Microsoft Clarity is a powerful engagement and behavior analysis tool with broad applications. In this blog post, we’ll focus on how to maximize its value from a paid media perspective. We’ll explore Clarity’s features that are particularly useful for analyzing campaign performance, user interactions with landing pages, and identifying potential drop-off points in your website funnel.

Key Features for Paid Media Analysis

1. Landing Page Comparison

Clarity is great at analyzing individual landing pages, but it also offers a super valuable comparison feature. This is particularly useful when A/B testing landing pages for paid campaigns. You can use the comparison feature to analyze the performance of two different pages side by side, which is ideal when you’re using different URLs for your tests.

For those using A/B testing tools, Clarity integrates with platforms like A/B Tasty, Optimizely, and Kameleoon. If you’re using a different A/B testing setup – you can build custom tags to filter and compare different variations of the same page. This flexibility allows you to compare and determine which version of a page has more of an influence key actions.

2. Leveraging UTMs

UTM parameters are crucial for tracking user origins and campaign performance. In Clarity, UTMs are utilized in several ways. The platform offers built-in reports for campaigns, referrers, channels, and sources, which you can easily access from the dashboard. These reports allow you to quickly click into heat maps and session recordings that came from specific campaigns.

You can also drill down into specific campaigns to view smart events, funnels, and specific heat maps and recordings. The comparison feature I mentioned earlier isn’t limited to landing pages – you can use it to view how different campaigns are performing side by side. This comprehensive view of your UTM data helps you understand the full impact of your campaigns across various metrics and user behaviors.

For more information on how to use UTMs in clarity, view my video below.

3. Smart Events

Smart events in Clarity represent valuable actions that indicate site performance, such as purchases or form submissions. When you drill down into smart events, it can allow you to see how different campaigns and channels are performing for specific actions. This is incredibly useful for understanding which of your marketing efforts are driving the most valuable interactions on your site.

Smart events will also enable you to create funnels from your landing page to your desired end result. By using UTMs in conjunction with these funnels, you can drill down on how each campaign is driving traffic through your conversion pathways. This level of detail helps you identify where users might be dropping off and which campaigns are most effective at guiding users to completion.

4. Conversion Maps

For e-commerce stores, Clarity’s conversion maps are valuable for understanding content performance. These reports allow you to determine what content affects your purchase rate. By analyzing conversion maps, you can identify which pieces of content are most valuable on the pathway to conversion. This insight is crucial for informing your creative decisions, helping you to emphasize the most effective content in your marketing materials and on your site.

5. Chat

Clarity’s chat feature offers a quick and intuitive way to gain insights into campaign performance. You can ask it any question about your data and receive a prompt response. When combined with other features like smart events, landing page analysis, and UTM tracking, chat becomes a powerful tool for understanding the impact of your campaigns quickly and effortlessly.

Future Developments

Microsoft Clarity is continually evolving, with exciting developments on the horizon. Upcoming integrations with paid media platforms promise to enhance its capabilities even further. These integrations will allow for syncing of smart events and automate campaign optimization, further streamlining your paid media analysis and decision-making processes.

Conclusion

Microsoft Clarity offers a robust set of features for understanding campaign performance and analyzing the full funnel of your paid media efforts. By leveraging these tools and reports, you can gain deep insights into your campaigns and scale your reporting effectively. As Clarity continues to develop, it’s positioning itself as an excellent choice for paid media analytics, providing a wealth of valuable information to optimize your campaigns. Whether you’re comparing landing pages, analyzing UTM data, or diving deep into user behavior with smart events and conversion maps, Clarity offers the tools you need to make informed decisions and improve your paid media performance.