September 6, 2018
Navigating Martech: TMS (Tag Management System)
A TMS is a Tag Management System.
Use it to manage tags from third-party tools installed on your owned digital properties. These tags generally capture customer interactions or tailor the content they see.
This article is Part 4 of Navigating Martech: The Complete Guide, and the reality is, there are thousands of new niche technologies that solve every problem in a different way, and it’s complex.
What Martech do you need and how do you set it up to realize the opportunity of cross-channel insight and personalization for service, marketing and loyalty?
The reality is vendors can over promise, technologies don’t easily integrate, data is messy, and you have limited resource, time and budget to solve this web of complexity.
This series and downloadable full report examine key aspects of the Martech ecosystem and in this article, we look at the role and capability of a typical TMS.
Want the full report? Download it now.
So what is a TMS?
Tags are snippets of code placed in a webpage, image, banner or ad, to allow 3rd party tracking.
And it’s this tracking that allows for remarketing, conversion tracking, affiliates and advanced customer insight services.
A TMS provides marketers with a solution that’s simple, reliable and integrates with their existing systems.
There has recently been a rise of Tag Management Systems positioned as CDPs. However, it’s critical to be aware of the two types of a TMS.
- A straight TMS
These solutions are designed to capture and manage the distribution of real-time events. They are good for online-only use cases and summary reporting may be available. - A CDP-ish TMS
A tag management system with some unification, segmentation and campaign activation features. Again, these tools focus on data captured online-only – achieving a single view, with offline data like store purchases, difficult to achieve.
The 5 factors that matter
There are 5 key things you need to know when considering a new piece of tech. Read a full breakdown of these factors over here.
1. Human data
Tag Managers primarily operate with Cookies and digital browsing behavior, not personally identifiable information.
2. Data lifetime
A Tag Manager typically maintains Cookies for 30-90 days.
3. Analytical capability
TMS solutions vary wildly in their analytical and segmentation capability, many are limited, some have sophisticated capabilities.
4. Speed to activate
Tag Managers operate in real-time, being able to send and receive data instantly.
5. Orchestration
Tag Managers don’t engage customers directly, however, some do enable sophisticated orchestration when integrated with other platforms – typically based on digital behaviors.
Tag Management has dramatically improved.
The modern Tag Manager takes care of the now-dated and tedious method of manually reviewing and changing the various tags that might exist on a page.
If an organization wants to practice agile marketing and often has tag change requests, then a tag management system makes a lot of sense, ensuring various data tagging products are all in one central place.
They help manage the full lifecycle of digital marketing tags and these benefits include:
- Agility
- Performance
- Cost Savings
- Data Control
- Safe preview mode
What now?
When it comes to Marketing Technology, there’s a lot to consider to ensure you are truly making the most of the Martech options available.
Each Martech platform plays a key role, integrates with other systems and has limitations.
The Lexer Customer Data Platform integrates with many aspects of the ecosystem – so we’ve unpacked the role, integrations and limitations of the 7 key platforms to help you navigate the space.
This is Part 4 of Navigating Martech: The Complete Guide, continue reading Part 5 – DMPs.
If you’re hungry for more or want to share this information with people across your organization, download the full guide.
