Kissmetrics Destination
Destination Info
- Accepts Page, Alias, Group, Identify, and Track calls
- In Cloud-mode, refer to it as KISSmetrics, or Kissmetrics in the Integrations object
- In Device-mode, refer to it as KISSmetrics in the Integrations object
Components
- Browser
- Server
Kissmetrics is a behavioral email and analytics platform. It pulls cross-platform behavior reports so marketers can analyze key audience growth segments. It also provides an overview of custom populations, population change and growth, so marketers can analyze populations from customers who have completed actions or events.
Getting Started
To enable Kissmetrics in Segment:
- From the Segment web app, click Catalog.
- Search for “Kissmetrics” in the Catalog, select it, and choose which of your sources to connect the destination to.
- In the destination settings, enter your Kissmetrics “API Key”.
- If you are using Kissmetrics using Segment’s client-side analytics.js library, Segment asynchronously loads Kissmetrics JavaScript library onto the page. (This means you should remove Kissmetrics’s snippet from your page.)
Your Kissmetrics source starts automatically collecting “Visited Site” events and other automatically tracked events.
Page
If you’re not familiar with the Segment Specs, take a look to understand what the Page method does. An example call would look like:
analytics.page('Docs');
By default page calls with name
and category
properties will automatically be sent to Kissmetrics in your page
calls. You can adjust this behavior in your Kissmetrics destination settings by toggling on and off the ‘Track Categorized Pages’ and ‘Track Named Pages’ settings.
Here’s an example call on docs pages:
analytics.page('Docs', { url: 'http:example.com/docs', referrer: 'http://google.com' })
This page
call is translated into an event labeled: Viewed Docs Page and will have the properties:
'Page - url': 'http:example.com/docs'
'Page - referrer': 'http://google.com'
Note: Kissmetrics requires an initial pageview to load the library. By default we include a call to page
in your snippet. This call must be made at least once on any page where you expect Kissmetrics to be loaded.
Identify
If you’re not familiar with the Segment Specs, take a look to understand what the Identify method does. An example call would look like:
analytics.identify('userId123');
When you call identify
, we first call Kissmetrics’ identify
method to store the userId
. Then we call set
to store the traits
.
Track
If you’re not familiar with the Segment Specs, take a look to understand what the Track method does. An example call would look like:
analytics.track('Clicked Button');
When you call track
or one of its helper functions (trackLink
and trackForm
,) we will call Kissmetrics’ record
with the exact same parameters.
The Kissmetrics javascript library automatically tracks a bunch of events (Visited Site, Ad Campaign Hit, Search Engine Hit, Form Submit, Pageview, etc.) These will all still work when you use Kissmetrics through Segment.
Note: If you send us an event with a property called “revenue” and we’ll pass that on to Kissmetrics as Billing amount
.
Group
If you’re not familiar with the Segment Specs, take a look to understand what the Group method does. An example call would look like:
analytics.group('123');
When you call group
, we first call Kissmetrics’ identify
method to store the userId
. Then we call set
to store the company traits
on the user. We prefix these traits with ‘Group -‘. For example,
analytics.group('123', {
name: 'Test Inc',
employees: 250
})
will add the following traits to the user:
'Group - id': '123',
'Group - Name': 'Test Inc'
'Group - Employees': 250
Alias
If you’re not familiar with the Segment Specs, take a look to understand what the Alias method does. An example call would look like:
analytics.alias();
Kissmetrics automatically aliases anonymous visitors the first time you call identify
from the browser. That means there’s no need to explicitly call alias
if you’re tracking anonymous visitors and identified users in client-side javascript.
Aliasing on iOS
We will automatically call alias
for you the first time you identify
users from our iOS SDK. That way it works exactly like web browser tracking - you don’t have to manually alias
new users.
You can read more about how Kissmetrics recommends using alias
in their docs.
Best Practices
Merging Identities
A common use of alias
for Kissmetrics is when an already identified user’s unique id
changes. In this case you need to merge the old identity with a new one.
For example, if you’re identifying people by their email address and they change it. In that case you’ll need to alias from the previous id
(their old email address) to the new userId
(their new email address). Here’s an example in node
:
analytics.alias({
previousId: 'old_email@aol.com',
userId: 'new_email@example.com'
});
Aliasing New Users Server-Side
In order to identify
new users server side and connect that user profile to an existing anonymous visitor profile there’s some work to be done.
Remember: Kissmetrics aliases automatically the first time you call identify
in client-side JavaScript, so in most cases you don’t have to call alias
at all.
We don’t recommend handling alias
server side, but if you must, here’s how to make it happen. There are two options: aliasing in conjunction with client-side tracking or aliasing when tracking exclusively server side.
In Conjunction with Client-Side Tracking
If you’re already tracking anonymous users on the client side you’ll need to pass the Kissmetrics identity from the browser to your servers in order to alias
it to the new userId
.
First, use analytics.ready
to grab the Kissmetrics identity:
analytics.ready(function(){
var anonIdentity = KM.i();
});
Next, pass the anonIdentity
to your server and alias
, identify
, track
your new user.
Here’s a node
example where the new userId
is 12345
:
analytics.alias({ previousId: anonIdentity, userId: '12345' });
analytics.identify('12345');
analytics.track('Connected Facebook');
Tracking Exclusively Server-Side
If you’re only tracking anonymous users with one of our server-side sources that makes things easier. All you have to do is alias
the anonymous id
to the new userId
.
Here’s a Python example of the alias
, identify
, track
sequence where the server-side anonymous id
was 92fh49fqh9849hf
and the new userId
is 12345
:
analytics.alias('92fh49fqh9849hf', '12345')
analytics.identify('12345')
analytics.track('Registered')
Appendix
User Properties
You can set Kissmetrics user properties in 2 ways with Segment:
- Make an
identify
call and include atraits
object. - Make a
track
call and include aproperties
object.
Nested Objects or Arrays
Keep in mind that if you send arrays, we will stringify them. Also if you pass a nested object as traits
or properties
inside the identify
or track
call, we will flatten them.
For example:
analytics.track('Signed Up', {
foo: {
bar: {
prop: [1, 2, 3]
}
}
});
The properties would be sent as foo.bar.prop: '1,2,3'
.
Note that this is without the prefix setting enabled. If you had enabled that feature, it would be Signed Up - foo.bar.prop: '1,2,3'
.
Receive experiment data from A/B Testing tools
You can track A/B testing event data like Experiment Viewed
and send it to Kissmetrics using Segment.
In order to enable this feature,
- Find your A/B testing tool in your Segment dashboard
- Select “Send experiment data to other tools (as an identify call) in Overview
- Save and Close
- You should see these events in the debugger
E-Commerce
If you are using our ecommerce api, we will forward that data along to Kissmetrics following the Kissmetrics Ecommerce Essentials Guide.
Engage
You can send computed traits and audiences generated using Engage to this destination as a user property. To learn more about Engage, schedule a demo.
For user-property destinations, an identify call is sent to the destination for each user being added and removed. The property name is the snake_cased version of the audience name, with a true/false value to indicate membership. For example, when a user first completes an order in the last 30 days, Engage sends an Identify call with the property order_completed_last_30days: true
. When the user no longer satisfies this condition (for example, it’s been more than 30 days since their last order), Engage sets that value to false
.
When you first create an audience, Engage sends an Identify call for every user in that audience. Later audience syncs only send updates for users whose membership has changed since the last sync.
Real-time to batch destination sync frequency
Real-time audience syncs to Kissmetrics may take six or more hours for the initial sync to complete. Upon completion, a sync frequency of two to three hours is expected.
Settings
Segment lets you change these destination settings from the Segment app without having to touch any code.
Setting | Description |
---|---|
API Key (required) |
string . You can find your API Key on the Kissmetrics Settings page. |
Prefix Properties | boolean , defaults to TRUE . Prefix the properties with the page or event name. |
Track Categorized Pages | boolean , defaults to TRUE . Send an event for every page with a category. |
Track Named Pages | boolean , defaults to TRUE . Send an event for every page with a name. |
This page was last modified: 27 Oct 2023
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