Marketing manager SGEN onboarding guide
| Field | Value ||---|---|| Audience | sgen-admins || Page type | tutorial || Area | _workflows/role-onboarding || Updated | 2026-05-14 |How to onboard as a Marketing Manager in SGEN
This guide is your operating playbook as a marketing manager using SGEN. It covers the four areas you own — Analytics, Forms, Popups, and Blog — and shows you what to check daily (15 min), review weekly (30-45 min), and analyse monthly (2 hours). The cadence is grounded in real your business workflows: daily traffic snapshots, weekly campaign reviews, and monthly channel-mix audits. It also names the areas you should never need to enter, so you can push back confidently when someone asks you to change settings or theme files.
Before you start
Before your first session, confirm the following with your site owner or administrator:
- Your account exists and is assigned the Editor role — Editors can publish blog posts and configure popups; Author and Customer roles cannot.
- You can open Analytics → Reports and see charts. If the screen shows no data, the site may need 24-48 hours of live traffic before charts populate.
- At least one Form is live on the public site capturing leads (newsletter signup, contact form, or similar). If none exists, ask your administrator to set one up using Build a form.
- Your credentials are saved and tested. SGEN does not send automatic password-reset emails unless your administrator has configured SMTP in Settings — confirm your password before your first solo session.
If anything above is missing, share Add or edit a user with your administrator so they can check your role and correct it before you start.
Where to go
Your four primary areas inside the SGEN admin panel:
| Area | What you do there |
|---|---|
| Analytics → Reports | Traffic snapshot, top pages, event-type trends |
| Analytics → Event Logs | Row-by-row event audit — page views, 404s, form submits |
| Forms → Submissions | Lead inbox — every form entry, filterable by date and source |
| Forms → Reports | Channel-attribution doughnut and daily lead-volume line chart |
| Popups | Publish, draft, and retire campaign overlays |
| Blog | Draft, schedule, and publish editorial posts |
You do not need to visit Settings, Theme Editor, Custom Codes, or the Users screen. Those areas change how the site works at a structural level — they are your administrator's territory.
What is this for?
This doc is a role-scoped operating cadence for a marketing manager at a SGEN-hosted site. It answers "what should I do in SGEN every day, week, and month?" rather than teaching individual features from scratch. Each section links to the relevant reference doc for the feature it covers — follow those links when you need field-level detail.
The cadence covers the full scope of a marketing manager's day-to-day work: reading what visitors are doing (Analytics), acting on lead capture (Forms), converting visitors with overlays (Popups), and publishing content (Blog).
Good use cases
- You joined a new team and need to understand which SGEN areas are yours to manage.
- Your team is onboarding a marketing manager and you want to hand them a single, complete operating guide.
- You are auditing your own practice and want to confirm you are reading the right metrics on the right cadence.
- You want to confirm your account permissions before a campaign launch.
- You need to explain to a stakeholder what a marketing manager can and cannot change in SGEN.
What NOT to use this for
- Do not use this guide to configure site settings, change themes, or manage Custom Codes. Those operations belong to your administrator and require a different role.
- Do not use this guide if you are an ecommerce manager. Orders, product settings, and revenue reports have their own role workflow.
- Do not use this guide to manage user accounts. Creating, editing, or deactivating accounts is the site owner's responsibility. See Manage users list for that workflow.
- Do not treat Event Logs as a replacement for a full marketing analytics stack. SGEN analytics is server-side and accurate for direct attribution, but it does not model multi-touch attribution across channels.
How this connects to other features
- Read your site Event Logs — feeds the daily traffic check with row-by-row event data including 404 paths and form-submit events.
- Visualize traffic with Analytics Reports — feeds weekly and monthly trend reviews with the Top Paths doughnut and Events Over Time line chart.
- View and manage form submissions — your lead inbox; use it to review entries, check email notification status, and re-dispatch failed integrations.
- View form reports — channel attribution view; the Distribution by Source doughnut tells you which acquisition channels are working each week.
- Browse your popups list — the campaign overlay inventory; use it to confirm which overlays are live and to retire expired promos.
- Create a popup — the authoring form for new overlays and copy updates on existing ones.
- Create and manage blog posts — draft, schedule, and publish editorial content; use the Published and Draft tabs for the weekly publishing schedule check.
- Add or edit a user — out of scope for your daily work, but your administrator uses this to set your role. Share it with them if your access seems wrong.
What success looks like
After two weeks on this cadence, a healthy marketing manager practice in SGEN looks like:
Daily: You can open Analytics → Reports and name the top 3 pages without reading every row. You catch a 404 spike within 24 hours and report it before it damages a campaign. Your form inbox shows Notified: Yes on every submission from the previous night.
Weekly: Your Forms → Reports doughnut shows at least 2 distinct sources — not 100% Direct. Your blog has at least one post published in the past 7 days, or one draft marked ready to go. No popup has been running for more than 14 days without a copy check.
Monthly: You can produce a one-paragraph channel-mix summary without leaving SGEN — which source drove the most leads, which page drove the most traffic, and whether the trend is up or flat versus the prior month.
Permissions: You have never needed access to Settings, Theme Editor, or Custom Codes. If you have, something in your role setup needs revisiting with your administrator.
A representative month-end snapshot for your business — balanced channel mix, healthy lead volume, no permission gaps — looks like this:
What to do if it does not work
Analytics charts show no data. Charts populate from the previous 30 days of tracked events. If the site launched recently, wait 24-48 hours and reload. If data was visible before and has disappeared, ask your administrator to confirm the SGEN tracker script is still present on all public pages.
Form submissions stopped arriving in email. Go to Forms → Submissions and check the Notified column on recent rows. If any show No, click the row and use the Re-send button. If re-send also fails, your administrator needs to review Settings → Email — SMTP credentials may have expired or changed.
A published popup is not showing on the site. Open Popups, find the popup, and confirm its status is Published (not Draft). Confirm the Autoload option is ticked if the popup is meant to fire on page load — without Autoload, the popup only fires when a visitor clicks a link or button containing its hashcode (e.g. #sgp_3). See Browse your popups list for the hashcode system.
A screen says "Administrator only" or similar access error. Your Editor role does not grant access to Settings, Custom Codes, or Users. This is by design. Ask your site owner or administrator to make the change — share the relevant reference doc link with them so they know exactly what you need changed.
A blog post published before it was ready. Go to Blog, find the post, click Edit, change status to Draft, and save. The post disappears from the public site immediately. The draft is preserved — republish when it is ready. See Create and manage blog posts for the status-change workflow.
Daily cadence — your 15-minute morning check
Each morning an analyst (your business' marketing manager) opens SGEN and runs through four checks before her first meeting. The sequence is the same every day: traffic snapshot, form submissions, popup status, fresh lead skim. The whole routine takes 15 minutes.
Steps — daily checks
1. Open Analytics → Reports for a traffic snapshot
Go to Analytics → Reports. Set the date range to the last 7 days. Scan the two summary tiles — Total Events and Top Paths. You are looking for the broad shape: is total event count holding steady, or did yesterday show a dip or spike?
A healthy day on your business' site — steady blog traffic, homepage visits, and a handful of form-submit events — reads like this:
If 404s is rising (more than 10 in a single day for a small site), go to Analytics → Event Logs, filter by 404 Not Found, and identify the broken paths. Report them to your administrator for redirect fixes. See Read your site Event Logs for filter and search instructions.
2. Check form submissions since yesterday
Go to Forms → Submissions. Set the date filter to today. Scan new rows — you are looking at the count and the Notified column, not reading every entry. A typical your business morning shows 2-5 overnight submissions across the newsletter and contact forms:
If Notified shows No on any row, click that row and use the Re-send button in the detail view to test dispatch. If re-send also fails, your administrator needs to check Settings → Email (SMTP credentials may have changed). See View and manage form submissions for the detail view and re-send workflow.
3. Confirm popup status
Go to Popups. Scan the status tab counts and the list of Published rows. You are confirming that the Published tab only contains popups you intend to be live right now. During a campaign it is easy to leave an expired promo running — catching it daily prevents visitor confusion.
A typical your business setup during a May campaign, with three overlays live and two in draft for next month:
If a popup in the Published tab should be paused, click its row, open the edit form, change status to Draft, and save. The overlay disappears from your public site immediately — no cache to wait for. See Browse your popups list for the status tab and bulk-action controls.
4. Skim fresh leads for high-value inquiries
Still in Forms → Submissions, clear the date filter and sort by newest first. Read the top 5 row previews — you are looking for a business email on the contact form, a repeat submitter, or an unusual referral source that suggests a PR mention or backlink. Flag anything worth following up (an email, a CRM note, a Slack message to the sales team), then move on. This step takes two minutes and costs nothing when the inbox is quiet.
Weekly cadence — campaign review
Once a week — your business' team does this on Friday mornings — run a structured campaign review. Budget 30-45 minutes.
Steps — weekly campaign review
1. Review campaign traffic
Go to Analytics → Reports. Set the date range to the past 7 days and the event type to Page View. Check whether your campaign landing page appears in the Top Paths list. A healthy campaign week shows the landing page in positions 2-5 of the doughnut chart. If it is not in the top 10, the campaign drove less traffic than expected — investigate whether your ads or email links are reaching your audience.
2. Check lead source attribution
Go to Forms → Reports. Set the form filter to your primary lead-capture form and the date range to the past 7 days. Look at the Distribution by Source doughnut. A healthy your business week with four active acquisition channels reads like this:
If Sources shows 1 (everything attributed to Direct), your campaign links are missing UTM parameters — traffic is landing but attribution is lost. Add UTM parameters (?utm_source=…&utm_medium=…&utm_campaign=…) to every paid link before the next send. See View form reports for how to read the doughnut and set the date range.
3. Review blog publish schedule
Go to Blog. Open the Draft tab. Any post whose intended publish date has passed needs attention — either publish it now or set a new target date. For the coming week, confirm at least one post is drafted and ready to publish. See Create and manage blog posts for draft, schedule, and publish steps.
4. Audit active popups for copy freshness
Go to Popups → Published. For any popup that has been running longer than 14 days without a copy update, note it as a candidate for refresh. Campaign fatigue is real — the same overlay every day trains visitors to dismiss it. Rotate headline copy or swap the CTA every two weeks. See Create a popup for how to edit the popup body without changing its hashcode or trigger settings.
5. Confirm email notification health
In Forms → Submissions, filter to this week and check that every row shows Notified: Yes. A block on email notifications is the most common reason a lead sequence stops working. If you find rows showing No, re-send them and alert your administrator that SMTP may need attention.
Monthly cadence — deep review
At the start of each month, block two hours. This is the session where you look back at the full prior month of data and make decisions about the next month's content calendar and channel mix.
Steps — monthly deep review
1. Run a full-month traffic analysis
Go to Analytics → Reports. Set the date range to the full prior month (for example, April 1-30). Note Total Events and compare to the prior month. A healthy content-led site should show 5-15% month-on-month growth in page views without a proportional rise in 404s.
A solid April for your business — with organic blog traffic climbing and 404s holding flat — reads like this:
If 404s are rising proportionally to page views, a renamed or deleted page is probably generating broken links — report the broken paths to your administrator for redirect fixes. See Read your site Event Logs for the 404 filter workflow.
2. Audit channel mix
Go to Forms → Reports. Set the date range to the full prior month. Look at Distribution by Source. A balanced channel mix for your business — organic, paid, social, and referral all contributing — shows a doughnut with 3-5 distinct slices. If one channel dominates at 85%+, that channel is a single point of failure in your lead pipeline. Note it in your monthly report as a risk and build a plan to diversify before the next campaign cycle.
3. Review content output
Go to Blog. Count posts published in the prior month using the Published tab, narrowing by date. For a retail brand publishing 2-4 posts per month, a healthy tally is 2-4 published posts, 1-2 drafts in progress, and 0 posts stuck in draft beyond their intended publish date. If you have drafts that are weeks past their target date, investigate whether the bottleneck is approval, imagery, or copy review and resolve it before the next planning cycle.
4. Measure lead volume trend
Go to Forms → Reports for the full prior month. Compare Total Leads to the prior month. Declining lead volume alongside stable page traffic usually means a landing page or popup is underperforming. Cross-check: go to Analytics → Event Logs, filter by Form Submit, and note which pages are generating form-submit events. If a page that used to generate submissions is now generating none, its form or popup may have broken. See Read your site Event Logs for the Form Submit filter.
5. Handoff — permission audit
Ask your administrator to confirm that the Users list reflects your current team. Marketing managers do not have access to the Users screen — this step is a handoff, not something you action directly. Anyone who has left should have their account moved to Trash to prevent stale sign-in access. Your administrator should use Manage users list for the bulk-trash workflow and Add or edit a user if any account needs a role change.
Things you should NOT need access to
The cadences above are your complete scope in SGEN as a marketing manager. The following areas are explicitly out of scope — if someone asks you to make changes here, the request should go to your administrator.
You should NOT need access to:
- Settings — site name, email credentials, integrations, and billing. Changes here affect every user and the site's core behaviour. Your administrator owns this.
- Theme Editor — visual design, fonts, and layout. Any design change should go through your administrator or your developer.
- Custom Codes — injecting HTML, CSS, or tracking scripts. Code-level changes have site-wide consequences and require administrator access.
- User role admin — creating, editing, or deactivating accounts. See Add or edit a user — but only your administrator should action this.
You DO need access to:
| Feature | What you do | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| Forms → Submissions | Read incoming leads, re-dispatch failures | View and manage submissions |
| Forms → Reports | Read lead volume and channel attribution charts | View form reports |
| Popups | Configure, publish, and retire campaign overlays | Browse popups list |
| Blog | Draft, schedule, and publish editorial posts | Create and manage blog posts |
| Analytics → Reports | Read traffic trend charts and summary tiles | Visualize traffic with Analytics Reports |
| Analytics → Event Logs | Audit individual page views, 404s, and form submits | Read your site Event Logs |
| Media | Upload images for blog posts and popup content | (Media reference doc) |
If you find yourself needing to access something not in the table above, flag it to your administrator before making changes. Scope creep in admin access is the most common source of accidental site-wide changes.
Examples
Example 1: Monday morning traffic check reveals a 404 spike. Katherine opens Analytics → Reports on Monday, sets the range to 7 days, and sees 404s at 19 — up from the usual 4. She goes to Analytics → Event Logs, filters by 404 Not Found, and finds /brewing-guide is returning 404s across multiple sessions. A blog post was deleted over the weekend without a redirect being set. She messages her administrator with the broken path. The administrator sets a redirect before the campaign targeting that URL goes live. See Read your site Event Logs for the 404 filter workflow.
Example 2: Weekly form report shows 100% Direct attribution. On Friday, Katherine checks Forms → Reports for the week. Sources shows 1 — every submission is attributed to Direct. She checks the campaign email sent on Tuesday and finds the link carries no UTM parameters.
She adds `?utm_source=email&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=may-launch` to the link for the next send.Next Friday, Sources shows **3** — email, organic, and direct — and the attribution problem is resolved.See [View form reports](../../platform/sg-admin/my-forms.md) for how the Distribution by Source chart reads UTM data.Example 3: Month-end review shows a popup running stale copy. During the April month-end review, Katherine opens Popups → Published and notices the newsletter popup has been live for 28 days with the same headline copy. She clicks the row, opens the edit form, updates the headline to reflect the May Brewing Guide offer, and saves as Published. The updated copy goes live immediately — no page publish required, no cache to wait for. See Create a popup for the body editor and configuration options.
Day-one and first-week path
Use this table on your first day to confirm access and establish the baseline before running your first campaign.
| When | Action | Expected outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 — morning | Open Analytics → Reports, set range to last 7 days | Charts populate with traffic data — if blank, the site may be brand new (wait 24-48 h) |
| Day 1 — morning | Open Forms → Submissions, confirm at least one form is live | You can see recent entries and the Notified column |
| Day 1 — afternoon | Open Popups, read the Published tab | You have a baseline of what is live before you change anything |
| Day 1 — afternoon | Open Blog, count posts in the Draft and Published tabs | You know the content pipeline before your first editorial decision |
| Day 2 | Run the full daily 15-minute check solo | Traffic snapshot, form inbox, popup status, fresh leads — all four in under 15 minutes |
| Days 3-5 | Check Forms → Reports for channel attribution | You can name the top 2-3 acquisition sources without guessing |
| Week 2 | Run the weekly campaign review end to end | Traffic, attribution, blog schedule, popup freshness, email notification health — all five steps completed |
| Week 2 | Identify one popup or form that has been live for 14+ days without a copy update | Note it as the first refresh candidate |
Other roles on this site
Each role on a SGEN site has its own onboarding guide. Use the table below to understand who owns adjacent surfaces — and who to route tickets to when something is outside your scope.
| Role | What they own |
|---|---|
| Content Editor | Blog posts, pages, media library, comment moderation |
| Ecommerce Manager | Orders, products, coupons, and fulfillment cadence |
| SEO Specialist | SEO audit grid, redirects, robots.txt, Search Console |
| Developer | Custom CSS, Custom Codes, tracking scripts, SG-Builder Additional CSS |
| Support Agent | Read-only admin lookups, ticket triage, escalation paths |
| Platform Admin | Site provisioning, user management, billing, SMTP settings |
| Partner / Agency | Multi-client delivery, white-label, reseller billing |
Related reading
- Read your site Event Logs
- Visualize traffic with Analytics Reports
- View and manage form submissions
- View form reports
- Browse your popups list
- Create a popup
- Create and manage blog posts
- Add or edit a user