When it comes to reviewing the performance of a marketing campaign, some marketers tend to focus on clicks or installs. But there are also key actions that users complete further down the funnel, like reading a blog post or completing a conversion, that could be a much better indicator of the health of your business. Without visibility into a campaign’s impact on those key actions, it’s hard to make smart, agile marketing decisions.
It’s not an easy feat to set up tracking for all key actions in a way that is compatible with every tool in your marketing set. Luckily, there are two best-in-class customer data platforms that make it easier to have insight into these metrics: mParticle and Segment. Many sophisticated companies make significant investments in these platforms, using them to standardize and centralize critical business data. These platforms make it easier to track and send key event data to various marketing, attribution, and analytics tools, all from a single verified source.
We are proud to announce that Branch now supports importing events server-to-server from mParticle and Segment. This means you can leverage your existing event tracking solution to get complete attribution reporting with Branch, just as if you’d tracked these events directly from the Branch SDK.
Enable Full-Funnel Analytics and Advanced Targeting
Once events are imported from mParticle or Segment, they are attributed to campaigns using Branch’s attribution engine, and are available wherever you would normally see events in Branch. You can get full-funnel analytics — from click through to purchase or revenue — by importing events server-to-server, and viewing them in the Branch dashboard. Even if there is not a specific campaign to attribute a key event to, Branch will still tie these events to a user.
This enables a number of powerful new use cases, such as:
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- Targeting users who have completed a purchase with a specific web-to-app Journeys using creative specifically designed for your high-value users.
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- Using Universal Ads to send imported purchases or other events back to ad networks, with the ability to build audiences in those networks based on attributed purchases.
- Connecting web and app events to offer full visibility into the cross-platform performance of your Universal Email campaigns. For example, you can see how many purchases your users completed in the app versus on the web.
How It Works
Once you turn on the server-to-server event import from mParticle or Segment to Branch, events will start flowing. This kicks off a workflow behind the scenes:
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- When Branch receives an event, we check whether it meets our criteria for importing. For instance, if an event does not have enough identifiers to tie it to a user, we will not report it. In addition, we won’t import events that are auto-tracked with Branch SDKs, such as clicks, opens, and installs.
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- Once an event passes these checks, we will automatically map the event and its attributes to Branch’s standard events and fields.
- Finally, we will run the event through our attribution system to tie it to the user who completed it, and attribute it to campaigns you are running within Branch.
After the event is imported into Branch, you can use it wherever natively tracked events are available. This includes Liveview, dashboard analytics, webhooks, Data Integrations, Universal Ads postbacks, Journeys targeting, and all exports.
Getting Started
The most valuable insights from Branch come when you measure down-funnel conversions (e.g., product views or purchases). These new import integrations allow you to bring mParticle and Segment data directly into Branch, leading to better reports and more sophisticated targeting for Journeys, without needing to duplicate the in-app event tracking you’ve already built out.
Server-to-server event import is part of Branch’s Data Feeds product. If you already have event tracking set up with mParticle or Segment, turning on server-side event import to Branch is easy: you simply need to provide your Branch keys, enable the integrations in both parties, and optionally configure your platforms and mappings.
Get started today with our mParticle and Segment guides, and start learning more from your attribution data!