Have you been trying to integrate Google Analytics and Salesforce data? Do you want to get insights into your Salesforce data to optimize decision-making? If yes, then this article will answer all your queries.
We will guide you through Google Analytics, Salesforce, and a few different approaches to integrate Google Analytics and Salesforce data easily. When you integrate Google Analytics and Salesforce data, you get insights into the marketing data that can help you take action to fetch better results.
Salesforce:
Salesforce, without mincing words, is one of the best (if not the best) customer relationship management platforms used by CRM experts the world over.
Its importance in the overall improvement in customer service, creating efficiency, managing database, fostering better communication with clients, and other well-documented benefits cannot be overlooked.
Google Analytics:
On the other hand, Google Analytics is one of the most used digital marketing tool and web analytics service out there. Of course, its usefulness in providing accurate data showing how visitors interact on your page cannot be downplayed.
Separately, these platforms fare nicely, but what happens if the two services can merge and work side by side?
We are often asked:
- Can Google Analytics data such as Goal Completion, Campaign Information, and Medium/Source be seen in Salesforce?
- Can I integrate Salesforce’s Customer/Industry Type data on Google Analytics?
Well, yes.
Others have merged these platforms together and you can, too.
From the moment a visitor lands on your website, to how long he or she interacts before the action of purchasing your services or products can all be tracked at once and with little effort from your end.
Below are the methods you can employ to achieve this:
- Add hidden form fields to link data to Salesforce
- Customizing a Salesforce trigger and send the data to Google Analytics
- Querying the API for Google Analytics and sending the data to Salesforce
- Querying the API for Salesforce and send that data to Google Analytics.
- The all-new Salesforce Sales integration into Google Analytics 360
- Windsor.ai – CRM connector
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Add Hidden Form Fields
This trick is one of the oldest methods of integrating Salesforce with Google Analytics data. The process involved is quite easy to understand. All you have to do is create Custom Fields to one of your Objects and make a Web Form for it.
The next step is to gather data from the user and fill up those fields and submit the form. The data is immediately stored in Salesforce when the Web Form has been submitted.
With this method, Google Analytics data integration into Salesforce is possible, providing insights pertaining to last non-direct attribution. Also, user’s Campaign Information and Source/Medium can be viewed from the data stored in the __utmz cookie.
This data stored in Salesforce is known to be productive for companies focused in demand-generation. However, for a firm that deals mostly with longer sale cycles, it might not be helpful.
It should be noted that this method can be customized to provide extended information that you can leverage on.
If you’re using Universal Analytics, this method will not work for you. Sorry.
Customizing a Salesforce Trigger
Contrary to many opinions, Salesforce Triggers mirror the actions of most database software triggers. Typically, they are fired up when certain actions within the system occur, especially sending data to other services like Google Analytics.
Hence, Salesforce can be customized to manage Users ID, modify the users’ data stored in Google Analytics, and fill in extra fields of users (like Customer Lifetime Value) in Salesforce into Google Analytics.
With this method in full swing, you can get real-time updates to your Google Analytics data without hitches in data quality.
It should be however noted that there are some restrictions to what Salesforce triggers are capable of.
Typically, each Salesforce license comes with only 200 @futurecalls. For you to send data to Google Analytics, you can only use 10 @futurecalls per transaction. Hence, you need to prioritize what data that should be sent to Google Analytics.
Querying the API for Google Analytics and sending the data to Salesforce
Google Analytics has a number of APIs for processing data linked to your account. Experts who know their way can create or modify scripts that latch on to Google Analytics for specific data and send that data to Salesforce with the aid of Bulk APIs or REST.
Salesforce also has a handful of APIs for various applications. For you to make good use of these APIs, you need to modify or create a Custom App in Salesforce and build it on a personal server to set it in motion.
With this method, you can periodically transfer data to Salesforce from Google Analytics, especially when Salesforce is not readily available.
If, for instance, you want to find out the medium or first source of a visitor’s history, you can retrieve that particular data by imputing a user-specific key in Google Analytics. That data can now be uploaded to Salesforce for use.
Querying the API for Salesforce and sending that data to Google Analytics
Similarly, Windsor AI will help you pull data from Salesforce into Google Analytics by making use of its APIs in which the data will now be uploaded to Google Analytics.
This method works typically with the aid of Data Import or Measurement Protocol and necessitates a service on a personal server to get things going. It also requires authentication from a Salesforce app. Using this method, data can be transferred from Salesforce into Google Analytics without the use of Triggers.
Integrating Salesforce Sales to Google Analytics 360
Group Product Manager for Google Analytics, Kyle Harrison, announced in a blog post last year that Salesforce Sales Cloud Data can now be fully imported into Google Analytics 360.
With a handful of changes done to your website, you can connect your personal Google Analytics 360 and your Salesforce account together, with your GA 360 license intact.
This integration is specifically designed for people that have been using Forms to store information to Salesforce.
The process involved is quite lengthy. You can read all the instructions here. Once the process is completed, Salesforce will import changes to Opportunities and Leads after sending data back to Google Analytics.
Following any of the aforementioned methods will fuse both your Salesforce and Google Analytics accounts and place you on an eagle’s eye view of the activity on your website.
Get in touch and see how windsor.ai can do this for you!
Try Windsor.ai today
Access all your data from your favorite sources in one place.
Get started for free with a 30 - day trial.
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