Collect personalized analytics even with ungated content for better lead generation & qualification in your marketing campaigns using CloudFiles

Secure file sharing & tracking is a core offering of CloudFiles. However the app also offers a number of useful little features that can help collect personalized marketing analytics based on content performance. This makes CloudFiles a great marketing analytics tool. In this article, we discuss how to use CloudFiles to collect marketing analytics using ungated content. This form of collecting document tracking data is suitable for sales & marketing emails, LinkedIn campaigns etc... 

While sharing content through such mediums, you already know who is going to access that file link. CloudFiles provides you a way to attach custom meta information to the document link before sharing. If the client accesses the link, the meta information you had provided will help personalize the analytics.

The process of collecting content marketing analytics through ungated content has been illustrated in the infographic below. For a more detailed explanation, refer to the steps below.



Step 1: Upload a file in CloudFiles and get the shareable pdf link

As shown below, you can use CloudFiles content library to import PDFs, PPTs, Word Docs & more from Google Drive, OneDrive, Box & Dropbox. You can grab links to these files and enable a variety of settings and track engagement metrics on them.



Step 2: Personalize the document link using your campaign tool

We are going to use a personalized file link to tell the app of the user who accessed the link. This method is suitable for email campaigns and templates. Use soft or hard gating for secure file sharing on CTAs & social media. Learn how in the CloudFiles Security Features Tutorial article. which requires the viewer to enter / verify their email before accessing the document.

To personalize the links, simply add the email parameter to the CloudFiles link as shown below



Step 3: Access in Incognito mode

In order to test out the analytics, access the document link with an email of your choice in the parameter. You can also access the link multiple times with same or new email and all sessions will be correctly recorded as shown in the next step.



Step 4: Check your content's analytics

Once you have accessed the file link a few times, go back to CloudFiles account and check analytics. Use CloudFiles as a marketing analytics tool to gauge buyer interest. Learn more in the article Gauging Buyer Interest Using CloudFiles. You can see the total number of views, unique views, downloads, total time spent and time spent in each page of your document. You can view the total content statistics or statistics for each individual, and each session of that individual.



Step 5: Use file links in email campaigns to collect analytics

This feature is highly suitable for document links which are shared such that you know who will access the document. This includes sharing file links with mass emails instead of bulky attachments social media, LinkedIn campaigns etc...