4 Ways Tag Management Improves Business

Marketers everywhere are familiar with web tags, the short JavaScript programs that run in the user’s browser; they’re the primary delivery mechanism of the adtech and martech services that power today’s digital engagement. However, hidden web tags (also known as piggyback tags) are less well-known. They are invisible to marketers unless specifically searched for and identified because piggyback tags are usually introduced through third-party vendors.

Because they are invisible, you’ll need a couple of purpose-built tools to help you find and eliminate unwanted third-party tags. Tag mapping tools pinpoint the hidden web tags on your website, running a deep scan to reveal all the first- and third-party tags. A typical web tag map looks like this:

The hidden tags behind nfl.com

The next step is to review the third-party tags, investigating those you don’t know. There can be a lot! This task requires a tag investigation and removal tool with an extensive vendor directory containing detailed information on their tags, the type of data they're collecting and what they're doing with it. When you identify unwanted third-party tags, the tag management tool should make it easy to eliminate them.

Optimize CX, ensure compliance, detect vulnerabilities, build trust

The power to eliminate unwanted piggyback tags gives you the firepower to accomplish some amazing feats:

• Optimize the customer experience: Every user wants their information or shopping cart checkout to be fast, whether it’s coming to them on a mobile device, laptop or desktop computer. A slight delay, caused by a hidden web tag, can have enough of a ripple effect on the site that bounce rates will increase.
  
  

On the flipside, for example, an online retailer found that a 100ms improvement in checkout page load speed amounted to a 1.55% increase in session-based conversion, which in turn yielded an average annual revenue increase of nearly $530,000.

Proper tag management helps you to optimize the customer experience by eliminating latencies that keep visitors waiting for their content to load, or their video to start playing. A lower bounce rate means more people are on the site and generating more revenue, through ecommerce or advertising.

• Ensure compliance: Recent and emerging privacy regulations like the European Union’s General Data Protection Rule GDPR and California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) are making a sweeping impact on the way that personal data is collected, sold and used online.
  
  

Tag management tools can give you an overall picture of your web properties’ compliance with these regulations. In addition, these tools allow you to pinpoint specific tags that don’t comply with data collection requirements, saving your company from the stiff fines violations carry.  

• Detect data breach vulnerabilities: Along with economic recession, cybersecurity fears are keeping CEOs up at night. And with good reason. Improperly prevented or handled, data breaches are already a well-known executive career-ending move. Some of largest, most toxic data breaches, such as Cambridge Analytica and Equifax, have hinged on vulnerabilities created by third-party connections – just like the third-party web tags currently hidden on your site.
  
  

Because tag mapping and tag management tools let you identify and investigate third-party tags, you can discover if unauthorized web tags are lurking on your site – tags that can dramatically increase breach risk. By removing these piggybacked tags, you are eliminating associated risk.

• Help build trust and relationships: Today’s awareness of how personal data is exposed and misused has driven a major shift in consumer attitudes; they are expecting more from the brands they do business with and are looking to regulators to enforce their demands. Companies that manage consumer data with precision and care, while delivering a top-notch user experience, are building the trust that leads to more people opting in.
  
  

Purpose-built tools

Together, tag mapping and tag management tools like Crownpeak’s Trackermap and TagControl empower marketers to help their companies use digital properties as essential assets in building trust and relationships. These solutions provide a real-time view (not a synthetic scan) into the tags that are causing latency, are unauthorized, and/or may pose compliance or security risks, and allow their removal. 

Every marketer should know how their web tags are helping and hindering their business. If you’re curious what tags are operating behind the scenes of your website, get a 360-degree view of who has access to your user data now.