CDP - Olytics Overview
Omeda’s web analytics service, Olytics, is an essential feature of our CDP solution. Olytics allows you to track the behaviors and attributes of your website users and connect these behaviors with the data already stored in your Omeda database. Together this data enables you to more accurately segment and target your audiences using our marketing products like Email Builder, Odyssey, Personalization, and Metering or by leveraging our integrations with Facebook, Adroll, or Google Ad Manager.
Glossary of Terms
Action : Action refers to a single instance of an olytics behavior occurring. This usually represents a single page visit but could refer to the completion of a video or any other behavior that is indicated by the firing of the olytics.fire function. Each action can be associated with tags that further describe the behavior.
Anonymous Record : when someone visits a site where Olytics is implemented, but does not have a known encrypted customer id value stored in the oly_enc_id cookie, an anonymous record will be stored in your database. This record will store details about their visit, and other visits that occurred with the same oly_anon_id cookie. When a visit does occur with the oly_anon_id value and an oly_enc_id value, the anonymous audience record will be merged with the known record associated with that encrypted customer id. Anonymous records that have not been merged with a known record are stored for six months. Anonymous records from the Safari browser are stored for two months.
Behavior : an Olytics behavior describes an action that a user has taken. Most behaviors reflect a visit to a domain but can describe other actions a user can take on your site. An audience member can have many actions of the same behavior.
Domain : an Olytics domain can be created in tandem with an Olytics behavior if the behavior represents a page visit of the domain. When an Olytics domain is created, email deployments sent from Email Builder or Odyssey that contain links within that domain will automatically be flagged as Olytics links and will have the oly_enc_id parameter and value appended.
Known Record : a known record represents a record in the database that was not created by olytics, and likely contains details about the audience member like name, title, email address, and other product associations. Also referred to as Known (Limited).
Known Record + Olytics : this is a known record that also contains olytics behavioral data. Also referred to as Known + Behaviors.
oly_anon_id : this is a cookie that is created when a new user visits an Olytics site. The value populated within this cookie is the user’s Anonymous Record Id. This value will be stored in their browser on the same domain until the cookie expires or the user clears their cookies.
oly_enc_id : this is a cookie that is created by Olytics and contains a website user’s Encrypted Customer Id if the user is Known with Olytics. When a value is present in this cookie, behavioral actions will be associated to a website users known audience record.
Tag : an Olytics tag is a field that provides additional context for an action. For example, a website user might visit a site creating an action of the behavior, “Site Page Visit”. A tag like “Olytics Category” with the value “Homepage” could accompany that action. Multiple tags can occur within the same action and each tag can contain multiple values.
Required Scripts
Getting started with Olytics is simple and requires your technical team to add three snippets of code to your website(s). All of these scripts are accessible via Integrations > Olytics. For a step by step implementation and testing guide, please read the article, “Implementing Omeda’s CDP Solution, Olytics“.
Olytics CSS
The Olytics CSS provides the styling required to display Personalizations, Meters, and our Consent Management solution on your sites.
Global JavaScript Load Script
This script does many things like trigger Personalizations and Meters to fire on your sites, create an anonymous record in your database to store web behaviors and attributes, and make a connection from anonymous records to a known customer record. It does this by creating two cookies which are stored in the user’s browser for your site domain.
olytics.fire JavaScript
This script will associate the record created by the olytics.load script with an Olytics behavior stored in your database. These Olytics behaviors typically represent a visit to a site domain. This script is how we determine which Olytics domain your user has visited and when. Within this script is where you will also pass Omeda attributes about the particular page they have visited like the Category or Tag. Custom Olytics attributes can also be used to pass us details about the visit.
How it Works
New Site Users
When a new user visits a site where Olytics is implemented, a record will be created in your database with the following information:
Attributes that provide context to the behavior like Category or Tag
IP Address
Browser (Chrome, Firefox, IE, etc)
Device (Windows 7, iOS 8, Android)
Device Type (Personal computer, Smartphone, Tablet, Smart TV)
Referring Domain/URL (http://www.google.com , etc)
Visitor Location based on IP Address
UTM Parameters
This information will be associated with a cookie stored in the user’s browser called the oly_anon_id, or the Anonymous Id.
Returning Anonymous Users
When an anonymous user visits an olytics site that they’ve visited previously, the visit details will be associated with the Anonymous Id stored in the oly_anon_id cookie, connecting their previous visits and new visit to the same audience record.
Converting an Anonymous User to a Known User
An anonymous user can be merged with a known audience member via a variety of methods but the but the principle of all of these methods is the same; when the oly_enc_id cookie is populated in the browser, the behaviors associated with the oly_anon_id also populated in the browser will merge into the known audience record.
Conversion Methods
Setting the oly_enc_id cookie via URL parameter
The most common method for converting an anonymous user to a known user is from the user clicking on a link that contains the oly_enc_id parameter populated with the user’s Encrypted Customer Id. In Email Builder and Odyssey, Olytics can be enabled to add this parameter and value automatically to all Olytics links. You can tell that a link is an Olytics link and will have the parameter and value appended within the Link Tracking pleat under Olytics.
If a third party ESP is used to send emails, the oly_enc_id parameter and the Encrypted Customer Id value can similarly be added as a merge variable in links to your Olytics pages.
Setting oly_enc_id cookie via Javascript Function
Another common method for conversion is to populate the oly_enc_id cookie after a user logs in to your site or submits a form. This is done by firing the below javascript function with the Encrypted Customer Id obtained from the form transaction.
olytics.confirm('encrypted-customer-id');See the example flows below for how to achieve this:
Form Submission Flow
User submits a form on your site.
When the user signs up – you can call the Save Customer and Order API and then the Run Processor API.
Now that the customer has been saved and processed to your omeda database, you can use the encrypted customer id returned from the Run Processor API and fire the olytics.confirm javascript function when the confirmation page loads, passing in the encrypted-customer-id.
Your known customer will now be tracked as they browse your site.
Login Flow
User logs in to your site with their credentials
When the user logs in – you can call the Validate Authentication API, Customer Lookup By Email or Customer Lookup Service By External ID to retrieve the encrypted-customer-id.
Now you can use fire the olytics.confirm javascript function when the confirmation page loads, passing in the encrypted-customer-id.
Your known customer will now be tracked as they browse your site.
The anonymous user can also convert to a known user by submitting a Form Builder form within a Personalization modal. If the form is iframed within the modal, the Form Builder form must have the Javascript element “Olytics-Dragon-Iframe Close-Confirm” or “Olytics-Dragon-Iframe Close-Confirm (3s Wait)” on the last page of their form. This element will pass their Encrypted Customer Id to the parent page and close the modal.
Returning Known User
When a user visits your site and their oly_enc_id cookie is populated, their site behaviors will be associated with their known audience record.
Additional Resources
Learn how to Implement Olytics
Learn how to Manage your Olytics Implementation
Learn how to Query Olytics Data
Learn how to access Olytics Reports
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