The TM1 Challenge
So, what is TM1? Chances are, if you do not work directly with Ticketmaster, you have not heard of this product. If you do work with Ticketmaster and are currently leveraging Tealium as your tag management platform and CDP, this article will be very relevant. If you plan on implementing a CDP or new tag management software anytime in the future and work with Ticketmaster, this article will be helpful for you as well. Let’s start with a few questions: What exactly is TM1? What unique challenge does TM1 present to brands leveraging Tealium (or any other CDP)? Do you have to use TM1 to collect Ticketmaster data? What are the limitations of using TM1? How do you maximize customer data collection from TM1? How does this relate to your Tealium implementation? The answers to these questions and many more are detailed below.
What is TM1?
TM1 is a robust marketing and tag management platform created by Ticketmaster where you can manage your Ticketmaster hosted events, manage POS ticket sales, view sales reports and other relevant ticket and event data. In this article we are going to focus on TM1’s marketing category. This is where their tag management platform comes into play. TM1’s marketing suite hosts website pixels; this is where any brand selling tickets or hosting events on Ticketmaster places vendor pixels to attribute ticket sales data to marketing efforts. Ticketmaster will not allow a foreign container tag on their site (Google Tag Manager, Tealium, etc.). Let’s revisit the “Do you have to use TM1 to collect Ticketmaster data?” question. The answer is yes, all vendor pixels must be placed on Ticketmaster’s site via the TM1 platform. This is critical in understanding challenges with how Tealium collects crucial customer level information from Ticketmaster’s website.
How Tealium Interacts with TM1
Let’s begin this discussion by revisiting the, “What are the limitations of using TM1?” question. As noted above, TM1 does allow the placement of vendor pixels to collect customer information and attribute events and ticket sales data back to marketing efforts. The challenge stems from limitations TM1 places on data that is passed back via any pixel in their tag management platform. Tealium value is powered by crucial customer level insight that is collected via the Tealium Collect Tag on a website. A website’s data layer is the foundation to the Tealium solution. The Tealium data layer is implemented on a website in the form of a JavaScript object that is referred to as utag_data. This allows data that is loaded on any website page to be exposed in the Tealium tag, which then allows Tealium to capture and put that critical customer level data to work. Below is an example of what the Tealium data layer might look like:
Ticketmaster hosts hundreds of thousands of events for various clients like the NBA, MLB, NFL, concert venues, and many other event or ticket related customers. Although many Ticketmaster customers might be Tealium clients, this does not mean Ticketmaster is a Tealium client. This introduces the issue of loading Tealium’s data layer on Ticketmaster’s website. Ticketmaster is not a Tealium client, so we do not have the ability to implement their data layer on their site.
While other vendor partners have template options to apply their pixels, like Facebook or Google, Tealium is not a preferred vendor partner. We can implement a simplified version of the Tealium collect tag in TM1, this might take the form of a custom IMG tag that fires on the Ticketmaster domain. But the data being passed over to Tealium is highly limited due to Ticketmaster’s limitation on what can be passed via a website pixel. Ticketmaster currently does not allow 3rd party JavaScript code to be passed over in a website pixel, so crucial user identifiable information like email addresses, Facebook cookies, customer IDs, etc. are not able to be passed in website tag call to Tealium. Below is an example of all the event parameters TM1 passes over to any vendor via a website pixel:
Putting Ticketmaster Data to Work
So now that we have detailed the challenges any Ticketmaster client faces with crucial customer level data collection, lets discuss solutions. It is almost a certainty that you are collecting and storing your Ticketmaster event sales data somewhere. This sales data could live in a data warehouse or data lake and be used to enrich your CRM or marketing automation efforts. You probably have tons of sales and event data collected from Ticketmaster stored on an internal server. Let’s think about how we can leverage that existing data to enrich customer data that lives in your Tealium CDP. Remember, we cannot grab crucial customer level information via the JavaScript object “utag_data” on Ticketmaster’s site. That does not mean crucial customer data cannot make it into Tealium at all though. Tealium offers a solution known as File Import Data Source. This allows customers to import offline customer data sources like in store sales data, POS data, CRM data, call data, etc. into Tealium’s CDP. This is a powerful tool that allows Tealium customers to marry online and offline customer data signals in one central location, creating a complete view of any given customer. The combination of customer data gathered on your own website via Tealium’s data layer in tandem with data gathered from offline sources like your CRM or Ticketmaster sales data will allow you to powerfully enrich leads in your Tealium CDP.
Conclusion
TM1 presents advertisers with a unique set of challenges. TM1 is Ticketmaster’s proprietary tag management solution, and they limit what data can be passed via pixels to vendors. The Tealium collect tag is crucial in grabbing variables that are exposed via Tealium’s data layer implementation on any website. Because Ticketmaster is not a current Tealium preferred vendor, they do not have the Tealium data layer applied to their website. These are challenges that by no means are not solvable, marrying your proprietary website’s data layer enrichments with offline data sources from Ticketmaster or your CRM via the File Import Data Source process offers a solution. Customer data powers personalization, audience segmentation, and increased revenue opportunities. Creating a complete customer profile in Tealium via offline data sources combined with data gathered from Tealium’s data layer implemented on your own website will drive revenue and ROI.