Here’s your summary of what happened over on the Google Analytics blog, and in the analytics industry in general, in January and how you and your team can take advantage of these developments.
1. Boost Conversions by Infusing Google Remarketing with Marketo Real-Time Personalization
Who Should Care: Advertisers, large e-commerce businesses
Level of complexity: Advanced
The Gist:
- On January 15th Marketo hosted a Google sponsored webinar
- The webinar details the importance of real-time personalization for marketing results
- The webinar was performed by Google’s Dan Stone, Marketo’s Mike Telem and Mike Tomita
- Real examples of successful cases: via http://www.marketo.com/webinars/real-time-personalization/
Your Action Items: You can watch the webinar here and download the slides here.
2. Simplify your Google Analytics Reporting with Add-ons for Google Sheets
Who Should Care: Anyone who uses Google Analytics to create reports or dashboards
Level of complexity: Beginner to Advanced
The Gist:
- Google introduced a new feature for Google Sheets, the Google Analytics Spreadsheet Add-on
- Essentially the add-on allows you to access all of your Google Analytics data inside Google Sheets with a few easy clicks
- Below is an introduction video to the Google Analytics Spreadsheet Add-on
- Below is a slightly more advanced video detailing how to set up a dashboard that automatically updates and can be placed out on the web:
Your Action Items: If you aren’t familiar with this add-on, watch the introduction video above. Once completed try using the add-on to generate a few simple reports. Once you feel comfortable with it try using the add-on to generate the same reports you use in the interface.
My Take: I can’t stress this enough, I freaking love this add-on. There are so many ways to use this add-on, for example getting unsampled data using smaller time frames and multiple reports, custom report automation, and deeper insights by adding multiple dimensions!
The good people over at Moz used this add-on to create a seriously powerful sheet for content. They called it the “One Metric” and the article can be found here.
3. AccuWeather Unlocks Cross-Channel Impact Using Google Analytics Premium
Who Should Care: Google Analytics Premium clients, Measurement protocol users
Level of complexity: Extremely Advanced
The Gist:
- AccuWeather uses Google’s Measurement Protocol and Google Analytic Premium to integrate reporting for many services into one location
- These services included information from across the web, such as email and websites, but also offline campaigns
- AccuWeather sought to accomplish four goals using this approach:
- Analyze the effectiveness of weather forecast emails
- Attribute credit to campaigns that drove users to app store pages
- Better understand their mobile audience
- Collect this new data without compromising AccuWeather’s fast and simple user experience
Your Action Items: If this interests you, dig deeper here and read the full results of the study!
My Take: This is another example of how powerful the Measurement Protocol is! Large organizations have the resources and time to use these advanced systems to their advantage, but small businesses can find value too. If your business has a lot of customer touch points online and offline it may be worth learning more about the Measurement Protocol with this video.
4. Retailers: Three Insights to Drive Q1 Results
Who Should Care: Retailers, E-commerce business owners, advertisers
Level of complexity: Intermediate
The Gist:
- Google analyzed Q1 of 2013 and 2014 to reveal some useful insights for Q1 2015
- The Day of the Big Game (2/1) is a low point for American online shopping
- The Sunday before Valentine's Day (2/8 this year) has an above average transaction, conversion, and session rates
- Somewhere in between the Big Game and Valentine’s Day Q1 spending starts to raise, rebounding from the usual dip after holiday spending
Your Action Items: Use these insights to help guide strategy in late January and February, especially if you sell romantic products.
My Take: Decreases to online shopping on the Day of the Big Game and increases to online shopping the Sunday before Valentine's Day makese sense. While this isn’t exactly groundbreaking, its great to see the numbers to support these gut feelings. Use this to guide strategy this year, and next.
5. Introducing Trash Can: Data Recovery in Google Analytics
Who Should Care: Any Google Analytics User
Level of complexity: Beginner
The Gist:
- Google is rolling out a Trash Can feature to all Google Analytics accounts
- The Trash Can will allow you to retrieve any deleted view, property or account
- There is a 35 day window to retrieve deleted data, after that it is gone for good
- Although this will be rolled out within the next few weeks, anything you’ve deleted as of 1/28/15 will still show up in the Trash Can once it appears
Your Action Items: Nothing immediately besides feeling more confident when deleting views, properties and accounts.
My Take: This is a much requested and useful improvement! I’m excited to have a safety net available, even if it never gets used it’s always better to be safe then sorry! Use this feature to turn your “Whoops……” into nothing more than a few clicks and a sigh of relief!
6. Start Remarketing with Google Analytics Instant Activation
Who Should Care: Advertisers, marketers
Level of complexity: Intermediate
The Gist:
- “1 in 5 remarketers successfully complete their setup.” - Avi Mehta and Rosanne Borja, Google Analytics Team, Google Analytics Blog
- Google simplified the remarketing setup process using Google Analytics by adding the Instant Activation feature
- It takes four steps in your Google Analytics
Your Action Items: If you currently use remarketing, then you are in good shape! If you have been considering adding remarketing this process makes it simple! Follow the steps here.
My Take: Considering how impactful remarketing can be, it’s surprising that only 1 in 5 remarketers successfully complete their setup. It’s great to see Google make it easier for us marketers to implement this into our advertising spend.
