GOOGLE ANALYTICSAdvanced Google Analytics Features and

Functions

GOTOWEBINAR INTERFACE

Type all comments/questions into the

"Questions" panel.

If you cannot hear me speaking, go to:

File->Preference->Audio and check your audio settings.

Your interface may display slightly differently.

SAM TOMLINSON

Vice-President, Strategy & Analytics,

Warschawski Agency

I bring a diverse background spanning finance,

business and marketing communications to create

outsized, bottom-line results for organizations. I

also teach classes at some of the world’s most

notable institutions.

AGENDA 1. Advanced Google Analytics Features and How to Use Them

2. Alert! Alert! Google Alerts

3. UTM Parameters

4. Session Variables

5. Importing Data

6. Custom Dimensions & Metrics

7. The GA Reports (Live Walkthrough)

LET'S CONSIDER A CAMPAIGN SCENARIO

Imagine you have a Day of Giving Event coming up, and want to figure out how it’s going/what’s working/what’s not using Google Analytics. As part of that campaign, you have a few things happening:

1.Facebook Ads

2.Twitter Ads

3.Google Ads

4.Organic Social Media

5.E-Mail Blasts

6.In-Person Event

THERE'S A LOT OF THINGS HAPPENING

And odds are, not all of them are going to work. So we need to figure out what’s working + what’s not. To do that, we can use several different tools, along with what we’ve already covered in the previous modules:

1.Alerts!

2.UTM Parameters

3.Data Import

4.Custom Dimensions + Metrics

5.Measurement Protocol

QUICK NOTE // ASIDE

One of the things that confuses most people with Google Analytics is how it treats different types of businesses/organizations – and the answer is (almost) always: all the same. GA doesn’t ”see” a difference between (for instance) a lead generation business and a non-profit driving sign-ups for volunteers; it doesn’t “understand” the difference between eCommerce sales (i.e. widgets sold) and on-site donations received. It’s all the same.

So while some of our examples may include specific functionality (i.e. eCommerce) that you don’t have, remember that the underlying functionality is what matters (i.e. taking money on a website).

LET’S ANSWER SOME QUESTIONS!

ADVANCED GOOGLE ANALYTICS FEATURES ANDHOW TO USE THEM

STREAMLINING MANAGEMENT

One of the biggest hurdles to integrating GA into your daily workstream is (ironically) the sheer volume of data it collects and displays, which we’ve seen over the past couple weeks.

For sites with hundreds (or thousands) of pages, this can quickly become overwhelming – and finding those nuggets of insight can be a daunting task. As a result, most marketers stay at a top-level and most non-marketers never log in.

GETTING THE RIGHT DATA INTO GOOGLE ANALYTICS

While GA offers an incredible amount of data,

sometimes it isn’t the right data for your organization.

Sometimes it’s partially helpful, but not the complete

picture. But – fear not! We have multiple ways to get

the information you need into Google Analytics!

• Data Import

• Custom Dimensions + Metrics

• Measurement Protocol

LET’S ANSWER SOME QUESTIONS!

ALERT! ALERT!GOOGLE ALERTS

WHAT ARE GOOGLE ANALYTICS ALERTS?

If you’re like most marketers, you’re wearing a lot of hats and doing a lot of things – so you might not have time to check Google Analytics every day (or every week). However, you’d probably still like to know if things are going boom.

This is where Google Analytics Alerts come in handy.

SETTING UP ALERTS (part 1)

Alerts are located in the Settings (gear icon, lower left) of Google Analytics, and configured at the VIEW level (so different views can have different alerts).

SETTING UP ALERTS (part 2)

Alerts can be sent via e-mail – so you get a notification each time your alert trips. You can set positive alerts (certain number of conversions or donation clicks), or negative alerts (low traffic, low conversion rate, high bounce rate on landing pages)

WHAT ALERTS SHOULD I SET UP?

UTM PARAMETERS

WHAT ARE UTM PARAMETERS?

For most of us, our marketing isn’t limited to a single channel or a single tactic; we’re constantly doing multiple things (ads, e-mails, events, social media posts, etc.) – and trying to keep track of what’s working and what’s not can be exhausting, if not impossible.

One (common) frustration is that our web analytics simply doesn’t provide the granular level of detailed required to see how each of these different tactics has performed.

UTM PARAMETERS

Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters are

appended to an existing URL link, allowing you to

pass along additional information from one page to

the next. Some examples of what you can pass via

UTMs includes:

• IDs of Ad Elements (Creative, Campaign, Audience, etc.)

• Device Type and Device Model

• Location

• Keyword, Match Type and Search Ad Position

• Placement

HOW DO I GET UTM CODES?

UTMs can be created within most ad

platforms, as well as with free tools.

They can be populated using:

• VARIABLES: dynamic elements that

vary based on the user)

• STATIC: the same thing for each user

– i.e. “FACEBOOK” as a source

Here’s a link to the URL Builder I use.

WHEN DO I USE UTM PARAMETERS?

All the time! But before you go UTM-crazy, here are a few things to remember:

1.UTMs are CaSe SenSiTivE. Facebook =/= facebook.

2.It is usually a good idea to build a nomenclature that everyone in the organization is expected to maintain (example on the next slide)

3.Once you have this established, then use it for EVERYTHING. All vendors – PR, SEO, SEM, Social, Partners, etc. should be given UTM links. No exceptions!

UTM NOMENCLATURE

Here’s an example of a UTM Nomenclature Guide:

Note: all should be lowercase.

Source: [URL, no suffix]

Medium: [cpc, cpm, organic, referral, influencer]

Campaign*: [enter the campaign ID given by you/your organization]

Term*: [keyword for ad] -- *paid search only

Content: [creative asset ID or link location ID]

*For Campaign ID, I usually do something like YY_NAME (21_GIVINGDAY)

LET’S ANSWER SOME QUESTIONS!

SESSION VARIABLES

UTMS AREN’T PERFECT

One of the biggest issues with UTM parameters is that they “fall off,” usually

once a user is on your site. The information is passed once from the link

with the UTM to when they arrive on your site but lost after that, which can

be profoundly unhelpful.

But fear not! Session Variables are here to the rescue! These nifty little

things use PHP (you’ll need a developer’s help) to store the parameters

passed via UTMs permanently, and even fill them into hidden fields so they

go to your CRM or e-mail server automatically.

UTMS AREN’T PERFECT

Setting up the Session Variable does

require technical expertise and you

should not try to do this on your own;

but understanding that it exists can

allow you to ask for it, which will make

your life much, much better.

LET’S ANSWER SOME QUESTIONS!

IMPORTING DATA

DATA SILOS

Most businesses have multiple systems + tools that help you run your business:

• CRM: contains customer information/IDs, lifetime value, recent orders/donations, etc. .

• CMS: article topics, authors, preferences, etc.

• eComm: product data, inventory, prices, sizes, styles, etc.

MISSING INFORMATION

Alternatively, sometimes Google Analytics simply doesn’t have all the data you’d like to make an apples-to-apples comparison across different channels or marketing campaigns:

• FB/IG = cost data

• E-Mail = open rate data

HOW DATA IMPORT WORKS

Google Analytics supports several data import types (“Data Set Types”), based on the type of data you’d like to add into Google Analytics. Some of the common ones include:

Customer Data

Product Data

Content Data

Each of these comes with a specific “schema” that is used to join your third-party data with Google Analytics.

HOW DATA IMPORT WORKS

HOW DATA IMPORT WORKS

Here’s another example, this one for importing cost data (helpful when you’re advertising on a third party, like FB or Twitter):

OTHER DATA TYPES + SCHEMAS

User Data

Upload data such as LTV, Location, Donation or

Purchase History, Event Attendance History, Volunteer

History, etc.

Requires GA ID Capture

Geo + Cost Data

Have a marketing campaign running in one DMA that you

want reflected in your GA data? Have another

campaign running on another platform you’d like to pull in to

your GA reports?

Custom Data

If none of these use cases

suit your needs, you can create a custom import that

allows you to bring in exactly the data you’d like to see –

you just need to ensure there

is one primary key to map it.

There are multiple types of data you can add into Google Analytics in order to provide richer, more

robust and more actionable reporting. This includes:

UTMS AREN’T PERFECT

Once you have this data integrated into your Google Analytics (UA) or

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) platform, the next step is to make it actionable to

you. UA + GA4 both offer several features/functions to help you do this,

including:

• Calculated Metrics

• Custom Dimensions

• Custom Metrics

CALCULATED METRICS

A calculated metrics in GA is (to put it simply) a calculation that uses one or more existing metrics in GA, along with one or more mathematical operators, to create a new metric that’s relevant for your business.

These can come in several formats, and use all standard operators (+, -, /, *,(), 0-9):

1. Integer w/ Decimals

2. Currency

3. Time

4. Float

5. Percentage

CALCULATED METRICS, PART 2

Revenue Per User

For many organizations, RPU is a critical measure of success – whether that revenue be donations,

merchandise purchases, etc. Formula:

{{Revenue}}/{{users}}

Profit Per Item Sold

If your organization does sell items (sweatshirts, stickers, whatever), and you’d like to

remove your COGS from your revenue reports (so you know

how much $ you made):

{{Revenue}}-{{COGS}}

Funnel Conversion Rate

Want to know where in the

volunteer sign-up people drop

off? You can create calculated

metrics for each stage:

{{Stage 3 Completes}}/

{{Stage 2 Completes}}

There are (quite literally) hundreds of use cases for calculated metrics – from determining stock on

pages to calculating profit per item sold to generating a lead score for visitors to understanding

where your checkout flow has gone bust. It’s all up to you.

LET’S ANSWER SOME QUESTIONS!

CUSTOM DIMENSIONS & METRICS

CUSTOM DIMENSIONS + METRICS

Once you’ve added new data into Google Analytics, you’re likely to have some questions, such as: what do I do with it? How can I put it to work? Where can I see this data in action?

That’s where Custom Dimensions + Custom Metrics come in handy.

There’s a LOT to this topic (and some of it is quite dense + technical) – so let’s start off with a handy reference: this article from Google.

There’s also this developer’s guide, which I recommend bookmarking.

USES FOR CUSTOM METRICS + DIMENSIONS

Capture Add'l Info

If you are offering lots of content, you can use CDs to

track your authors, tags, categories + comments on

each piece of content –helping you figure out what’s

working!

Augment w/ Import Data

Want to include your CRM data, call data, lead data, sales data, etc. in Google

Analytics Reports? Add it as a custom dimension. You can also pull in info for logged-in

sites like status, membership, level, etc. Insanely helpful

Technical Stuff

Want to know exactly how

people are navigating to the site? If it was opened in a

new tab or a current tab? The ID of a logged-in user? The

exact time of a hit? All can be

captured w/ CDs + CMs.

There are (so, so, so) many uses for these two things – but since they go together (a metric is the

number/value associated with a dimension), I figured we’d address them together

LET’S ANSWER SOME QUESTIONS!

THE GA REPORTS(LIVE WALKTHROUGH)

LET’S ANSWER SOME QUESTIONS!

NEXT SERIES

Cyber Security: Spot Their Tricks and Fix

Your Risks

March 10th, 11th, 25th, 2021 1-2:30pm ET

20% Discount Code: GOOGLE21

TECHIMPACT.ORG

THANK YOU!