Modern marketing relies heavily on data collection. Tags, the code snippets that collect that data for analytics tools and digital marketing platforms, play an essential role. Traditionally, marketers relied upon IT for help managing and updating these tags.
Tag management systems reduce this reliance, giving marketing teams control over their own tags while eliminating IT bottlenecks. They also help enhance website performance by decreasing the number of tags deployed per page.
What is a tag management system?
Tag management systems (TMSs) like Observe Point are IT tools designed to allow digital marketers to add, edit and remove marketing tags without depending on developers. Such platforms may offer features such as technology governance, security controls, privacy safeguards and technical support that digital marketers may find beneficial.
Marketing tags are small pieces of code or transparent images (pixels) integrated into websites that transmit visitor behavior data to analytics tools, remarketing platforms, search engines and more. Marketing tags serve multiple functions including ad tracking, conversion rate monitoring and enabling live chat features.
Too many tags can slow down a site and negatively affect user experience, but marketers can use tag management systems to accelerate content deployment and digital performance by centralizing vendor tags and data collection. This reduces IT workload while helping marketers respond more quickly to changing objectives while testing and improving digital experiences more easily – ultimately leading to them reaching their marketing goals more quickly and maximizing ROI.
What are the benefits of a tag management system?
Tag management systems enable marketers to deploy, test and update tags without having to rely on IT. This makes the digital marketing process faster while helping marketers meet tight campaign time frames. Furthermore, tag management systems help optimize site performance by eliminating tags that impact page load speed or reduce tag bloat.
Enterprise tag management platforms often offer a centralized data layer that enables marketers to define and synchronize the types of data being gathered across digital technologies, thus helping reduce privacy risks and ensure best data governance practices are adhered to.
Utilizing a tag management system also frees up IT resources, helping the whole organization run more efficiently. Marketers can run tags without turning to IT for every step, freeing IT to focus on more strategic issues – helping the whole organization work more efficiently overall.
What are the pros and cons of Google Tag Manager (GTM)?
GTM provides you with the power to add or update digital marketing tags without relying on web developers, thereby decreasing JS code on your website and increasing page load times.
Time and money savings can also be achieved, since you can make changes yourself without waiting for a developer. Plus, this service integrates directly with Google Analytics, Facebook AdWords and third party tracking technologies – not to mention being free! Setup is straightforward too – don’t waste any more time, go set your site free now.
GTM may not be as user-friendly as other tag management systems; furthermore, it’s only available on websites using the Google Cloud CDN and has a daily quota of 10,000 requests and 0.25 queries per second that could prove troublesome if your website contains lots of tags and receives heavy traffic.
What is the best tag management system?
There are various tag management systems on the market. While some are free to use, others provide advanced enterprise features. When selecting an effective tag management solution for your business, make sure it fits with your unique marketing goals and meets its requirements for optimal use.
Search for a TMS that allows you to manage multiple tags with one web interface without the need for software coding, as this will save both time and money while helping prevent errors. Also look for TMSs offering small compressed JS file sizes so your website loads faster.
Consider TMSs that feature advanced features like ad blocker detection, customer profile management and personalization capabilities – for instance Tealium iQ allows you to manage and deploy analytics- and tracking-tag deployment across all of your websites in a central location while creating custom audiences and trigger dynamic ads using advanced business rules. Furthermore, Tealium offers powerful API integrations and turnkey integrations with over 1,300 vendor solutions all while offering data privacy controls for GDPR compliance.