GA4 Advanced Segments, Audiences, and Comparisons are three ways to group your visitors, sessions, and events in Google Analytics data and find deeper insights. These three features are somewhat similar in their functionality while are also different. In this post, I am going to clarify what these three features are, how they are similar or different from others, and when you use them.
Comparisons in GA4
The comparison feature in Google Analytics (GA4) allows you to compare one subset of your data with other subsets. This feature is available on top of most of the standard reports. Those who are familiar with the Segments or Advanced Segments feature of Google Analytics will find this feature similar. However, this feature is very limited in nature and can't be considered "Advanced Segment". You can read about this feature in detail at Comparisons in Google Analytics 4 (GA4).
Use Comparisons, when you want to quickly compare your data from past data.
Segments in GA4
A segment is a subset of your data. In GA4 segment allows you to narrow down and focus on a group of users or sessions based on common attributes and conditions.
This feature is only available in Exploration, Segments can not be used in standard reports while Comparison is available for comparing charts and various metrics in Standard Reports. Comparison on the other hand can't be used in Exploration.
Just like Comparison, segments look at the users in past sessions so are retroactive. Read GA4 Segments Explained for more details on Segments.
Use segments when you want to drill deeper into your data explore it in detail.
Audiences in GA4
GA4 Audiences are groups of users based on common attributes, behaviors, etc. You can create an Audience using dimensions, metrics, and events to include any subset of users that makes sense for your business. In this post, you will learn about the GA4 audience so that you can start to create and use them with confidence.
Segments can not be used in standard reports while Audience can be used in standard reports by including them in Comparison as comparison criteria.
The audience is not retroactive, which means the Audience starts to accumulate users from the moment you build it. Audiences can be used to build comparisons and also target and retarget users using Google Ads. Read GA4 Audiences; How to create, edit, archive, and use Custom Audience to learn more about Audiences.
Use Audiences when you are going to target your users on Google Ads and do some quick comparisons.
Consulting - We can get you up and running with Google Analytics 4 as well as train your and your team to use it effectively. Reach out to us for more details.
Google Analytics 4 also know as GA4 is in news for the past year. Here are some Google Analytics 4 blog posts that will help you demystify this new tool from Google.
When you create a new Google Analytics property it is automatically created in GA4, this post shows you how you can create it in the old version. Read more...
Well GA4 is all new, this post answers if you should upgrade or not. Read more...
Learn More about GA4
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Google Analytics 4 is here and is now the default version of Google Analytics when you create a new property. For all the existing Universal Analytics, current or previous version depending on how you look at it, there is an option to upgrade to Google Analytics 4. I am sure you have several questions regarding this upgrade process. I am going to answer many of those in this and several other blog posts.
Send me your questions by leaving a comment below:
The upgrade is not what it sounds - Upgrade usually means that you lose the previous version and just get the new functionality, right? Well, that is not the case with Google Analytics upgrade to Google Analytics 4. Upgrade in this case means that you will get a new Google Analytics property that will take some basic settings from your current Google Analytics property and use those to set up a new Google Analytics 4 property. So there is no need to worry about losing your existing property. After the upgrade process is complete, you will actually have two properties collecting data for your web site. This gives you an opportunity to play with the new version without losing your existing setup and functionality.
New setup and possibly new tags will be required - If you are using gtag on your current site then you can use it to send the data to the new Google Analytics 4 property. If not then you will have to put new tags. The global site tag (gtag.js) is a JavaScript tagging framework and API that allows you to send event data to Google Analytics, Google Ads, and Google Marketing Platform. If you are not using gtag then you will need to add new tags on your site. If you are using Google Tag Manager then you will have to set up new data collection tags. Many things such as events, audience, and conversions will require setup changes.
No Views - In Universal Analytics you had the ability to create a view to see a subset of your data. For example, if you wanted to remove traffic to your site from within your organization then you would create a new view, apply a filter that removed internal traffic, and then used that view to understand site usage by "actual" users. (learn more about the view on Optizent YouTube channel). In Google Analytics 4 you don’t have an option to create views instead of views you can use analysis Hub or segmentation feature to narrow down to the data that you want to track and analyze.
New data model - Google Analytics 4 has a completely different data model than the previous version - Google Analytics 4 is based around Events and Users. Every session is an event, a page view is an event, every interaction within the browser is already tracked, and an event or can be tracked as an event.
Event tracking has changed - In Universal analytics, event tracking required you to pass the parameters, Category, Action, and Label attributes. Event tracking has now changed, you now have parameters and values attached to each event and you can pass up to 25 name-value pairs are parameters. This allows for deeper analysis (check out Google Analytics & Events setup video).
Several Events are tracked without any setup - Google Analytics 4 automatically tracks scroll, outbound link clicks, downloads, engagement with YouTube embedded videos, and onsite-search. They are set up by default when you create a new Google Analytics 4 property. You can disable them if you would like in the admin panel of Google Analytics 4 property (check out Google Analytics & Events setup video).
Goal and conversion tracking has changed - In the past there was a separate setup for Goal tracking where you define different types of goals and set them un in the "Admin" interface of Google Analytics view. Now it is all ever based. You define and track an event and convert an event into a conversion event right within Google Analytics property (check out Google Analytics & Events setup video).
Not all reports are available in Google Analytics 4 - Google Analytics 4 has a limited number of predefined reports. Many of the reports that you have been used to in Universal Analytics are no longer there. Some of them are not available because Google Analytics 4 is still in development, others are not available because the Google Analytics data model has changed and those reports don't make sense anymore. Instead of pre-defined reports, Google Analytics 4 has "Analysis Hub" which is similar to Google Data Studio type reporting or Adobe Analytics Workspace. In this interface, you pick Dimensions, Metrics, and Segments to build the report that you want. This new interface and metrics/dimensions means that you will have a bit of a learning curve so be prepared for it.
No Bounce Rate - Many of you have relied on bounce rate for years to see how successful your site or marketing campaign was. Well, the Bounce rate is no longer in Google Analytics 4. Instead of bounce rate, Google Analytics 4 provides Engaged Sessions. An engaged Session is defined as a visit that engages with the site or app for at least 10 seconds or has two-page view events or a conversion event.
Numbers will not match - Since there is a difference in Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics measurement, data model, and processing of hits, some numbers won't match between the two systems. You will likely find a slight difference in Session count and Active User Count.
Real-time reporting provides you a view into what is happening at that very moment. In the context of Web Analytics, real-time reporting gives you a glimpse into what't happening on your website at .
It provides you view into on how many visitors are on your site. Which campaigns, sites, search engines, social media sites etc. they are coming from, which pages they are looking at, what actions they are taking on on etc.
How Real-time reporting can help
Though most of your insights are going to come from the not so real-time data. Real-time reporting can help in several scenarios. Below are some use cases for real-time reports:
Campaign Launch - When you launch a new campaign e.g. paid search, email newsletter, TV ad etc. you want to see how people are reacting to those campaigns then real time makes sense but only for initial diagnosis. Wait for complete data to make any changes.
New Promotion - When you add new promotions on your site and want to see how visitors are reacting to those promotions, so that you can tweak/ experiment new version of those promotions in real time, then yes you should look at real time data.
New story/content - When you add new stories, links etc. and want to see if anybody is clicking on them so that you can make some changes based on instant feedback. I can see the usefulness of this feature for news and media sites.
Site Changes - When you launch a new version of the site and want to see if new pages are being recorded in Google Analytics and if you users are interacting as expected then real time reports can help.
Tracking Changes - When you roll out new tracking changes and want to see if those changes are working or not. For example, you just enabled Event Tracking via Google Tag Manager and want to see if the events are capturing the right data or not. In this case you will check the real time Events report in Google Analytics. I expect you to check the changes on a development and QA environment before rolling out.
New Features - When you launch a new feature on your site, launched a video, deployed a new game and would like to know if your visitors are using it or not, real time reports can help.
Keep in mind that even if you are ready to make changes in real time, you might not have statistically significant results based on few data points that you get in real time reports.
Should you build your audience and pages only on 3rd party platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc.? This is a questions that I see quite frequently in various digital marketing forums.
In this post I am going to provide you my point of view on this subject.
These 3rd party platforms are huge with lots of traffic so first and foremost you should try to grab your share of the traffic from them. You should work hard to clearly figure out how to make the most of these platforms and how to leverage their reach to help your business grow. However, you should not build your entire business on them.
Why you might ask? Because they have the power to shut you down anytime for no fault of your own.You don't want to be in a situation where you entire business comes crashing down one day. You are at their mercy, you don't control their terms and polices, either you agree or disagree. If you disagree then you can't be part of that platform or network.
If for some reason you are found in violation of any of their terms and policies you could be completely shut out. Then all you are left with is to fight with back and forth emails, if you are lucky. In most cases you might not even get a timely response.
Some Examples:
Facebook blocked user accounts - Check out this post titled "What I Learned When Facebook Disabled My Account". This post has a lot of comments about people losing their access to Facebook and hence access to their pages and groups etc.
Twitter suspending accounts - Below is an example tweet that shows you that once your account gets suspended then it becomes difficult to get it restored
My Experience:
I also had such experience recently where Google shut down my account for a few minutes. I am still not sure why that happened. All I got was an email that my account was suspended for not following Google policies but they did not give any clear indication. The email was very generic in nature and I believe that was done automatically by an algorithm. Since the email was sent to my gmail account, I only got that after the account was restored. I was lucky that it got restored automatically in few mins.
However this experience was scary as I have a lot of stuff on Google. I have my emails on Gmail, my pictures on Google, Videos on YouTube, this blog is on Blogger (owned by Google), Google docs etc. Imagine if I was left without access to these things for days.
Solution
Always keep a backup of important files, documents, emails and audience that your business depends on.
Businesses
Drive your audience to your own websites and blogs (not a free platform as I do). Facebook pages, groups, twitter accounts are all great but you really don't own them so make sure to drives users to your own sites.
Build your own marketing lists - collect emails.
Own the customer information and data rather than just relying on a pixel that sends the data to Google and Facebook.
Individuals
Have a back email solution - keep important contacts and emails in multiple places
Keep backup of your docs, photos, videos etc. in multiple places - I keep them in Google, Amazon, OneDrive etc.
If you want to keep them in one place then have multiple account access so even if you lose one account, you have other admin accounts that can access them.
Do you really own anything?
You rent domains names, host sites and data in cloud owned by other companies. They can decided to shut it down for violation of terms. Your emails service provider sends emails on your behalf, they can take away your ability to email to your customers if you have too many spam complaints or other service violations. Your business or personal digital assets are stored with someone else, there is a possibility of you losing access. Isn't it?
Anything else you would like to add? Share you experience in the comments below.
I am excited to announce that I will be conducting Digital Analytics Association's Essentials Series – Fundamentals in Digital Analytics. This is a LIVE, interactive, discussion-based education program that will be offered completely online, and only once per year. You’ll have access to me and fellow classmates through DAA's learning platform.
When you sign up for the first Essentials Series Online course, Fundamentals of Digital Analytics, you will learn key competencies, and gain knowledge and skills in the areas of: data capture and measurement, reporting and forecasting, analytical business culture, site optimization and marketing campaigns.
So, what can you expect from your LIVE learning experience:
Course 1 - Fundamentals of Digital Analytics is a series of 6 LIVE classes that are prescheduled, and will begin on Tuesday, April 14th. The courses will be held on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12:00pm EDT – 1:00pm EDT with me conducting an “online class” format, allowing students access to a SME for Q & A and/or class discussion.
This will consist of: Coursework/assignments that will be completed weekly prior to the online class . Zoom technology will be used, and sessions will be recorded for accessing on-demand. Never use Zoom technology for your learning before? Check out the software and technology requirements to support this learning format. It will require a PC, Tablet, iPad, etc. that has audio and video capability. This will allow for the full, LIVE, virtual learning classroom experience.
What you will learn in the Fundamentals of Digital Analytics course: Whether you are new to web analytics, new to web management, or just need to be sure that you are seeing the forest for the trees, this is the best place to get grounded in the basics. In this introductory workshop you will learn about:
Metrics terminology and technology
Most critical web metrics
Performance Indicators
How to derive business value from web analytics
The skills you need (or need to look for in others) to build a web analytics powerhouse
A process for creating a web analytics culture and making it stick in your organization
How to gain executive buy-in
Insight into optimizing your business with web analytics
Getting started with visitor data analysis
Class dates/times will be:
Tuesday, April 14th, 12:00 pm ET – 1:00 pm ET
Thursday, April 16th, 12:00 pm ET – 1:00 pm ET
Tuesday, April 21st, 12:00 pm ET – 1:00 pm ET
Thursday, April 23rd, 12:00 pm ET – 1:00 pm ET
Tuesday, April 28th, 12:00 pm ET – 1:00 pm ET
Thursday, April 30th, 12:00 pm ET – 1:00 pm ET
Tuesday, May 5th, 12:00 pm ET – 1:00 pm ET (Make-up class if needed)
Upon completion of the course, candidates/participants will receive:
Certificate of Completion in the Fundamentals of Digital Analytics.
Digital Badge to promote to others your successful completion of this course.
Evaluation of the course, so we can continue to improve for future learners.
Pricing for Essentials Series Course I: Fundamentals of Digital Analytics:
Member: $850
Non-Member: $1050
How do I get started?
Take your career to the next level by earning a Certificate in the Fundamentals of Digital Analytics
I am pleased to announce that my first ever book is now available on Amazon.
Google Tag Manager - Zero to Hero
This book teaches you everything you need to get started with Google Tag Manager. The book is based on my best selling Google Tag Manager Course.
Reviews:
If you know nothing about Google Tag Manager, this is THE very best place to start. If you've been working with Google Tag Manager for some time, this book will validate what you know and unpack the complexities you've tripped over. There is no fluff in this book. It jumps straight into the details in the proper order and at the right speed for understanding and mastery. There are no wasted words - no wasted time.
I've known Anil Batra for almost 20 years through our relationship in helping create the Digital Analytics Association (DAA) and his speaking at my Marketing Analytics Summit. He has given lectures, produced workshops, and delivered online courses for the DAA (and other organizations), teaching thousands of students. All of them have given Anil the highest scores for his lucidity and the depth of his knowledge. Anil is that rare combination of knowledgeable, forthcoming, and accessible. Clearly, I am a fan.
- Jim Sterne, Founder Marketing Analytics
Summit & Co-Founder Digital Analytics Association I have been a member of Anil's Udemy classes and Facebook group for quite some time. I bought the book because it is a great resource to refer to. Plus, it makes me smarter! He is an excellent instructor, you will love his presentation style. - Brenda M.
In this book I take you through various features of Google Tag Manager and show you how you can implement various Tags.You will go from not knowing anything about Google Tag Manager and Data Layers to mastering them and using them with confidence.
The book will cover the following topics
Fundamentals and Essentials of Tag Manger (Applies to any tag manager)
Signing up for Google Tag Manager
Details of Google Tag Manager Interface
How to setup Google Tag Manager for Google Analytics and track page views
How to setup external link tracking as Events in Google Analytics via Google Tag Manager
How to setup Button click tracking in Google Analytics
How to track JavaScript errors using Google Tag Manager ( GTM)
Deploy GTM in WordPress
Understand and use Data Layer in Google Tag Manager
Pushing dynamic values and custom event in DataLayer
These days there is a lot of buzz in the marketing community about use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in marketing.
In this post I will cover some basics of AI that you need to know before you can explore how AI and ML can help you in your marketing efforts.
What is Artificial Intelligence?
There are several definitions of Artificial Intelligence or AI. The simplest one to understand is from Oracle.com: "Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to systems or machines that mimic human intelligence to perform tasks and can iteratively improve themselves based on the information they collect."
So in a nutshell AI refers to machine, which can learn and become intelligent like humans.
AI is an umbrella term that includes algorithms, concepts, tools, technologies etc. that perform these complex human like tasks.
One of such and widely used concept in AI is Machine Learning. Keep in mind that all machine learning is AI but not all AI is Machine Learning as AI include much more than just Machine Learning (ML).
What is Machine Learning (ML)?
Machine learning is the practice of using statistics to parse large amount of data (structured and unstructured), find patterns in it, learn from it, and then make a determination or prediction about something in the world. So rather than hand-coding software routines with a specific set of instructions to accomplish a particular task, the machine is “trained” using large amounts of data and algorithms that give it the ability to learn how to perform the task. (definition modified and adopted from: Nvidia).
Machine learning builds a mathematical model based on sample data, known as "training data", in order to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed to perform the task. (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning)
There are three major types of learning used to train these models - Supervised learning, Unsupervised Learning and Reinforcement Learning.
Supervised Learning
In supervised learning, the algorithm builds a mathematical model from a set of data that contains both the inputs and the desired outputs.
(source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning)
Example: Predict churn propensity of a customer.
You can provide training data that contains customers purchase data, past behavior data (input) and then each customer is labeled if they churned or not. Based on this data, model learns what purchase and behavior data will cause all the customers to be labeled as "Churn Risk" or "Not Churn Risk".
Unsupervised Learning
In unsupervised learning, the algorithm builds a mathematical model from a set of data which contains only inputs and no desired output labels. Unsupervised learning algorithms are used to find structure in the data, like grouping or clustering of data points. Unsupervised learning can discover patterns in the data, and can group the inputs into categories. (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning)
Example: Uncover customer segments.
Unsupervised learning can help find various customer segments in your customer data using customer attributes, sales, onsite behavior etc.. This can then be used to drive better customer engagement and better marketing performance.
Reinforcement Learning
In Reinforcement learning, the agent (also called Machine, model or AI) is given a problem to solve and faces a game-like situation. It is given rewards for positive behavior and punished for negative behavior as it tries to solve the problem.. These rewards are provided by the developer of AI. The machine uses trial and error to come up with a solution to the problem. The developer does not provide the model any hints or suggestions for how to solve the game. It’s up to the model to figure out how to solve the problem and maximize the reward. The end goal is to make the model learn desired behavior that maximizes the total reward.
Example: Provide recommended products to customers.
Reinforcement leaning can be used to develop a online product recommendation engine.
Other Terms that you should be aware of Structured Data
Data that can be organized in rows and columns such as Customer Demographics, Sales data, onsite behavior data etc. Unstructured Data
Free form data such as word documents, call scripts, pdf, images etc. Anything that is not structured is classified as Unstructured data.
Marketing Uses of AI
There are several ways AI can be used in Marketing. Here are some examples, this is not a complete list. I will add more articles in future to cover several use cases.
Customer Segmentation
Ad budget allocation across channels or by channel
Content creation
Chatbots - Which understands humans questions and then responds with appropriate response.
Churn Prediction/Customer Retention
Product recommendation engine
Hopefully this article provides some clarity to the confusion around AI in Marketing.
Your turn now. Are you using AI for marketing? If yes, how? If not then why not? What are the challenges. Let's talk.
Excel is one of the most used tool for data analysis by marketers, marketing analysts, web and digital analysts.
We (Optizent.com) have developed a course that will teach you Excel Functions and Features that you need for Marketing Analytics. You will also get several practical examples of how to use them for your analysis. Not only do we teach excel functions and features useful for Marketing, Digital and Web Analytics but also you will get cool ideas about what data you can analyze.
What you’ll learn
Understand various types of errors Excel throws and how to fix them
How to suppress the error or replace them with more meaningful data
Learn different ways of combining data from multiple columns
Understand different types of cell references.
Bulk delete blank rows to clean your excel sheet data
Find duplicate rows of data, highlight them and/or bulk delete them
Learn how to use VLOOKUP - Uses search engine (SEO) keyword data as an example.
Learn Pivot Tables - Example: Digital Marketing Campaign Analysis
Find Optimal Campaign Budget Allocation with Excel Add-In Solver - This will change the way you allocate your marketing budgets.
Course requirements or prerequisites?
You should be familiar with the basics of Excel.
Who this course is for:
Anybody who wants to learn about some key features in Excel how to apply them to common data issues.
There are several tools in the market for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Some are free and some are paid. Google Analytics is one such tool, which is free.
I have developed an online course, that will teach how to use Google Analytics to get better at Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Google Analytics provide lots of valuable information that you can use to your advantage and have higher ranking sites on Google, Bing etc.
This course also gives you an overview of Google Webmaster Tools also called Search Console and show you how you can get that data into Google Analytics.
What will you learn:
Understand which Google Analytics reports to use to get insights to improve SEO
Get insight into (not provided) keywords that show up in Google Analytics keyword report.
Get a quick overview of Google Web Master Tools (Google Search Console) and connect it to Google Analytics
Understand and use Landing Pages, Devices, Countries and Keyword reports from Google Search Console
Learn how to compare various traffic drivers showing up in Google Analytics reports.
Segment Organic traffic in your reports.
Get a free SEO Custom Dashboard template that you can use to develop your own dashboard and use it right away and wow your boss.
