Kissmetrics Destination

Kissmetrics is a behavioral email and analytics platofrm. 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.

This document was last updated on July 3, 2018. If you notice any gaps, out-dated information or simply want to leave some feedback to help us improve our documentation, let us know!

Getting Started

Before you start, make sure KISSmetrics supports the source type and connection mode you’ve chosen to implement. You can learn more about connection modes here.

To enable Kissmetrics in Segment:

1. From the Segment web app, click Catalog.
2. Search for “Kissmetrics” in the Catalog, select it, and choose which of your sources to connect the destination to.
3. In the destination settings, enter your Kissmetrics “API Key”.
4. 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 Kissmetric 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](/docs/connections/sources/catalog/libraries/website/javascript/#track-link,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:

1. Make an identify call and include a traits object.
2. Make a track call and include a properties 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,

1. Find your A/B testing tool in your Segment dashboard
2. Select “Send experiment data to other tools (as an identify call) in Overview
3. Save and Close
4. 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.

Personas

You can send computed traits and audiences generated using Segment Personas to this destination as a user property. To learn more about Personas, contact us for 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, Personas 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), Personas sets that value to false.

When you first create an audience, Personas 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.

Settings

Segment lets you change these destination settings from the Segment app without having to touch any code.

API Key

You can find your API Key on the Kissmetrics Settings page.

Prefix Properties

Prefix the properties with the page or event name.

Track Categorized Pages

Send an event for every page with a category.

Track Named Pages

Send an event for every page with a name.