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How to Track profile source through custom categories
How to Track profile source through custom categories

Capture the source of your profiles to work out where your best leads are coming from and improve your lead acquisition costs and efforts

Cláudia Duarte avatar
Written by Cláudia Duarte
Updated over a week ago

Are you paying for the right leads? As in, are you taking notice of lead performance? Measuring lead performance is about gaining insight on which lead generation methods drove the most number of leads and even conversions into submitted applications, hence it's an assessment that must necessarily happen on the post-lead acquisition phase by meticulously tracking profile sources. And what's best is that it's SUPER easy – read and you'll see! 😸

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What are source categories?

Better understood as lead source categories, these are groupings of leads by primary channel of origin. By creating different source categories and sorting leads among them with accuracy, you can easily trace where they’re coming from and use that information to your advantage by crafting the best mix of tactics for your school and unleashing it through the channels that provide the finest return on your investment. 💰

How should I pick my custom source categories?

It's important to think carefully and analytically about all of the potential lead sources that apply to your school, write them down and work through the inventory, because you'll have to strike a good balance of broad and specific categories. ⚖️ Consider that leads can come from a variety of places: lead generation companies, social media, fairs, Adwords, partners, among others; and that each avenue can be further divided. If you work with multiple lead generation companies, to give an example, you might want to create a unique category for every regular. Or if you advertise on more than one social network, wouldn’t it be great to ascertain that a certain user who submitted a form was redirected from “Facebook” and not vaguely from “Social Media“? 💡 However, this isn't necessarily the right approach for sources that you buy from or employ as a one-time deal or otherwise infrequently, as it would quickly bloat up the list of profile sources with unproductive entries. 😦 Sporadic lead suppliers should be condensed into broad categories for brevity. But overall, the more specific and inclusive your categories are, the better you can analyze their results. 🙌

How can I define my custom source categories in FULL FABRIC?

Since handling source categories is a delicate task that carries the risk of loss of data, our Support team will do it for you. Tell us the categories you want to add by starting a chat or emailing support@fullfabric.com, and we'll let you know when it's done. 😃

Where in the portal can I record a profile source?

There are four actions through which you can record a profile source: when doing an import, when configuring an event landing page, when using the self-explanatory Create a profile tool, and when configuring a landing page form.

Below you can find a brief explanation of each. ⬇️

Importing profiles

When you import a file into Full Fabric, one of the steps is to define the Profile Details, of which one is Source category. You can choose from different available options:

Add an update the source category

  • Only add source categories for new profiles

  • Add the source for new profiles and update the source of existing profiles

Add the same or different source categories

  • Add the same source category to all profiles

  • Customise the source category for each profile on your import file

👐 More info about imports here.

Configuring an event

When creating an event, under the tab Details you'll be able to select a Default source category. Yet, there's a subtlety to this: since you can only select one category per event, it wouldn't be efficient to share the link onto different platforms and mailing lists, as the ensuing visitors are always funneled into the same source category either way. For maximum effectiveness, create separate landing pages for each and every place that you draw in people from.

Using the "Create a profile" tool

When staff creates a profile, the final and optional step in the process is to add a Source category. It's as straightforward as it gets. To learn how a profile can be created (not to be confused with a user signing up), follow this link.

Configuring a form

Setting up a form to have a source category is a bit more complex, but worth every effort. Firstly, enter a form and, under the tab Details, choose the Default source category.

Then hit the tab Integration, pick Endpoint on Enable external integration, and read the guidelines that crop up below to embed the form wherever you want it to be in (for instance, your school's official website). Having completed this, regardless that people might be accessing the form externally, the system will automatically pull the information and match it to the profile source that was chosen.

You're limited to one category per form, so care to embed it in a single point of destination.

How can I update a profile's source category?

If someone's profile source category was incorrectly inputted the first time, visit their profile and proceed as instructed to update it:

1) Enter the tab Advanced

2) Switch to the tab Source

3) Choose a new Category

How can I see all of the profiles from a given source of origin?

By making a segment with the rule "profile ⇢ source is ⇢ (choose value/s)", which will conjure an exportable list of every single profile that conforms to the criteria. 🗂 You can multi-select more than one CATEGORY, but be warned that it may defeat the point as results will be less precise – unless, of course, that's what you're going for.

You can also combine multiple rules to further dig up stats and accomplishments. One such rule of interest would be "profile ⇢ has submitted application ⇢ (choose value/s)". Our suggestion is that you initially just check how many leads you got from a specific medium, and then add the latter rule to identify how many of those leads became applicants.

Have fun exploring the rules, and pit segments against each other to see how the results hold up! 🚀


PUBLISHED: March 12, 2019
LAST UPDATED: May 3, 2024 at 1:28 p.m.

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