytics will be able to track 'UserA' VisitPageCount and Value, and creates the corresponding campaign of 'TargetAudience_A' with that data.

When the user opens the email sent from 'TargetAudience_B' and clicks the link, visits the site, NO campaign is created for 'TargetAudience_B' in the database, I can see all the data should use to create a new campaign for 'TargeAudience_B' is used to update campaign of 'TargetAudience_A'.

The whole link in the sent email has been modified by Sitecore, the corresponding campaign id is added, which makes the link looks like this:'httP:xx.domain.com/?ec_camp=xxxx&ec_as=xxxx'.

It seems that Sitecore just adds an Id to the url, but does not create a campaign for the 'TargeAudience_B' with that Id.

I use this sql query to check the visits data:

  Select * From Visits join Automations on Visits.CampaignId = Automations.CampaignId
  Where Automations.data = '{EmailTemplateId}'

the data column on Automations table is the email template id of the target audience.

Does any one know, how to track one user's activities for multiple campaigns? Is this possible to do? Or is this something which needs to be fixed by Sitecore?

Any help will be much much appreciated.

Thanks

EDIT: Sitecore does create Campaign for each target audience, but does not create Visits record for every one of them; Sitecore associates Campaign with the Visits, Sitecore cannot find\create Visits of 'TargeAudience_B', it finds the Visits of 'TargeAudience_A', for some reason it just updates the Visits record of 'TargetAudience_A'.

This does look right, does Sitecore create just one visit for a visitor a day no matter how many target audience this visitor in?

Mark Cassidy Mark Cassidy · Accepted Answer · 2013-10-01T08:21:16

Neither target audience, the Visitor.ExternalUser or anything other than a fresh Visitor cookie will make DMS re-consider your visitor. So to answer your question, I do believe you are correct in your observation, and that this behavior is by design.

Also keep in mind; if your users click the email you send out from say their iPhone and come visit the site, they will be granted a Visitor ID. Later, when they're back home at their PC and click the same email again, they will get a fresh Visitor ID and will not be recognized by DMS as one and the same Visitor. This too, is by design.

If you want to achieve what I believe you're aiming to achieve, you're going to have to "tag" your Visitors with a key you recognize - like the email address - and then hook into the APIs and "grab" all Visitors that match your tagged email address. Not sure how well this will work with all areas of the DMS.

In my example above; if a user was triggered to enter an Engagement Plan or a State in an Engagement Plan - the "iPhone Visitor" would get attached to it - and any actions undertaken by the same person on his personal PC visitor profile on his desktop PC would not be affecting anything in this state.

Yes, it is a bit confusing - I may even have some slight details of this wrong - the DMS API changes a lot. But as far as I can determine, the above is correct and all by design.

Sitecore ECM how to track the same user's activities in different target audiences

1 Answers