Act-On's Tracking Beacon identifies visitors and sends behavioral data from your
various web properties back to Act-On to power segmentation, reports and complete
your view of contact engagement. The Beacon settings control how activity of
anonymous and known prospects coming to your website, forms, landing pages, or
any web resource are collected via JavaScript you add to your web properties.
How it works
Once you install the Beacon code on your web properties, page visit data is sent to Act-On and is connected to contacts once we can associate their cookie ID with an email address. This association is often the result of clicking through an email you send them from Act-On or a form submission. The collected web behavior data will be available in your Website Prospector Report as well as within Segmentation, Contact and Account Report timelines, and elsewhere. This data allows you to answer many of the key questions at the core of marketing automation:
Who is visiting your website?
- Find out which companies are visiting your site before they ever fill out a form
- Use the Anonymous Visitors feature to target likely prospects at those companies
- Learn the referring domains and marketing campaigns that drove traffic to your site
What are they looking for?
- See the pages and content each prospect is viewing, as well as the search terms they're using while on your website – all in real time
- Analyze which content types and topics deliver the biggest payoff, then optimize your website to capitalize on this knowledge
- Segment your lists based on what your prospects are interested in and target relevant messages based on these interests
Who are your qualified leads?
- Score your prospects so sales can focus on leads who are more ready to buy
- Generate higher quality prospects through behavior-aware drip programs
- Know what a specific prospect is interested in based on their activity history
- Alert sales immediately when key buying signals are detected
The Beacon is compliant with international privacy regulations and compatible with advanced website management tools like Google Tag Manager. It loads asynchronously, which means that it does not slow down the performance of your pages, and it can track multiple events on a single page, such as multiple clicks in a new window or tab.
Here is a quick overview of the steps below:
- Determine which of your web pages will use Act-On content or directly relate to your Act-On initiatives
- Access the HTML of those pages
- Paste in the Beacon tracking code
For best results, install the Beacon code only on the web pages that pertain to your Act-On marketing activities. If you install the Beacon on multiple additional pages that are not part of your Act-On marketing strategy, this can negatively impact the performance of your reporting.
Notes:
Before utilizing the Beacon Tracker, you will need setup your Custom Marketing Domain. If you have already done so, continue with the setup process below.
After adding or changing the tracking code, it can take approximately 15 minutes for the new tracking information to flow to the application.
Install the Beacon
- Navigate to Settings > Other Settings > Beacon Settings.
- Select your desired Cookie Mode:
- Standard Mode will cookie all visitors. It is highly reccomended to integrate the beacon code with your cookie consent prompt. If you do not yet have one configured through the use of a cookie consent manager you can get setup with these instructions.
- Disabled Mode does not cookie your visitors at all. Visitors will not be tracked, and all visitors will appear as “anonymous” in Website Prospector. This mode is not recommended unless you must comply with strict privacy regulations.
- For more information, see Beacon Tracking Mode Details.
- Embed the Beacon Code by copying the entire block of code using either the Copy button or highlighting to copy.
- Work with your webmaster to add this code to your website pages, blog, and other web pages to track.
- Make sure that the code is only called once per web page
- A good place for the code is just before the closing </body> tag
- Act-On will validate your installation automatically. After you have added the beacon code to your website pages and you have received traffic to those pages, you will see a green "Active" banner on your next visit to the Beacon Settings page.
- If you have installed your beacon successfully but see the red "Inactive" banner on the Beacon Settings page, you should validate that the beacon code is still present in your web pages and there has been traffic to those pages in the last 24hrs.
Notes:
- For best results, add the code only to pages that directly relate to your marketing campaigns
- You do not need to add this code to your Act-On-hosted landing pages and forms (they will track visitors automatically)
- If you change your tracking mode, you will need to replace your tracking code on each web page you have placed it.
