Introduction to Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a web analytics platform used by all kind of businesses, across all industries. It is the backbone of the Google Marketing Platform.

While it's not the easiest platform to setup and use, it holds precious website and audience data, that can be leveraged far beyond what most marketers are used to.

💡 Anytrack: While the primary reason we integrated Google Analytics in AnyTrack, was to enable performance marketers to track their conversions with Google Ads.

✅ But today there are countless reasons why this integration is at the core of the AnyTrack platform.

⚠ Currently, AnyTrack integrates only with Google Analytics Universal (not GA4, which is still in Beta).

How does the AnyTrack Google Analytics integration work:

1. AnyTrack collects and creates a first party dataset composed of Google Analytics first party data, and other tracking tags (Facebook, Taboola etc..).
2. User sessions, events, and conversions are tied to the first party dataset.
3. AnyTrack then sends engagements and conversions to Google Analytics via Server Side API.

The outcome:

Your Google Analytics data is enriched with key conversion data, and engagement events, which allow you to discover the most granular business intersects that no other analytics platforms can provide you with.

Some examples:

• Demographics, interests, and aggregated conversion value.
• Keywords, interest, conversion value.
• User behavior (new, returning, session length, bounce rate) by traffic source, keyword, conversion value.
• Build retargeting audiences, based on any of the segments you've built.
• Leverage multiple traffic sources, and / or campaigns, to create data driven marketing campaigns.
• And so much more!

🎯 Google Marketing Platform

The Google Marketing Platform is composed of all the marketing software provided by Google. When your Google Analytics is filled with conversion data, you can leverage the most powerful marketing tools from Google.

• Google Ads
  • Custom audiences
  • Lookalike audiences
  • Conversion Tracking
  • Offline conversions
  • eCommerce Transactions
• Google Optimize
  • Run Multi-Variate AB testing
  • Advanced experiments for Google Ads campaigns
• Google Data Studio
  • Share custom dashboard with partners, customers
  • Build your own reporting suite
  • Mix data from multiple sources (Google Analytics, Semrush)
• Google Tag Manager
  • Centralize your tracking Tags
  • Trigger custom events in AnyTrack

A Google Analytics account with rich conversion and event data, enables marketers to take their data driven dreams, far beyond traditional marketing tactics. 

Google Analytics core reports:

Audience: Who are the visitors, and what are their traits?

The audience dimension gives you everything you need to know about your visitors.

Acquisition: Where are visitors coming from?

This dimension relates to your traffic, organic, paid, internal etc... 

Behavior: What are visitors doing on your website?

What content are visitors consuming, what actions are the visitors taking, on which pages etc... 

Conversions: What are the meaningful actions visitors make on your website?

Conversions and goals are the most important events happening on your website. And at the same time, they are the most complicated to set up, test, and use.

The four Google Analytics core reports answer the most important intersects across your business.

Events, Goals, Conversions, and Transactions

How to does one make sense of these different names, and their meaning in the Google Analytics "Data MindSet"?

The most important is the Event because everything else is inherited from it.

Without the Event, you can't define a Goal, a Conversion, or a Transaction.

The Event is the trigger, the Goal is the business interpretation of such event.

Goals, Conversions, or Transactions are the business interpretations of the Events, otherwise called RULES.

Events:

An Event is anything that happens on your website. The most common Event is the "Page View" event. Google Analytics tracks Page View events automatically, and ties it with the user "Client ID".

Whatever your business is, you have some Goals that help you define your success.

For example, you run a blog on which you you promote your consulting services.

Your business routine might include:

• Publishing articles
• Sending a weekly newsletter
• Writing eBooks
• Sales calls with Leads
• Sales calls with Customers
• Sharing your content on social media
• Advertising on Facebook, Twitter etc... 

Eventually, at the end of the month, your bank account should tell you how much your business made.

But a row on your bank account statement is meaningless, unless you know which activities contributed to your bottom line.

That's where the ability to apply business rules to Events happening online or offline, is paramount to running an efficient business.

If the sales and marketing hub of your business is your website, then you should track how each activity contributes to you bottom line.

Conversion Goals

Essentially, creating a conversion Goal in Google Analytics is like creating a rule:

• If user download my eBook
• If user visits my Calendly page
• If user books a Discovery Call through Typeform
• If signs up for my newsletter
• If user pays for my consulting services.

How do you set up Conversion Goals in Google Analytics?

Before you can create a Conversion Goal, you need to track the actual Event. To set up Event Tracking, you can either use your Javascript coding skills, or use your Google Tag Manager Tagging Skills.

⛔ There's no shortcut, and if you're not familiar with either Javascript, or Google Tag Manager, you should hire a developer.

🍀 Luckily for you, you have AnyTrack's AutoTrack feature, which does it automatically without writing a line of code.

1. Track the event (using one of the methods described above)
2. Set the rule that will trigger the conversion goal:
   
   1. Reach a specific page / url
   2. Clicked on a specific URL.
   3. Filled a form named "my newsletter"
   4. Reach your "thank you page".

🍀 AnyTrack does it automatically.

What is the Event Value?

The Event Value is a numeric (monetary) value that you associate with the actual event.

For instance, you can set a value of "1" when someone sign up for your newsletter, and a value of "100" when someone books a discovery call.

🍀 Anytrack automatically forwards to Google Analytics any monetary value received by your conversion sources.

"Offline" Events Tracking

It's the action of linking a user that started its journey on your website, and that triggered an event outside your website - where the Google Analytics tracking code can't be placed.

For example:

• When you make a phone call with a lead, and update your Hubspot CRM with the lead status.
• When you promote an affiliate offer, and the conversion happens on a merchant website.
• When you charge your customers a monthly recurring fee, and the charge happens in Paypal, Stripe or other payment gateways.

Other considerations for Offline Events:

• Cross domain tracking - if the visitor starts its journey on your site, and finishes on an other website, you both need cross domain tracking setup, which is challenging.
• Point of sale - when a customer got a coupon on your website, and came to your brick and mortar shop to complete its purchase.

For all these scenarios, you need the ability to collect first party data on your website, and join it with other pieces of data you collect offline. 

🍀 AnyTrack does it automatically with over 100 integrations.

Goal Value vs Transaction Amount

As opposed to transactions amount which is interpreted by default as a monetary value, the Goal Value might mean a real monetary value, but it can also be set as a hypothetical monetary value. 

For example, if I know that for every 10 people signing up for my newsletter, 1 person buys my ebook for $100, then I could set a $10 event value to each newsletter Optin Event.

🍀 AnyTrack automatically tracks and sends the event value to Google Analytics.

The Transaction Amount: 

Transactions are Conversion Events associated with the Google Analytics suite of eCommerce features.

When you enable the eCommerce & enhanced eCommerce plugins (from within Google Analytics Admin), you can start sending eCommerce events such as `add to cart` or `purchase` with a transaction amount.

🍀 You can enable the eCommerce plugin in AnyTrack and any conversion event tracked with a monetary value will be formatted into an eCommerce transaction.

📝 Google Analytics eCommerce enables a complete suite of granular reporting such as cohort analysis, user's lifetime value and more.

Google Analytics Integration summary

Google Analytics is the only web analytics platform built to provide a complete business overview to marketers. Whether for paid or organic traffic, Google Analytics lets marketer correlate granular audience data with, marketing campaign performances, and itemized conversions.

The AnyTrack "one-click" integration with Google Analytics, is the simplest way to enrich your Google Analytics with any conversion data. From CRM platforms like Hubspot, affiliate networks like CJ Affiliates and Skimlinks, data is collected and sent to Google Analytics in real-time.