Whether you deliver insights and analysis, or drive your organization’s digital marketing, you probably rely on digital analyics as part of your toolkit. In our latest webinar “Google Analytics 360 & the move to enterprise analytics”, hosted by Marketing Land, experts from Cardinal Path and Google discuss how the move to enterprise analytics and the powerful tools of the Google Analytics 360 Suite can transform your marketing strategy.
In case you missed it, check out the on-demand.
Below, you will find some of the great questions asked by our audience during the webinar, as well as those questions that we didn’t have time to answer during the live session.
Q: How many people and/or what kind of expertise do we need to operate Google Analytics 360?
A: I believe that there is a difference between these two questions (different requirements for ongoing and implementation). If you have the web analytics capabilities, you can look into doing this yourself, but oftentimes, it makes sense to work with a partner like Cardinal Path to dig deeply into to ensuring you can implement the right way. For implementation- think about what kind of internal staff you have. There might be a need for training to bring them up to speed. That is also a place where Cardinal Path can come in, provide ongoing support to really be an extension of your team. Any marketer that has an understanding of digital ecosystem should be able to get caught up pretty quickly.
Q: How do you see Google Analytics 360 evolving in the future…what other capabilities will the platform be supporting?
A: We’ve really extended the comprehensiveness of the suite. Tightening the integration of DoubleClick and deepening the capabilities of BigQuery will be a major trend you’ll notice. Most of the other updates are confidential, but what I can say is overall, we’re committed to just making it really very seamless.
Q: How disruptive is it to switch from standard to 360? For example, will I lose my old data? Do I have to re-deploy?
A: It’s actually magically simple. It’s just a switch that’s pulled in the back that can be done automatically. It starts data collection right away through that pipeline, and integrations become available to you immediately. It’s an exceptionally seamless process if you’re already using the standard platform. If you’ve implemented Google Analytics on your own, we also suggest that in moving from free to enterprise, it makes sense to do an audit of your original implementation. If that’s the case, you can literally do what I said and flip the switch. Just to make sure you’ve implemented properly before you do that.
Q: With the free version of Google Analytics, we have separate roll-up account. In Google Analytics 360 Suite, since you can roll up, can you see historical roll up data?
A: No. Unfortunately roll up data only accumulates from the day the roll up account was set up and onwards.
Q: As a Marketing professional, I am interested in learning more about how Cardinal Path provides value to a client who hires a consultant to manage their Google Analytics 360 efforts?
A: Cardinal Path is a certified Google sales and service partner. We offer clients a comprehensive set of services spanning the entire analytics lifecycle, from solution design and implementation through to ongoing analysis and maintenance. We also provide custom corporate training that will enable your employees to become experts themselves. Learn more about how we’ve helped some of the world’s leading brands make the leap to data informed decision making.
Q: Is Google Analytics Premium rebranded as Google Analytics 360?
A: Yes, Google Analytics 360 is the new name for Google Analytics Premium- but along with this rebranding comes added functionalit; content experiments, data visualization, and the larger data capabilities. The new tools boast features that Google Analytics is well suited to handle and its products working seamlessly together in the Google ecosystem to provide holistic solutions for marketers and analysts.
Q: What is the User ID based off of?
A: User ID is defined by each individual Google Analytics client that chooses to implement it. It is typically some sort of internal or CRM user ID that uniquely identifies that user across all users of a particular system. The user ID must be comprised of non-personally identifiable information.
Q: How did they connect the PII to the cookies?
A: Google Analytics does not natively store any PII on any visitors. It is also against Google Analytics usage policy to record or store PII on the platform, even if inadvertently. The client must take care to ensure that they do not collect PII through Google Analytics purposely or otherwise, as Google can at its discretion; erase collected data.
Q: Can you push SalesForce to GA360 to Audience Center for further activation?
A: Yes, this can absolutely be done, and we at Cardinal Path have done this for several clients. Contact us to learn more about your specific instance of SalesForce.
Q:Can an agency use this tool for their clients? Can you study multiple clients on one account or would each client need its own account?
A: Yes, assuming proper permission was obtained from the client for each site, Google Analytics allows you to send data from one site or multiple sites to a single property. You could then separate sites by view, or view reports in aggregate across multiple sites to compare data.
Q: Are there any plans for a middle ground in pricing between the free and enterprise Google Analytics, perhaps usage-based?
A: Not at the moment. However, as your organization grows and you start to require deeper analysis and to collection of a wider breadth of data, the need for 360 may become justified as you start reaching the limitations of the free version of Google Analytics.
