SiteCatalyst SAINT Classifications: Concatenation

SAINT Classification is one of the most useful features of Adobe SiteCatalyst. However, most company’s that use the tool use it simply for the ability to upload single dimensions for a key. For example, if a company is uploading SAINT classifications for marketing reporting and analysis for paid search, they will often upload classifications such as the following for paid search tracking codes:

• Search Engine Name
• Paid Search Campaign Name
• Paid Search Ad Group
• Paid Search Keyword Phrase
• Paid Search Match Type

While all of this information is critical for the effective analysis of paid search campaigns, there is one limitation of SiteCatalyst that this does not help overcome. That is, the fact that directly within SiteCatalyst, you cannot subrelate by more than one classification to another. Yes, there are classification hierarchies, but the setup for this is in the admin console and is not as flexible as might be desired by many SiteCatalyst users. So, there is a simple solution that most company’s are not using. This simple solution is to create additional classifications that will mimic the ability to subrelate to additional levels of depth. So, in addition to the classifications above, the following additional classifications could be setup:

• Search Engine Name > Paid Search Campaign Name
• Search Engine Name > Paid Search Campaign Name > Paid Search Ad Group
• Paid Search Engine > Paid Search Keyword Phrase
• Paid Search Engine > Paid Search Match Type

As an example of how this might be used, the SiteCatalyst user could run a “Paid Search Engine > Paid Search Match Type” and then subrelate that to “Paid Search Keyword Phrase” to see a report that would look as follows:

• Paid Search Engine > Paid Search Match Type
  • Paid Search Keyword Phrase

OR…

• Google > Exact
  • Web Analytics

As you can see here, this mimics the effect of being able to subrelate to a third level. While this is not the perfect/ideal solution until unlimited drill down (without the hierarchy restrictions of the admin console), this simple concatenation of SAINT classifications should provide the users of SiteCatalyst reports and dashboards with more useful information on which to base business and marketing decisions.