What this means for your practice
Maintain a controlled campaign naming convention and map historical inconsistencies explicitly. Preserve an unclassified bucket instead of silently guessing every source.
An example to discuss with your team
Submit sample tracking values with spelling differences and missing fields to the reporting model. Confirm the resulting labels and unclassified cases are explainable.
What to discuss with your agency
Ask the agency to process sample labels with spelling variants and missing fields. Known differences should be grouped through a documented rule; unknown sources should remain unknown. Assign someone to maintain the naming list when services or campaigns change so the report does not drift again.
Put the brief into practice
Create a short naming guide for future campaign links, with examples the people preparing campaigns can follow. Keep the list manageable and assign someone to maintain it when services or channels change. For historic inconsistencies, record known mappings explicitly rather than rewriting every unknown value into the most likely category. Ask the agency to show the original value and the reporting label for a sample so the grouping remains explainable. Include spelling differences, renamed campaigns and missing information in the review.
Decide how unclassified entries appear in the report and who investigates patterns worth correcting. A naming guide should support cleaner collection at the source, not require the analyst to repair the same errors every month. When comparing periods, explain any material change in classification that moves records between channels. Otherwise a tidy new naming scheme can create apparent performance changes that actually come from how the data was grouped.
How to check the result
Measure the proportion of recorded enquiries with a usable and consistent channel classification.
Turn reading into a next step
Your action checklist
Work through these checks with your team or supplier. Tick the ones you have resolved and leave unknowns open.
Record what you know, what is still missing and the answer you need from your team or supplier.
Use project decisions only, without personal, patient or confidential details. Entries stay in this page and are not submitted to Kay & Co. Copy or download before leaving; this page does not save your notes.
Further reading
These sources provide background for the topic. The practice examples and checklist are illustrative planning suggestions from Kay & Co.
Related guides
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