Introduction

Alerts create an easy way for users to monitor SEM performance and their Marin accounts when pre-defined conditions are met. They can provide insight into new opportunities, inefficient performance, and help with account maintenance.

You’ll want to ensure that these types of alerts are actionable and do not occur every single day - alerts should be rare enough that they are immediately actionable. As a rule of thumb, if the alert you create contains data on that day, you may want to be more restrictive.

This article contains best practices for creating alerts, but if you'd like step-by-step instructions on the setup process, check out our article Training: Setting Up Email Alerts.

Performance-Based Alerts

Performance-based alerts are great for helping users identify elements of their account that can be further optimized. An example would be identifying low CTR keywords by creating an alert that looks for keywords with high impressions and low CTR. Based on this alert, you may want to consider breaking these keywords out into new groups, or changing the ad copy.

Another example would be identifying large changes in campaign spend; using an absolute value percentage to therefore include both increases and decreases in spend. These large swings in cost would warrant investigation. Some further examples:
 

• Keyword conversion rate increases or decreases by more than 30%. This could indicate a significant change in landing page, ad copy or user behavior.
   
• Keyword average position decreases by more than 3. This could indicate a competitor has entered the marketplace.
   
• Keywords with high spend and no conversions. This could indicate under performing keywords you should pause or re-evaluate.

Account Maintenance Alerts

Account maintenance alerts help users ensure their SEM accounts are structured properly, tracking has been implemented correctly, and that all objects are in sync with the publishers. All of these alerts are actionable because they are identifying a structural issue in your account.

For example, if you are using keyword level tracking in Microsoft; you’ll want to create an alert for all Microsoft creatives to make sure they are using {param1} as their destination URL. Another alert that should be created at all object-levels (Campaign, Group, Creative, Keyword) identifies sync errors. These affected objects should be re-pushed to the publisher; or a manual synchronization performed to pull in data from the publisher. Some further examples:

• Keywords and creatives with a disapproved status. These objects may require an exemption with the publisher.
   
• Destination URLs missing tracking parameters.
   
• Ad groups with no active creatives or no active keywords.
   
• Creatives tagged with a promotional dimension that are set to Active outside of that promotion's valid date range.

Bidding-Related Alerts

Bidding-related alerts can help users identify reasons to change folder-level settings. For example, identifying keywords at the folder bid cap (i.e. keywords where current bid is within 10% of the maximum bid for that folder). If these keywords are performing well, you should consider raising the bid cap. Please keep in mind that folder-level settings should not be changed before thoroughly investigating the potential impact. Some further examples:
 

• Keywords in a performance bidding folder that are set to bid override. These keywords are not being optimized against performance and you should remove the bid override setting.
   
• Ad groups whose performance far exceeds the folder's performance targets. These folders may need to be remapped to a more appropriate folder.