Salesforce + Google Partnership

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Last quarter at Dreamforce it was announced that Google and Salesforce have entered into a global partnership and are releasing an integration which will make Salesforce lead data available in the Google Analytics 360 UI. This is an enormous advancement that makes key pieces of the Google stack, be it GSuite, Google Cloud, or Google Analytics 360, even more competitive across a wide group of industries. Final release dates for use of the tools are forthcoming. Although these two tech giants will likely continue to release tools and features which compliment each other’s platforms, the analytics-based integration rolled out has been requested for years. This will greatly benefit companies who need to see their sales lead data alongside their web behavior data for optimal advancement through the sales pipeline. The idea is that if you can understand what sales leads are doing on your website, you’ll be able to deliver effective content and personalized marketing all throughout the process. Prior to the release, integrating Salesforce Sales Cloud data into Google Analytics, and vice versa, had been challenging enough to deter most companies from investing any significant effort into doing so. It involved manually adding custom fields to Salesforce and importing data into Google Analytics which ultimately enabled the two tools to exchange information. Generally, we would advise clients to set aside 10+ hours to get the project off the ground. Now, for Google Analytics 360 customers, a simple opt-in is all that will be required to see lead data flow straight from Salesforce into Google Analytics 360 . The information exchange works the other way as well. Google Analytics audiences will now be made available in Salesforce for targeting through Marketing Cloud, and holistic dashboarding. If you’re curious about how to get started, check out our step by step guide below, which is followed by a few analysis use cases. Take note that for now, this is reserved for GA360 customers only. The list of reasons to upgrade just keeps growing!  

Quick Start Guide:

  1. Contact your Google Analytics 360 Reseller and let them know you’re interested in hearing more. They will talk you through the future opt-in process and instruct you on which pieces of information you’ll need to provide. Opt-ins open early 2018.
  2. Once you’ve completed the opt-in procedure, you’ll find your newly integrated Salesforce data in your Events reports alongside all of the other valuable event data you’ve already configured.
  3. Look for an Event Category of ‘Lead’—this will denote which events are sent in from Salesforce. The easiest report to see this information in quickly can be found by going to Behavior → Events → Top Events.
   
  1. Nested under the ‘Lead’ Event Category, you’ll find the Event Actions of, ‘Change’ & ‘New’. Change denotes that their status as a lead has been altered, and thus updated in Google Analytics. New would indicate the lead has been added by a team member to Salesforce.
  Now that you know where to find this data, what can you do with it? This is the fun (and incredibly valuable) part.  

Use Cases:

  • Build Goals in GA which are event-based and cue off of your imported Salesforce lead data to indicate a conversion has taken place. Once these Goals have been set up, you may turn around and import them into AdWords & DoubleClick Search.
   
  • Once you’ve set up Goals to reflect movement through your pipeline in Google Analytics, you’re now ready to set up advanced Custom Reports which will enable you to see which Channels or Sources and Mediums (paid and non-paid) were critical throughout the lifecycle of your leads. Thanks to our findings from this report, we can now understand which channels drive and contribute to leads most and least often. This will ultimately help marketers drill in on which platforms they deliver content, and optimize spend or time invested in a data-driven fashion.
   
  • Onto an Analytics Pros personal favorite use case: Advanced Segments. Think of the possibilities! By taking the event structure brought in by the Salesforce import, we can build out segments to look at a lead in any stage, and overlay them onto our most critical and telling reports. I’m now able to see demographics, geography, device browsing behavior, and so many more dimensions and metrics broken out by lead status. In addition, once you’ve laid out these audiences, and grown familiar with them by exploring them throughout the tool, you can (without any tagging) push them into the ad platforms you have integrated with Google Analytics 360.
       
  • Query your Google Analytics → BigQuery export using the defined Salesforce data Event structure. If your company has a User ID that's passed into Google Analytics and joined to other databases or third party systems, you’ll now be able to uncover a multitude of insights about that user’s behavior which now start at the beginning of the sales journey and end in a conversion.
  The integration with Google Analytics and Google’s Cloud database, BigQuery, is what has us on the edge of our seat, but Salesforce and Google have promised many other useful integrations as well, many of which center around the usage of GSuite. Analytics Pros specializes in reselling Google Analytics 360, is a Google Cloud Certified Partner and an authorized GSuite Reseller. If we can help you learn more, please contact our team.