Among the top most integrations anticipated last year was that of Google Analytics 360 with Marketing Cloud. This became available, in general, with the release of April 2018.
Here was now the ability to have website analytics and email data work together seamlessly. One of the most eagerly awaited features was Google Analytics’ ability to pull campaign data as well as website performance metrics and make it available within the Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
A main challenge with email marketing tools in general has been the lack of insight into site based behaviour. Usually, actions taking place outside of an email, or the landing page templates generated by the tool cannot be seen or require a separate tool to track them. With this new feature, Google Analytics now opens up the opportunity to serve as a data hub. This in turn measures the success of various campaigns from different tools.
With this, marketers are now able to get a holistic picture of their email campaigns as well as mobile marketing efforts. Additionally, this information will help them understand and work out how it affects website behaviour and conversions. With this integration Salesforce Marketing Cloud customers will have a new set of metrics available in the Marketing Cloud interface. These metrics cover site usage, are goal-related, and are related to the e-commerce segment.
These metrics arise from the connection of Google Analytics 360, Salesforce Sales Cloud and Salesforce Marketing Cloud in the following ways:
- All sales data that is in the Sales Cloud will be available in Analytics 360. This can then be used for attribution, bid optimization as well as audience creation.
- All of the data from Analytics 360 will now be available in the Marketing Cloud reporting UI. This enables a clear understanding of the success or failure of the campaign.
- All customer interactions arising from the marketing cloud will be made available in Analytics 360 and these may be utilized to create audience lists.
With this, customer insights may now be used to catalyse action across marketing channels. This will go beyond Google’s regular ad platforms of email, SMS as well as push notifications.
What Does this Integration Mean for Marketers as Well As Analysts
What such integration and information flow essentially means is that organizations will now be able to ensure that a precise target group, with the potential to convert as customers, receives messages that are relevant to them. With the ability to sync an audience within the Google Marketing Cloud, marketing professionals can now create and deliver person-specific advertisements as well as site experiences. All of these abilities may also be applied to other marketing outlets such as that of email as well as phone messages.
Additionally, thanks to the in-depth information reporting, marketers will now be able to have a detailed view of the success of each of their campaigns as well as its shortcomings. Now performance management parameters may be directly added to emails. Being able to check metrics in real time will help with better site engagement with customers.
Integrating Google Analytics 360 and Salesforce Marketing Cloud
For a successful integration, you will need Google Analytics 360 from Google and Journey Builder from Salesforce Marketing Cloud for information to move in two directions. Journey campaign information is added to emails that are sent out. When a user opens a mail, reads it and decides to click through to your website, all those campaign parameters are picked up by Google Analytics which will in turn, establish what traffic source and channel should be credited for bringing the user to the site. It also provides the user identifier from Salesforce Marketing Cloud as well.
When users look through your website, all activity such as goals achieved and purchases made or shortlisted are tracked by Google Analytics. All this information is then passed through to Salesforce.
With the merger of Google Analytics360 and the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, access to quality and meaningful data can now impact customer journeys, helping the marketer connect to the right target audience.
If you need any support on integrating Google Analytics 360 and Salesforce Marketing Cloud, write to us at services@suyati.com .