How to create and manage Action Trackers

Definition

An Action Tracker (or Action tracking) enables you to track visitors who have clicked on a specific element of your website during their visit. 

There are 2 types of Action Trackers: 

• Account Action Trackers (AAT): Action Trackers available at an account level

  Concretely, it means you can re-use any existing AAT in any campaign in the same account whatever the campaign : save a lot of time because you don’t need to recreate an XAT you would have created in a former similar campaign. 

• Campaign (eXclusive) Action Trackers (XAT): Action Trackers available at a campaign level and exclusive to that campaign (cant get selected in another campaign than the one you created it in).

Once configured, an AAT is displayed in the Action Tracker list for every campaign, unless hidden.

How to create an Action Tracker in the visual editor

You can create action trackers in the visual editor only. 

Your action tracker will be linked to a campaign id whose editor you used to build it. 

To create an Action Tracker:

1. Go to the Visual Editor of any campaign
2. Click on the element you want to track (and by doing so, create an Action Tracker on) and click “Add a tracker”.
3. From the modal, choose a Name, an event, a CSS selector, XAT or AAT and a context for your tracker.
   You can find out more on this topic in the guide on the Visual Editor.

Important:

• You can’t use the same name for 2 different AATs on the same account. You won’t be able to save unless you change the name.
• An AAT can never be modified (context aside) after being saved. You will need to delete it and create a new one.
• XATs can be modified and even switched  for AAT (if changed, you won’t be able to change it back).

The context is where you put any kind of information that will help remember why you set up that Action Tracker later, without the need to come back to the Visual Editor.

Once creation is done in the visual editor:

•  Any XAT campaign Action tracker will appear: 
  • In the goal set up page only for the campaign you created it in only
  • In the list of goals in the indicators page of the account - mention 
• Any AAT Account Action tracker will appear:
  • In the goal set up page for all campaigns of your account
  • In the list of goals in the indicators page of the account

Specific use case: Widget trackers

Widget trackers are XAT generated from the widget area (they get reach account level (AA)). For now, you can only edit it from the visual editor.

How to select an Action Tracker as goal for a campaign

From the Goals step of a campaign, you will see a list of action trackers that you can select for your campaign.

XATs will be on top of the list, AATs following next.
You can also look for specific ATs by using the search bar on top of the list.

In this list will only appear the XATs created for this campaign (not hidden) and the AATs (not hidden).
You won’t see XATs created for other campaigns on the same account.

The orange flag means that the Action Tracker is an AAT.

You will find next to it a (!) icon. Clicking on it will prompt a information modal with:

• The name of the AAT 
• The campaign ID: this indicates the ID of the campaign in which the AAT has been created (this is useful if you want to go back to the Visual Editor of the initial campaign. The AAT will only appear in the Visual Editor of the campaign you initially set it up)
• The Creation Date: the date on which the AAT has been created.
• ID/Class/Element: the CSS selector used to set up the ATT.

When you know which Action Tracker you want to select, you can drag and drop it in the right goal section (primary goal or secondary goal) and the trackers selected out here will record data and display stats in the report of the campaign. Make sure you select relevent AAT’s so you don’t analyze the wrong stats that will appear in your reports.
To know more about the selection of a goal, please refer to this specific article.

How to manage your Action Trackers

Above the search tool, you can find a link to the indicators page.

AATs are in orange with the same flag already mentioned, accompanied by the (!) icon with the same information explained above, in the Select an Action Tracker section.

XATs can be edited here but AATs can’t. But you will find a link to the original Visual Editor where the AAT has been set up in the edit modal. It can help remember what exactly this AAT is tracking.

As most trackers, ATs can be hidden (with the eye icon) and deleted (on certain conditions).

As a reminder:

How to delete an Action Tracker from the indicator page

Deleting an XAT is different to most other goal types since it’s only linked to the campaign you are managing.
From the Indicators page, you can delete an AAT if it’s not used in any campaign without losing any data.
If you delete while it’s used in any campaign (not archived), you will be prompted with a different modal telling you where it’s used and that if you go through with the AT deletion, you will delete the related data.

As a summary, in the indicators page:

• You can't delete an XAT
• You can delete an AAT
  • if it's not used in any campaign, there is no impact
  • if it's used in a campaign, you'll delete data relative to this tracker in his campaign

How to delete an Action Tracker from the editor

You can also delete an Action tracker from the Visual Editor.

• XATs follow the same rules as other trackers so they can be deleted in the editor. For more information, please refer to Visual Editor.
• For AATs, it’s different. You will only see the AAT in the campaign it was set up in.
  So you could use an AAT in campaign 2 but if it was set up in campaign 1, you will only see it in campaign 1’s visual editor, not in campaign 2’s visual editor.
  It follows the same rule as in indicator page. A confirmation modal if the AAT is not used anywhere. A warning message if the AAT is used at least in one not archived campaign.

How to delete the campaign where an AAT has been created

If a campaign only has XAT or AAT that are only used in this campaign, it can be deleted without issue.
But, you can’t delete a campaign where an AAT has been created if that AAT is used in any other campaign, not archived (it could erase data from the reporting for a live campaign).

How to delete a sub-test in a campaign where an AAT has been created

One can not delete a sub-test in a multipage test that is live (or paused) if an AAT or an XAT was created into it.

Account Action Trackers and Tag

All your AATs are bundled inside the Tag. So the data will be gathered from the beginning of the campaign no matter if you select it or not, for all your campaigns (after the creation of the AAT).
It means that if you add an AAT to the list of goals of the campaign 20 days after you launched it, you will still have the data of the 20 days of life of your campaign.

Use case

On certain websites, to join a loyalty program or confirm a newsletter subscription, visitors are asked to click a confirm button on a specific page. You can then choose this click tracking to create a new “subscriber” or “VIP member” segment.