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What to include in an agency Google Tag Manager container

If you’re not already using Google Tag Manager when implementing your clients’ analytics setups, you’re behind the game. Unless a client specifically requests different analytics software, Google Tag Manager is the way to go when it comes to making the most out of Google Analytics - and the other tags that are cluttering up the headers of your clients’ sites.
GTM is a free Google product that allows users to have a variety of different tags that are deployed within the one container (and snippet). It’s fantastic for marketers, because it means they’re able to make changes to these tags (including Google Ads, Facebook pixel, Hotjar tracking, Google Analytics, etc) without having to go into the backend of the website and mess around with hardcoding.
It also keeps all the tags together, and enables a user to specify when the tags should be deployed - on a Thank you page only, on every page, or on a particular button click.
Tag Manager is fantastic for agencies, because it’s easy to explain to clients; clients can make changes themselves; and agencies can create a Tag Manager template, or recipe, to deploy and modify on different client sites.
In this post, I’m sharing my own Tag Manager container recipe, and the tags, triggers, and variables that I use on virtually every client site.

Tags

    • Pageview - the standard Google Analytics tracking tag
    • Conversion linker - stores ad click info in 1st party cookies on your domain; third party cookies (what Google Ads uses) are now deleted after a day thanks to Intelligent Tracking Prevention
    • YouTube and Vimeo - see what videos users are watching, for how long (I use the LunaMetrics Vimeo Recipe)

      Lunametrics Vimeo Tracking
      I use the Lunametrics tracking recipe from Bounteous

 

  • Downloads - tracks number of times a file has been downloaded
  • Forms - tracks form submissions, like contact forms or request a quote
  • Phone call - tracks clicks to call (so long as the phone numbers are set up properly, with an html tel: link)
  • Email - tracks clicks on email addresses
  • Scroll event (if long form page) - tracks how far a user scrolls down a page, to give an idea of engagement (usually in percentage)
  • FB Pixel - deploys Facebook pixel within Tag Manager container
  • Google Ads - deploys Google Ads code
  • Outbound links - tracks links to other sites from your website
  • Social clicks/shares - tracks clicks and/or shares to social sites
  • 404 errors - tracks error pages (so the client can fix them)

Triggers

  • Files (pdfs, jpgs, docs) - clicks on files to download
  • Outbound links - clicks on links that don’t include the client’s domain
  • Mailto - clicks on links that include “mailto” (which opens a user’s default email client and includes the email address in the Send To field)
  • Tel - clicks on links that include “tel:” (which opens a user’s phone application - or more usually, on mobile, it opens the Click to Call)
  • Form submission - an inbuilt form submission trigger that can be modified based on form name (class or ID)
  • Thank you page - tracks conversions (depending on if a Thank You page has been set up)
  • Scroll - an inbuilt user engagement trigger type that can be set to fire at various percentages (e.g. 50% and 100% scroll down the page)
  • YouTube - an inbuilt trigger that fires a tag on when a YouTube video is started, completed, paused/seek/buffered, or progressed through at various percentages
  • Vimeo - custom event tracking on Vimeo videos
  • 404 - pageviews where the page title is Page Not Found (or similar)

Variables

User-Defined Variables

  • GA ID - Google Analytics tracking ID (e.g. UA-12134577-1)
  • Social media label - includes a regex table of various social media platforms
  • Document title - page title
  • DLV - Video Action - data layer variable for Vimeo tracking
  • DLV - Video Name - data layer variable for Vimeo tracking

Built-In Variables

  • Click (classes, element, ID, text, URL)
  • Form (classes, element, ID, text, URL)
  • Page (hostname, path, URL)
  • Referrer (the page before the current page)
  • Scroll (depth threshold, depth units, direction)
  • Video (duration, percent, provider, status, title, URL)

Click here to download the container (json file) or get in touch if you’d like me to set it up for you or your clients!