Marketing Campaigns

How it works

The mechanics of this kit, plainly — what runs and when, where the data lands, and what you look at.

• Campaign pull runs mondays · 8am and keeps the Campaigns dashboard fresh. Every Monday: the week's sessions and conversions per campaign, filed and drawn — and a card only when something moved.
• What is captured lands in the Campaign register dataset, which lives at Data/Campaign Register in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Weekly record dataset, which lives at Data/Marketing Snapshots in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Launch checklist dataset, which lives at Data/Launch Checklist in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Test record dataset, which lives at Data/Campaign Tests in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Competitor pages dataset, which lives at Data/Competitor Pages in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• The Campaigns dashboard reads from the dataset and shows, at a glance: this campaign · sessions by channel · sessions, month by month · by status · conversion rate · every week on the record · on the register · spent, as you told it · where the sessions came from · top pages in search · last 28 days · go through a launch checklist · before launch · budget pacing · the campaign calendar · the campaigns · the weeks, campaign by campaign · how this board works · every campaign.

The wiring, in one breath: Campaign capture writes to Campaign register · Campaign pull writes to Weekly record · Campaign register shown by Campaigns · Weekly record shown by Campaigns · Campaigns kept fresh by Campaign pull · Campaign capture given to Thistle · Campaign review given to Thistle · Campaign planner writes to Campaign register · Campaign planner writes to Launch checklist · Campaign tests writes to Test record · Competitor look writes to Competitor pages · Launch checklist shown by Campaigns · Campaign planner given to Thistle · Campaign tests given to Thistle · Competitor look given to Thistle.

Getting the most from it

A kit earns its place when it changes what you look at and what you say, not when it is installed. This is the rhythm that makes it pay.

• Let the Monday pull do the reading; your job is the glance. Open Campaigns after it runs and read Sessions by channel against The weeks — the bar says where the traffic came from, the table says which campaign inside that channel earned it, and the two together are the only honest way to answer "is this worth it".
• Say it in passing and it is filed: "we're running a partner roundup, tagged partner-roundup, three hundred and eighty budget", "the spring launch finished on Friday", "we spent two-forty on it last week". Campaign capture writes the row in your words, and with two campaigns that could fit it asks which — it never guesses.
• Fill in What it is for on every campaign, early. It is the one column your analytics property can never supply, and it is what turns a row of session counts into something you can make a decision about. Thistle asks for it at the calibration and never invents one.
• Ask before you argue: "how did the spring launch actually do?" Campaign review reads the whole run back — total sessions, total conversions, the pooled rate, the best week and the quietest — and states which property, which dates and which conversions it counted, so the number is checkable rather than just quotable. When a figure puzzles you, ask why ("why don't our conversions match the number the ads show?") and it looks up what your analytics tool says it counts and how it gives the credit, and tells you with the source.
• Keep the UTM conventions tidy and the register stays honest by itself. When you notice one campaign tagged two ways, tell Thistle they are the same thing: it keeps one row with both spellings and marks the other merged, so next Monday's pull files everything against one campaign instead of two.
• Plan the next campaign with Thistle before it goes live: "we're launching the walkthrough videos in a fortnight". Campaign planner asks what it is for, who it is for, the one thing it should get across and what would count as working, and writes each answer down in your words, on the campaign's row and as a short brief in your vault under Campaigns/. Ask for a headline, an ad or a subject line and it drafts a few for you to use; nothing is published or sent.
• Build the launch list while you plan, then use it on the day. Before launch on Campaigns shows every list with what is still to do first; tick an item there, or press Start on Go through a launch checklist and take one campaign's list an item at a time, with a note for anything you will want next time. Thistle offers, once, the checks that keep the record honest, such as tagging every link with the campaign's exact UTM value.
• Ask the money questions on the costs you gave: "what did each sign-up on the spring launch cost?", "how is the partner budget going?". Campaign review shows the sum, over only the weeks that carry a cost, and sets what is on record against the budget beside how far through its dates the campaign is. Budget pacing on the board does the same after every Monday pull. Neither says whether that is good: that call is yours. Treat a blank as information too: a campaign with no budget has no budget recorded, not a free one, and a week with no cost is a week nobody costed. Nothing on this board fills a gap with an estimate, which is exactly why the totals can be trusted.
• Keep your tests: "we tried two subject lines on the newsletter, B got 503 opens to A's 412". Campaign tests keeps what you changed, the dates, the figures and what you concluded, so the next campaign starts from what the last one taught you. Ask which version won and Thistle names the likelier one with its caveats; the conclusion on the row stays yours.
• Keep an eye on competitors without a row of open tabs: "what are Northwind and Contoso offering at the moment?". Competitor look reads their public pages, lays them side by side and, a month later, says what has changed. It gives no view on who is ahead.

Make it yours

Nothing here is fixed. The pieces are ordinary agents, routines, datasets and dashboards, so anything you know about shaping those applies. Retire whatever earns nothing.

Things people usually change first

Say any of these in chat, or edit them on the kit’s page in the app.

• Which analytics property and Search Console site are yours — said once, remembered, so no later pull has to choose.
• Which conversion counts. Out of the box the pull takes every conversion your property counts; name the event you actually care about and the rate on the board narrows to it.
• What each campaign is for, and what it costs — both are yours to write, and both stay exactly as you said them.
• When the pull runs, or pausing it and keeping the board and the records as they stand.
• Whether Thistle may read your Tag Manager container. Nothing reaches it until you connect it and say so, and even then it only ever reads what is there.
• What your campaigns are meant to do for you overall, which is what Campaign planner plans towards; say so again whenever it changes.
• Which competitors you keep an eye on, and which of their pages Competitor look reads.

Your first run

Installing starts a short setup conversation — not a form. Answer roughly, correct later.

1. Adding the Kit offers the first pull right away: once analytics and Search Console are connected on the Connectors screen, start it with one tap, and watch it read everything your property still remembers — every campaign name it ever saw tagged, week by week — and build both the register and the weekly record from it. The board has a year of trend on it before you have typed a campaign name. Prefer not to connect? Tell Thistle what you are running instead, and the register builds by hand.
2. When that first pull finishes, Thistle leaves a short note in your 1Presence inbox saying what it filed — how many campaigns, across how many channels — and invites a few minutes together on the three things only you know: which UTM names are really one campaign, what each campaign is actually for, and which conversion is the one you care about. That is also where budgets go on, if you have them, and, asked once in passing, what your campaigns are meant to do for you overall, which is what Campaign planner plans towards.
3. Thistle starts from what 1Presence already knows: what you have told it before, and any plan or brief in your vault. It offers what it finds for a yes and asks only for the gaps, which are the things analytics can never show: what a campaign was for, when it ends, what it costs, and any campaign that carried no tag.
4. Whatever is still blank waits on the Kit page with a way back to Thistle, and Thistle offers it once the next time you talk. Tell it a part does not apply to you, or that you have finished setting up, and it stops asking.
5. From then on the pull runs every Monday morning, reads only the weeks since the last one it filed, corrects a week rather than doubling it, redraws the board, and raises a card only when something genuinely moved — a campaign whose traffic shifted by more than a third, one it has marked finished, or a campaign your property reports that is not on the register yet.
6. Nothing here changes a tag, a property, a page or a sitemap, and nothing here sends anything to anyone. Thistle will tell you what the record shows and, when you ask, which channel looks to be working and where a budget could move, with its caveats; it drafts campaign words for you to use but never publishes them.

Watch the first pass, then tell it what you would have done differently — that correction teaches it more than any setup could.

The essentials

Learning, preferences and run costs work the same in every kit — so they are covered once, in the Kits guide.

Living with a Kit — the Kits guide →

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