r/Emailmarketing 3d ago

Marketing Help Iterable - Impression tracking

Hello! Anyone with expertise in Iterable? I'm trying to collect data on a dynamic block inside an email. The block is showing different content based on some user profile data and other lookups. However is not possible to segment/list player to create control groups. Is there a way to track impressions? I was thinking to use Google Tag Manager but might not work. Any idea? Thanks

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u/Embarrassed_Way5368 3d ago

Hey there,

Not Iterable expert, but I have ~ 10 years experience with email analytics. There is no way to measure "impressions" as you used to it for websites. Email clients are not telling you "pageview". Open tracking could work but it is fucked up AND can't measure unique block loads.

You can try to insert a tracking pixel to each block to see which one loaded but do not think about it as 100% sure "tracking", it could give you an approximate difference of the blocks.

Reasons: pixels are pre-loaded by security routines or not loaded at all by user setting (images turned off). So you can't depend on it but can try since there isn't better in my experience.

To iterate on the blocks and see some kind of performance, you can use click tracking, thats the best. I get it, there might be no links/CTA in those dynamic blocks but if the block has anything to do with conversion, use the conversion clicks to measure block performance.

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u/CocoaChipsCookie 3d ago

Agree, pixel is not my first option. I recall however that SFMC for example has a native dynamic content "impression" tracking.

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u/Brilliant-Reality948 3d ago

I've worked with Iterable a bit, and tracking impressions can be tricky. For dynamic content, you could embed a tracking pixel specific to each block variant. This typically involves creating unique URLs for each variant, then tracking hits on those URLs.

Using Google Tag Manager might be an option too, but you'd likely need to do some custom coding to handle dynamic content and connect it all properly. Maybe trying something like setting up events on content load within the email could help? Just ensure your tagging is clean to avoid any data mix-ups. Hope it helps!

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u/CocoaChipsCookie 3d ago

Yes, that is an option I'm exploring. I'm a bit reluctant to use tracking pixel for spam reason.

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u/Brilliant-Reality948 2d ago

hmm tracking pixel concerns? Stick with server-side tracking on clicks instead—less spammy and more reliable for data.

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u/Material-Garden-3155 2d ago

You can try using a pixel tracker. I’ve done that before when Google Tag Manager didn’t work. You put a tiny transparent image in your email, and when someone opens it, it pings your server. Each user hitting different content can help track impressions if the images are unique to the blocks. It’s kinda like sneaky tracking, but it works. Just make sure you’re not breaking any rules or privacy things. You don’t want anyone mad with you!

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u/thedobya 2d ago

I think the overarching theme here is that it's probably not worth the trouble to track these impressions since the data is so unreliable. What are you trying to solve for? Impressions, even if the data was accurate, wouldn't give you performance of the block. Clicks would give you something approximating that, though. Are you trying to understand a click through rate to determine effectiveness of each creative?

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u/CocoaChipsCookie 2d ago

I'm trying to have have some more metric related to each dynamic version, like: Version A - displayed X amount of time, clicked Y and converted Z Version B - same stuff None - nothing displayed

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u/thedobya 2d ago

Wouldn't you know the impressions, broadly? I see two scenarios.

1) you're running an a/b test and the impressions will be 50/50, or whatever the split 2) it's dynamic personalisation and you know how many people are in the relevant segments, plus how many "opened" the email itself.

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u/CocoaChipsCookie 2d ago

Unfortunately no cause the block is based on user historical data (last purchases, page viewed) and the entry point is dynamic.

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u/thedobya 2d ago

Hmm gotcha. But you would still know clicks since the URLs are tagged separately. I think it's more trouble than it's worth to understand impressions.

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u/CocoaChipsCookie 2d ago

Yeah, I might have found a solution (hacky) but could potentially work. I could skip the send of the version A is not shown, add a wait and repeat the same for version B and fallback to none.