If you’ve ever wanted to know what the LinkedIn Insight Tag is, how you can use LinkedIn’s data sets, learn how visitors interact with your website, and measure the effectiveness your LinkedIn campaigns, then you’re in exactly the right place.
In this article, we’ll dive deep into the definitions, advantages, and implementation of the Insight tag.
Table of Contents
- What Is the LinkedIn Insight Tag (Pixel)
- Why is the LinkedIn Insight Tag important
- How to get a LinkedIn Insight Tag
- Step 1: Access your campaign manager tool
- Step 2: Click on the your ad account
- Step 3: Click on the “Analyze” dropdown option
- Step 4: Click on the “Insight Tag” option
- Step 5: Click on “Create Insight Tag”
- Step 6: Click on the installation method for your tag
- Step 7: Get your LinkedIn Insight tag (pixel) number.
- How does LinkedIn insights tag work
- How to share a LinkedIn Insight Tag
- Retargeting on LinkedIn: How to do it with LinkedIn Insight Tag
- How do I add/install my LinkedIn insight tag
- How to set up LinkedIn conversion tracking with LinkedIn Insight Tag (Pixel)
- The future of LinkedIn insight tag and analytics
What Is the LinkedIn Insight Tag (Pixel)
The LinkedIn insight tag (pixel) is a JavaScript code (.js) that is provided for free by LinkedIn. It allows you to understand the demographics of audiences visiting your website, retarget website visitors, understand what content resonates with your audiences, and track conversions, interactions or actions that your website visitors take.
This is a great tool for any business marketer who wants to better understand their audience and how they interact with their brand. Adding the LinkedIn insight tag unlocks all the above mentioned insights and retargeting capabilities without extra cost.
According to LinkedIn, this tool will not affect or slow down your website because it is a light-weight code. The LinkedIn insight tag is sometimes known as the LinkedIn pixel helper, LinkedIn insight tag checker, or the LinkedIn tracking pixel.
Why is the LinkedIn Insight Tag important
With over 800 million members worldwide, LinkedIn owns a wealth of information for professionals. Setting up the insight tag would allow marketers to leverage on this data and gain insights on which demographic of professionals are visiting your website. You’ll be able to understand which campaigns are working and how they’re interacting with your website.
You may also build lookalike audiences from your existing website visitors so LinkedIn can help you find more new relevant audiences. The LinkedIn pixel is key to becoming a data-driven B2B Marketer.
How to get a LinkedIn Insight Tag
The LinkedIn insight tag can be found inside your LinkedIn campaign manager tool. If you’re unsure what that a campaign manager tool is, we’ve written an in-depth article on how to set-up a LinkedIn ad account and company page.
Step 1: Access your campaign manager tool
Step 2: Click on the your ad account
Step 3: Click on the “Analyze” dropdown option
Step 4: Click on the “Insight Tag” option
Step 5: Click on “Create Insight Tag”
Step 6: Click on the installation method for your tag
Step 7: Get your LinkedIn Insight tag (pixel) number.
The LinkedIn partner ID is also known as your LinkedIn insight tag ID or LinkedIn pixel ID. These terms are used interchangeably. Write down this ID as it will be useful when you are checking it’s installation.
How does LinkedIn insights tag work
The Insight Tag allows marketers to create cookies in the browsers of people who click on their LinkedIn Ads and land on their websites. They can then use these cookies to track the journeys from LinkedIn to their websites. The cookie collects information such as the website URL visited, IP address, device type, operating system, referral source, referring domain, and timestamp.
Once collected, the data is sent to LinkedIn and stored in the company’s database. LinkedIn states that the data is anonymous and does not include personally identifiable information. Reports and alerts about website visitors or ad performances do not include personal details of individual members. You’re able to retarget audiences who interacted with your website, although the personal identities are not provided.
If the web user lands on your web page from non-LinkedIn source, e.g. Facebook, you will still be able to retarget them or find out the professional background of the user if they have an existing LinkedIn cookie on their browser. This is also the reason why data will populate your LinkedIn website demographics report even though you are not running ads. One of the use cases is to check the quality of traffic from other sources especially if you’re targeting B2B professionals.
Yes, these data validation, matching and retargeting capabilities are free.
How to share a LinkedIn Insight Tag
LinkedIn provides you the capability to share your insight tag and grant others access permission too. Here are the simple steps to share your insight tag
Step 1: Go to your LinkedIn campaign manager
Open your campaign manager tool where the insight tag you want to share is located.
Step 2: Enter “Manage Insight Tag” dropdown and select “Manage Sharing”
Find and click on the Manage Insight Tag dropdown in the Analyze tab
Step 3: Select either Full Access or View-Only Access
Accounts with full access to the insight tag will also be able to edit and share you tag. Use this option if you want the ad account you’re sharing your tag with to have editing rights. Usually, if you’re working with agencies, you should grant the “use-only” access where accounts can still use your tag to track ad performance but won’t be able to edit and reshare your insight tag. Once you’ve selected your option, remember to click on “Save”
Retargeting on LinkedIn: How to do it with LinkedIn Insight Tag
Retargeting refers to targeting ads to audiences based on their demographics and behaviors on your website. This allows your ads to be more personalized, timely, and helpful to them. Companies have seen an increase of conversion rates by 20% when they implemented retargeting strategies.
While there are many retargeting possibilities, the LinkedIn insight tag specifically allows you to retarget your website audiences. This isn’t possible if the pixel is not installed. Here are a couple of steps for you to implement retargeting after you’ve installed your insight tag. Note that you’ll also need a minimum audience size of 300 tracked by LinkedIn before this function works due to data privacy laws.
Step 1: Access your campaign manager tool
You may access your campaign manager tool through the main LinkedIn home page in your profile.
Step 2: Select the Audience option under the “Plan” dropdown
Within your tool, you’ll find a “Plan” section in left column of options.
Step 3: Choose “Website” under the “Create audience”
There are many options for retargeting. Select retargeting based on website behaviors.
Step 4: Choose “Website” under the “Create audience”
Complete the details needed within in the next tab. I recommend using maximum 180 days. Include the URL you want to retarget next. This would refer to retargeting audience who lands on this URL specifically. There are also “AND” and “OR” Boolean options for you to either narrow or expand your retargeting audiences respectively.
How do I add/install my LinkedIn insight tag
There are 3 ways to install the LinkedIn pixel. You can either install the tag manually, send it to your web developer, or use a tag manager. I recommend using a tag manager tool like Google tag manager for ease of installation. Google tag manager specifically is free to use as well.
Install the LinkedIn pixel Via Google Tag Manager
The advantage of this method is that you don’t have to add complex codes manually. You can add the tag without changing your website’s code. All you need is to find the Partner ID for your insight tag in your campaign manager tool and add it into your tag manager.
Depending on which tag manager, the documentation might be different. Here are some of the common tag managers you nay refer to:
How to add the LinkedIn tag manually through WordPress
Add the Insight Tag to your website’s global footer, just before the closing tag. Doing so will enable you to see which pages convert best and where you need to focus your efforts.
Under the settings of the WordPress theme, paste the code you’ve taken from LinkedIn.
How do I know if my LinkedIn insight tag is installed?
The best way to check is to use this web based Linkedin pixel checker. It’s a one-click solutions which tells you whether the tag is installed correctly on your site.
Another manual, but not as accurate way, is to go to Campaign Manager, then Account Assets, and Insight Tag o check if there is an “active” label. If your Insight Tag is not yet activated, it will say “Not Active.” Click on the link to activate your Insight Tag. It may take up to 24 hours for the Insight Tag to be fully functional.
However, this method is not accurate because you can’t check specific pages and it only provides a generalized view.
You could also inspect the element of a specific URL and search for the pixel ID (PID) on the page.
How to set up LinkedIn conversion tracking with LinkedIn Insight Tag (Pixel)
LinkedIn conversion tagging is an analytic tool powered by the LinkedIn Insight tag. It allows you to track click throughs and view throughs from your LinkedIn ad campaigns, allowing you to measure the impact and return on investment (ROI) of your ads. There are 3 types of conversion tracking: page load, events specific, image pixel
How to track page load conversions
Once you have installed your pixel, you can track conversions whenever someone lands on a particular page. Assuming that you’re running a LinkedIn ad to drive webinar registrations, this method allows you to track anyone who lands on the “Thank you” page. Page load conversions are most commonly used. However, if your conversions are happening without a page load, you’ll require other methods of tracking – Which we will cover below.
How to Track Event-Based Conversions and custom events
Use event-specific conversion tracking when conversions are counted when a member takes action on a website without needing to visit a particular page.
You can also track events like button click with the event-specific pixel. You’ll need to install this code on the button and ensure it fires off only when the button is clicked. Do note that you’ll need the insight tag already installed on this page first. Here’s also a video of how you can install the event tracking through google tag manager.
The future of LinkedIn insight tag and analytics
LinkedIn will continue to evolve their analytics capability. They host the largest gathering professionals in the world with over 800M+ audiences. As data privacy concern escalates, LinkedIn will continue to provide new solutions like first-party cookie.
However, we are entering a future where tracking will become increasingly challenging. A similar social media platform, Facebook, has reported a decrease in 10 billion in revenue for 2022 due to more stringent privacy policies. LinkedIn will undoubtedly be affected as well.
Instead of focusing too heavily on high-fidelity analytical tools, focus on building strong foundations for marketing. We’re referring to building a strong marketing strategy from proven content examples. Having a directional sense of the analytics is enough to make marketing decisions. Leaders don’t need to go deep into every single analytics aspect and spend hundreds of thousands building out analytical dashboards that aren’t ever accurate.
