Attribution Modeling for Digital Success: Webinar this Friday + Public Whitelist

Last year, we launched Multi-Channel Funnels, giving marketers insight into how customers interact with multiple touch points prior to conversion. Since then, we’ve begun to see a great shift in the industry, as marketers move away from simple, last click attribution, toward a more holistic picture of how digital marketing channels work together to drive conversions.

Earlier this year, in Google Analytics Premium, we added the Attribution Modeling Tool, which lets marketers build models that distribute the credit for conversions across channels and touchpoints, and quickly compare multiple models side by side. We’ve received great feedback about how the tool provides fast and easy insight into channel value.



Yesterday at the Google Analytics Summit, we announced wider availability for the Attribution Modeling Tool through a public whitelist. We also shared our plans for a new 90-day lookback window, better sampling controls, and the ability to import cost data for use in attribution models.  To help you get started, this Friday we’ll host a webinar, Attribution Modeling for Digital Success, giving an overview of the tool. We’ll cover the opportunities and challenges of attribution modeling, how to interpret and build models, and ways to take action on the results.

Webinar: Attribution Modeling for Digital Success
Day: Friday, November 2
Time: 10am PST / 1pm EST / 6pm GMT
Webinar sign-up: goo.gl/YTulu
Whitelist sign-up: goo.gl/uHckk

A recording of the webinar will be available on the blog and YouTube soon afterward. You can also check out our attribution playbook and product fact sheet for more background -- and you can view earlier webinars in our Attribution webinar series.

Hope to see you at the webinar, and happy modeling!

Posted by Bill Kee, Product Manager

Google Analytics Summit: What’s New And On The Horizon For 2013

Every year, Google Analytics Certified Partners and Premium customers descend upon Mountain View for our annual summit. Google Analytics team members share a glimpse into the future of Analytics, and GACPs network and share ideas. Previously what happens at the summit stays at the summit. But starting this year we decided to share the latest and greatest with our wider community. Following is round up of the cool things we're working on which we shared at the Summit.

Paul Muret, Google Analytics Engineering Director, delivering opening keynote

Universal Analytics

This morning, we announced the launch of Universal Analytics, which helps customers tailor Google Analytics to their needs, integrate their own datasets and ultimately get a more complete vision of the entire marketing funnel. Read more in our announcement blog post. 

Attribution Modeling Tool Public Whitelist

Since April 2012, Premium customers have been using the Attribution Modeling Tool to build models that give credit to all of their digital channels, providing insight into the impact of various marketing programs as they work together to drive sales and conversions. Today, we’re beginning a gradual public rollout of the Attribution Modeling Tool. Please register for our webinar this Friday to learn more, or request early access to the whitelist.

Cost Data Import

Google Analytics now allows users to import their cost data from any digital source -- such as paid search providers, display providers, affiliates, email, social and even organic traffic. This allows you to measure performance of all your digital programs side-by-side. Cost data import will be rolling out over the next month.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Customer Lifetime Value is a feature being worked on for 2013, and shows the dollar amount of money that an individual customer will spend with a given business in the future. Its a very powerful feature, putting the types of analysis marketers need to drive smart decisions into their hands. 

Our CLV reports will help you:

• Value segments or all of your customer base
• Decide how much to spend acquiring new customers in a given segment
• Decide how much to spend retaining certain customers (e.g. remarketing)
• Rank customers
• Measure success of marketing actions

Recency & Frequency

Finding your most valuable customers leads to smarter marketing decisions, improving your spend allocation and customer relationship management. Recency, Frequency, and Monetary Value (RFM) are three powerful behavioral metrics that savvy marketers have been using for decades to identify exactly these customers. With these forthcoming reports, we are bringing the power of RFM to Google Analytics. Watch out for these reports in 2013. 

Custom Dimensions / Metrics 

Dimension widening (a feature activated by Universal Analytics) enables you to easily add information like CRM data to your Google Analytics account. You can, for example, widen an advertising campaign by adding cost data to get a clear picture of the ROI on your marketing effectiveness.

Note that custom dimensions and custom metrics are just like the default dimensions and metrics in your Analytics account, except you create and define them yourself. You can use them to collect and segment data such as demographic data, which isn’t automatically collected.

Premium International Expansion

It’s been a year since we launched Google Analytics Premium to better meet the needs of our enterprise accounts. With the strong demand we’ve seen for Premium in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, we are now planning to launch in at least 8 more countries: Japan, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and Norway for 2013. 

Mobile 100%

With ever-expanding mobile application marketplaces and a shift in focus to mobile, measuring apps is more important now than ever. With this, we’re excited to be moving Google Analytics Mobile App Analytics out of closed and into open beta. We’ve listened to feedback from more than 5,000 mobile app developers during the closed beta, improved the product and are now making it available to all developers and marketers.  

We’re excited to push Analytics forward into the future with new features and reports which help marketers and businesses become more data-driven. 

Posted by the Google Analytics team

Building A Centralized Digital Marketing Platform With Google Analytics

The following is a guest post contributed by Google Analytics Certified Partner Daniel Waisberg.

Think about your business as a train. It has a locomotive and several wagons, each with its own function and importance (e.g., a restaurant wagon, a restroom wagon, and a luggage wagon). Now, let's say Google Analytics is the locomotive of the train, it is used to drive the business forward in a data-driven way. Together with it we find several important wagons: AdWords, AdSense, Webmaster Tools and others. How would you like those wagons to be tightly integrated?

This is the idea behind Google Analytics Integrations, an eBook that describes the official integrations available on Google Analytics. Currently it is possible to integrate the data from several Google tools into Google Analytics such as AdWords, AdSense, Webmaster Tools and YouTube. This enables marketers and analysts to import a wealth of information into Google Analytics, presenting a broad picture of their digital marketing efforts. 

In the eBook you will find a step-by-step guide to linking those tools as well as an explanation of what you can do with the resulting data. Let's suppose you are a new advertiser using both Google Analytics and AdWords, but the accounts are currently not linked. While you can use AdWords reports to analyze effectiveness of your campaigns, by linking the accounts you will be able to understand the bigger picture of website behavior in comparison to your AdWords campaigns. This information can help improving campaign performance by shedding light on which campaigns are failing as a result of suboptimal targeting, poorly designed landing pages, or poor ads; and which campaigns are succeeding. 

For example, let's look at the "Day Parts" report on Google Analytics (if your accounts are already linked here is a direct link to the report). 

The Day Parts report is for exploring hour-of-day and day-of-week dimensions. This report is useful for gaining insights into optimizing ad scheduling in campaign settings within AdWords.  

Click image for full-size

In the figure above, we see that this advertiser sees its traffic peak between 5 and-8 P.M. When adding a secondary dimension of per visit value, however, we see that the per visit value of visitors is highest during the morning hours of 6-9A.M: 

Click image for full-size

If this was your report, the practical next step you would take would be to adjust the ad scheduling settings in your campaigns to drive more traffic to the site during those morning hours, as that traffic is more valuable. Here is how to do it:

1. Navigate to a specific campaign in the AdWords interface.
2. Choose the Campaign Settings tab.
3. Under Advanced Settings, click the plus (+) box next to Schedule: Start Date, End Date, Ad Scheduling.
4. Next to Ad Scheduling, choose Edit.
5. Change mode from Basic to Bid Adjustment.
6. Under Time Period (next to day of week), click to reveal an overlay.
7. Adjust the bid settings (by a percent multiplier to increase or decrease bids). There is a button to copy to other days to speed up making these changes.
8. Click OK and then save.

If you are interesting only in the AdWords integration, check the Google Analytics For PPC eBook, which includes only information about integrating and analyzing AdWords using Google Analytics. This eBook had an important contribution from Yehoshua Coren. 

Daniel Waisberg is author of Google Analytics Integrations and Founder of Online Behavior, a Marketing Measurement and Optimization portal.

German-speaking Google Analytics User Conference and Training Day

On October 8^th and 9^th the second German-speaking Google Analytics User Conference (http://www.analytics-konferenz.at) is coming up. The conference will be held at the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, Austria. 

The Google Analytics User Conference is a two-day event, featuring a Google Analytics Training Day (12/10/08) for beginners and the Google Analytics Conference (12/10/09).  The Conference will include 24 different sessions in three tracks, which provide a valuable insight into new Google Analytics technologies, efficient strategies, optimization and trends. Here are some highlights from the agenda:

• What´s new and exciting with Google Analytics
• Customer Journey & Multi-Channel Analysis
• Improving ROI and Conversion-Optimization with Google Analytics
• E-Mail/Social Media/Mobile Tracking
• AdWords in Google Analytics & Search Analytics
• Advanced Traffic Attribution
• Tech-Sessions: Implementing Events, Custom Vars, Advanced Google Analytics Tracking Codes etc.

Attendees
The interactive and informative day is designed to help all attendees getting the most out of Google Analytics. It connects people who love and use Google Analytics, Google team members, opinion leaders, industry experts, online-marketers, web-developers and others who are interested in web analytics. Take the opportunity to learn from Google Analytics pros and peers and share your experience and knowledge. Register now and get:

• Tips and tricks from industry insiders to improve the bottom line
• Tactical and practical advice which you can apply rapidly
• Guidance how to manage multiple campaigns across multiple platforms
• Align Google Analytics with overall business goals, etc.

Tickets: 
Attendees can choose one day or the other, or may attend both days at a discounted rate.

List Price: € 390,- each day (Training Day or Conference). Both days cost € 680. Find out more at http://www.analytics-konferenz.at/anmelden.

This is an event not to be missed! We are looking forward to meeting many of you at the conference. See you soon! 

Presenting Partners

The conference is presented by the following Google Analytics Certified Partners and leading agencies in Austria and Germany: e-dialog, elements and webalytics. Furthermore the event is being produced in cooperation with national and international companies, associations and media: Monster Worldwide, Searchmetrics, intelliAd, Digital Analytics Association, DMVOE, Marketing Community Austria, WirtschaftsBlatt, Computerwelt, Horizont, Werbeplanung.at,  ITPress, iBusiness, t3n, WebsiteBoosting, eStrategy and Conversion Boosting.

Posted by the Google Analytics Team

Social that Adds Up

Earlier this week HootSuite Enterprise hosted Adam Singer, from Google Analytics, to share how you can use Google to measure social performance. With over half of people talking more online than they do in “real life”, digital social media is a critical platform for marketers, but how do we measure its impact?

Most marketers use platform metrics as performance indicators, but often they cannot be linked to sales. Engagement is the easiest and often the most measured social metric in terms of followers, fans and comments. However, revenue is often the more important (and more difficult to measure) metric that can help marketers determine an ROI for their social media efforts. Google offers two solutions that can help drive social media performance: Google+ and Google Analytics social reports. 

Building relationships on Google+ may improve other parts of your marketing plan. Google+ is integrating social in all the Google products marketers already use, which can help them drive deeper engagement with their target customers, be more relevant by offering social recommendations when customers need them most and remain accountable by providing transparency of how their ad dollars are performing. 

With Google Analytics Social reports you can tie your social media to metrics you care about. Here are some top tips Adam covered in the webinar:

• Find something you can measure (micro or macro-conversions) and sprint in that direction. Focus on how separate channels can drive different types of site actions, which can be tied to a value you determine.
• Measure success criteria directionally. Benchmarks are uncommon and do not necessarily translate across products, services or industries.
• Create your social posts with a measurement goal in mind. Be sure to include a call to action to inspire your audience to act.
• Understand and connect with your audience differently across the different networks. Try not to post the same thing on each platform, customize and use what works best.

Thank you to those who could join, if you have any questions feel free to reach out to Adam (+AdamSinger on Google+) or watch the webinar recording here.

Posted by the Google Analytics Team

Stat Source: Socialnomics, 2009

Google Analytics User Conference, October 3 - 4

GAUGE (Google Analytics Users’ Great Event) Boston is approaching quickly. For those who don’t yet know, GAUGE is a training conference led by Google Analytics Certified Partners, and will help sharpen your GA skills through learning practical knowledge from other users that you can put to use immediately. 

The two-day event includes:

• 21 hands-on sessions and workshops led by top Google Analytics experts, including Analytics Pros, ISITE Design, Cardinal Path and LunaMetrics
• Two keynote addresses: 
• ‘The Art of Storytelling’ by Jason L. Baptiste at Onswipe
• ‘Seeing the Forest AND the Trees: How NPR can see detailed behavior data at massive scale to drive unprecedented insight’ by Steven Mulder, NPR, and Alex Langshur, Cardinal Path
• Presentations from the Google Analytics team, including analytics advocate, Justin Cutroni
• Analytics Helpdesk where you can receive direct consultations

Use code GABLOGBO12 for a 10% registration discount. We also offer a 15% discount for members of the Digital Analytics Association and a 50% discount for Government, Non-Profit employees, and Full-Time students.

In addition to the User Conference and Training Day, our attendees are invited to the GAUGE Hacknight & Google Analytics Application Showcase on October 3rd from 5:30pm - 8:00pm.

This networking reception and application showcase gives developers of Google Analytics integrated products the chance to pitch their creation to a panel of industry leaders, Googlers, and the audience. Any individual or company that has developed a product, platform, application, or other tool that integrates with Google Analytics is invited to apply. 

Apply here to pitch your product. 

If you aren’t attending GAUGE but still want to attend the Hackathon, request an invitation here.

If you’re not able to attend GAUGE Boston, consider attending our San Francisco event in April 2013.

I hope to see you in Boston or at a future GAUGE event.

Posted by Caleb Whitmore, Founder & Chair: GAUGE Conference & Analytics Pros

Social that Adds Up: Performance and Measurement

Join us for a webinar Tuesday, September 18th 11am PT, in partnership with Hootsuite, to learn how we can make better decisions based on performance metrics of social networks using Google Analytics social reports. Register today, it’s open to everyone! 

Adam Singer, the Product Marketing Manager for Google Analytics, will go beyond the current social metrics of followers, +1’s, likes and others, to discuss the true impact your social media is making on your brand’s bottom line. We often are asked about how businesses can measure their social media and how they can capture the value they create for their consumers. Many of our current metrics allow us to measure the reach of our message, but not necessarily the ROI. What impact does social have on a company’s performance? Learn how to connect visits to your social pages all the way through to a sale or conversion on your website. It’s time to prove the value of social media with the right measurement metrics.

You’ll also learn how social media can actually influence other media performance and drive conversions. When you verify your Google+ Page, Google may show more endorsements for your business from your customers and supporters within the search results page. This can raise the social awareness of your business and increase its relevance. Because 77% of US consumers trust recommendations from their social media connections more than any other media source, seeing a +1, can help them make a purchase decision. On average, search ads with annotations have a 5-10% uplift in clickthrough rate. Some of our advertisers have seen even higher uplifts, H&M achieved 22% uplift, Cadbury achieved 17% uplift and Laterooms.com achieved a 9% uplift in clickthrough rates on their search ads.

Start measuring the value you’re creating through your social media campaigns! 

Sources: Google Research 2012; Google internal data

Posted by the Google Analytics team

Multi-Channel Funnels: Webinar, Checklist, Tips & Tricks

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Mark Your Calendars For These Upcoming Analytics Events

Next week Google Analytics team members will be presenting on several key areas of measurement, both online and in-person. Be sure to mark your calendars and join us as we share ideas and best practices about everything analytics.

Google Developers Live Event (Online)

Make the Web Fast: Measuring performance with Google Analytics Site Speed reports

How well does your site perform? Are the slow pages affecting your conversation rates or driving away potential visitors and clients? In this perfcast, we will talk with Justin Cutroni and Ilya Grigorik about the new "real user measurement" (RUM) capabilities available in Google Analytics: we will discuss how the data is collected, what it means, and take a deep dive into some of the advanced use cases of how you can leverage this data within Google Analytics.

Date: Tuesday, August 14 at 2:00pm PST

How to watch: watch live at following GDL link, or add the event to your calendar on Google+.

Search Engine Strategies (San Francisco)

Google has several unmissable sessions at SES. Be sure to attend these two focused on measurement:

Business Optimization in a Digital Age

We were promised that Marketing one day would become rocket science. Well, we are almost there! Search continues to become more complicated, and more exciting. Then there's Social and Email and Display and Video and... so many more things. It is hard to understand how to do one thing right, much less try to do all of them right. In his exciting keynote Avinash Kaushik will share his unique perspective on balancing multiple media channels, leveraging super awesome metrics, grounding your digital existence in driving economic value, and leveraging the Clear Line of Sight model to ensure you are optimizing across all four of the most important business drivers.

Date: Tuesday, August 14 from 9:00-10:00am PST

Understanding the Mobile Customer Journey

Mobile apps are changing the consumer world and app developers, brands and marketers continue to invest heavily in the development of applications. This session will be an open dialogue about:

• How there are currently more than 600,000 mobile apps on Google Play - and why you need to understand how your app is found, why it is critical to stand out and why mobile analytics are key to improve your apps performance in increasingly competitive marketplaces.
• Brands increasingly creating mobile applications to reach their customers, and why they need to track and report end-to-end measurements of their results (as well as integrate mobile measurement holistically across digital tactics).
• What are some of the best practices to begin mobile campaigns (landing pages, click-to-call, analytics, integrations, etc.).
• Examples of brands, SMBs etc. using mobile in an effective way.
• The future of mobile - where it is headed and when.

Moderators:

Jason Wells, CEO, ContactPoint

Adam Singer, Product Marketing Manager, Google Analytics

Date: Wednesday, August 15 from 10:30-11:30am PST

How to attend: SES runs from Tuesday, August 14 through Thursday, August 16. If you’re in San Francisco, check out the agenda page for the full details of our sessions and be sure to come out and say hi.

Posted by Adam Singer, Google Analytics team

Webinar this Thursday: Multi-Channel Funnels

Over the past few months, we’ve hosted a series of webinars on marketing attribution, exploring how you can get better results by understanding and valuing your customers’ full journey -- from the first ad they see until they make a purchase.


This week, please join Neil Hoyne, Google’s Global Program Manager for Attribution, for an in-depth look at Multi-Channel Funnels. Neil will discuss how Multi-Channel Funnels can reveal customer interactions across different digital media, show how these channels work together to create sales and conversions, and how these tools tie to the larger attribution narrative. We’ll explore the different reports and discuss how to get the most out of Multi-Channels Funnels to improve your campaign performance.

Date: Thursday, August 9, 2012
Time: 9am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm GMT
Register: http://goo.gl/B49ma

Hope you’ll join us on Thursday!

Posted by Sara Jablon Moked, Product Marketing Manager for Conversion and Attribution