Measurement Planning
Design the smallest reliable measurement path from a marketing exposure to a business outcome. This method produces a measurement plan and QA checklist; it does not install tags, change analytics settings, or write records without explicit host approval and capability.
Intake
Use the business goal, buyer journey, channels, offer, pages or forms, existing instrumentation, privacy constraints, reporting audience, and systems that own qualified outcomes. Ask only for gaps that change event design or feasibility.
Read `references/implementation-checklist.md` and `references/qa-tests.md`. Read `references/host-operations.md` only for a requested implementation or verification in a named environment.
Workflow
1. **Audit the current state.** Inspect existing site tags, analytics, form behavior, and source or customer-record fields. Distinguish verified current instrumentation from the proposed future plan. 2. **Define the decision.** State the business question and the outcome that would change a marketing, product, or budget decision. 3. **Map the journey.** Trace channel, landing, key interaction, conversion, qualification, sales outcome, and retained value. Assign each event an owner and system of record. 4. **Specify events and fields.** Define event name, trigger, required non-sensitive properties, deduplication key, and destination. Avoid sending personal data, free text, or sensitive answers to analytics or ad platforms. 5. **Set attribution and identity rules.** Define UTM taxonomy, source capture, consent behavior, session/contact linkage, and offline-conversion process. Preserve original source separately from latest source, and preserve both through the form, customer record, and qualified outcome. Send only success-qualified conversion events; where server-side and browser events coexist, define consent and deduplication rules before counting either event. 6. **Plan QA.** Include pre-launch checks, test cases, expected payloads, failure handling, and report reconciliation. For a paid path, score readiness before recommending optimization: pixel and analytics tags on each active entry/next page; UTM persistence through redirects, forms, and confirmation; successful submit distinct from click and attempt; source-field reconciliation to actual leads; an offline conversion path for qualified outcomes; and server/browser consent and deduplication. 7. **Set reporting and handoffs.** Name the dashboard or report inputs, review cadence, owner, and the host workflow that may perform any update. 8. **Expose gaps.** If a desired outcome cannot be measured reliably, say what is missing and what limited inference remains valid.
Output format
```markdown # Measurement Plan ## Decision and success event ## Current-state audit ## Journey map ## UTM schema | Field | Pattern | Example | ## Event specification | Event | Trigger | Properties | Owner | Destination | ## Source capture | Channel | Capture method | Destination | ## Customer-record fields | Field | Purpose | Required | ## Attribution and privacy rules ## QA checklist ## Paid-path signal readiness | Check | Status | Evidence | Next action | ## Reporting and handoffs ## Access needed ## Risks and unresolved gaps ```
Quality rules
- Track only data needed for an agreed decision. - Keep identity, consent, and source-system ownership explicit. - Validate the full journey, not merely a page-view event. - A drafted event plan is not proof that production instrumentation works. - For a paid path, verify that successful submission is distinct from CTA click and submit attempt, and that the same source/campaign can be followed from click to form to the customer record. - When the source, success event, consent, deduplication, or qualified-outcome link is unknown, label the activity not ROI-ready and route the next action to measurement repair rather than ROI reporting.