Available from version 8 of the Sitecore Experience Platform, Sitecore Taxonomies is a tool for marketers to create and classify taxonomy tags in the Marketing Control Panel. Marketers can then apply Sitecore Taxonomies to campaigns, goals, and events.

With Sitecore Taxonomies marketers can track how visitors interact with the website. This gives greater insights to visitor behaviour, giving marketers the opportunity to refine strategies and re-optimise content if needed.

Sitecore’s flexibility also allows marketers to create custom taxonomies to segment goals, campaigns or assets and then assigning these taxonomy tags to digital marketing activities.

Types of Sitecore Taxonomies

For a clearer understanding of the dynamics of campaigns, goals and events, marketers can use four marketing taxonomy types to track visitor activity in Experience Analytics. These taxonomy types can be used to personalise content.

1. Channels

2. Campaign groups

3. Assets

4. Venues

1. Channels

Channels are simply how visitors get to a website. There are two types of channels visitors use to interact with a website:

• Online: Through a mobile app, PPC, social networks, an organic search etc.

• Offline: Through traditional direct marketing activities, press advertisements, exhibitions/trade shows, phone calls etc.

Taxonomy channels are created in the Channel item, under the Taxonomies in the Marketing Control Panel. By selecting the relevant online or offline channel, marketers can create a relevant taxonomy type.

Channel taxonomy types are assigned to campaigns. For example, a PPC campaign would be assigned to the Google Ads channel.

2. Campaign groups

Classifying individual campaigns to campaign groups that run across different channels make it easier to identify each campaign.

With Sitecore taxonomies marketers can create custom campaign groups to reflect business needs. For example, all PPC campaigns can be added to the custom taxonomy AdWords campaign group.

Campaign group taxonomy types are assigned to campaigns. For example, a PPC campaign would be assigned to the AdWords campaign group.

3. Assets

In this context, assets are PDFs, videos, Infographics, or other documents. To tag visitors’ consumption of this type of content, media items are classified as digital media assets and are created as Asset taxonomy groups and tags before being assigned to digital media assets in the Media Library.

For the download interaction to be tracked and measured in analytics, a download event should be assigned to the media item.

This is done by selecting the media item in the Media Library and choosing the Attributes option in the navigation ribbon and assigning the event in the Events tab.

4. Venues

The Venues taxonomy group enables marketers to track offline interactions at various locations.

Marketers can segment venues into Venue types, Venue groups, and Individual venues. These Sitecore taxonomies are used to identify and track offline interactions.

A scenario of how venues can be used to track offline interactions at various locations:

• A contact waiting at a bus stop in Moorgate, London, notices a summer promotion ad offering a 2 free scoops of premium ice cream

• The contact uses their mobile phone to scan the QR code so they can claim the ice cream Upon scanning, the user’s location and the advertisement scanned and collected in Experience Database (xDB)

• Marketing automation and personalisation are used to send the contact the coupon required to claim the ice cream

• When the contact goes to the shop to claim the ice cream their coupon is scanned. This information is collected in xDB and is presented in Experience Analytics

Campaign facets

Sitecore taxonomies allow marketers to create Campaign facet taxonomies. These are used to segment campaigns. They are assigned to campaigns so they are easily identified and tracked in Experience Analytics. For example, a campaign facet can represent a service/product.

Goal facets

Goal facet taxonomies are created under Goal Types. They enable marketers to segment a goal. For example, a custom taxonomy called Case Study can be assigned to a Case Study Download goal.

Sitecore taxonomies in analytics

Experience Analytics has a variety of dashboards and reports for marketers to gain insights on campaign activity. The Acquisition tab displays the following taxonomy data:

• Overview

• Channels

• Campaigns

• Campaign facets

Similarly, the Behaviour tab displays Assets/Downloads, and the Conversion tab displays Goal Facet data

Working with Codehouse

We’ve helped many customers spanning a variety of industries get the very best from Sitecore's marketing tools. If you want to know more about Sitecore Taxonomies get in touch.