Q. How hard/complicated is Scout to install?
A. Very easy. It's like any other JavaScript beacon web service that you've likely already installed. If you use Google Tag Manager, you can even do it yourself without getting developers involved. It will not slow down your website.
Q. I have Google Analytics installed, what does Scout get me that Google Analytics doesn't already?
A. Google Analytics is helpful for tracking traffic, but campaigns must all be configured properly in advance before the campaign starts. (It’s too late after the fact.) It’s smart to add campaign-specific UTM codes to ALL links you provide your media and traffic-driving partners.
While using UTM codes allows you to compare quantity of traffic from each partner, which is helpful from a marketing standpoint, this information is not actionable from a sales standpoint. Google Analytics won’t tell you which companies are visiting from which media partners, which company locations, which contacts from those companies, or if multiple contacts from a given company location are visiting.
Even if you are running marketing automation software such as Marketo, Eloqua, Hubspot or Pardot, that person will be tagged as an anonymous visitor upon their first visit to your website, even if driven there by a PMMI Media Group campaign.
Q. What about GDPR and other data privacy laws? And how do you use our data from Scout?
A. We've written a whole FAQ on it.
Q. What if I'm running Hubspot, Marketo, Eloqua or Pardot? Do I need Scout?
A. Without Scout, traffic that we refer from your email marketing campaigns with us will come across as anonymous traffic to your instance of marketing automation software. But with Scout, we maintain the connection to that individual, and thus tie activity on your website back to the audience member in our database.
Q. My web team is worried that Scout will slow down our website. Will it?
A. The PMG Scout script loads asynchronously which means that the browser loads the script in the background while it loads and renders the rest of the page. Nothing in the rendering of your webpages is ever dependent or in any way affected by the loading of the Scout script. In addition, the size of the script is 4.8kb (which is really small). Testing of the script in our sites shows that the execution happening in the script to identify users and set a cookie takes no more than 2/1000 of a second which would not be noticeable to your site visitors because the rest of the page renders while that is happening.
Q. How much does it cost?
A. If you are a PMMI Media Group advertiser, both Scout is provided at no charge at the current time, though this is subject to change at any time.
Q. Is only traffic directly from PMG campaigns tracked in Scout?
A. No. ANYTIME a known PMG audience member visits an advertiser's site with Scout installed, Scout should recognize the user and report on their activity in Scout (prviacy permissions allowing).
