With the rise of e-commerce and increasing pressure on businesses to maximize every marketing dollar spent, insights provided by digital analytics tools have become even more crucial.
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the latest version of Google’s web analytics service, providing integrated tracking and user behavior analysis for websites, applications, and other digital platforms. Replacing Universal Analytics (UA) starting from July 4, 2023, GA4 leverages machine learning technology to help improve your long-term return on investment (ROI) by providing valuable insights and a deep understanding of your customers across all devices and platforms.
Eminence provides an overview of these innovations and improvements in the new version of Google Analytics to optimize your long-term marketing strategy.
Smarter insights for better marketing decisions and ROI.
The new Google Analytics utilizes advanced machine learning models to automatically detect significant trends in your data.
INFORMATION: It identifies products with increasing demand due to new customer needs.
ANTICIPATION: It helps you predict future actions your customers might take. For example, it calculates the probability of churn, enabling you to invest more effectively in customer retention.
The improvements and innovations in this new Analytics version are numerous:
- Enhanced tracking tool for a better understanding of customer journeys.
- Smart conversion measurement that uses machine learning models to predict future outcomes.
- More comprehensive reports and in-depth analysis to make more informed decisions.
- Introduction of predictive metrics to help you understand the revenue potential from specific customer groups.
This latest innovation allows you to create audiences to target high-value customers and analyze why some customers are more likely to spend more than others. With this information, you can take steps to improve your results.
Thanks to new integrations with Google’s marketing products, it is now easier to use the collected data to enhance your brand’s return on investment.
For example, advanced integration with Google Ads allows you to:
- Create more precise audiences that receive more relevant and helpful ads.
- Meet long-term advertiser demands.
- Measure interactions between applications and the web, including engaged YouTube views, in your reports.
By combining YouTube video conversions with paid and organic channels such as Google Search, social media, and emails, you can better understand the combined impact of all your marketing campaigns.
→ How to configure Google Analytics 4 using Google Tag Manager?
A more comprehensive understanding of how customers interact with your business
The new Google Analytics GA4 provides customer-centric metrics instead of fragmented metrics based on devices or platforms. By using multiple identity spaces, including IDs provided by marketers and unique Google signals from users who have opted for personalized ads, it gives you a complete view of how your customers engage with your business.
For example, observe how customers discover your business through a web ad, install your application, and make purchases within it.
Furthermore, you can better understand your customers from acquisition to retention. This is crucial as consumer needs evolve rapidly, and real-time decision-making is necessary to acquire and retain new customers.
Based on user feedback, the new version simplifies and reorganizes reports so that you can easily find marketing information relevant to specific customer journey stages.
For example, discover which channels attract new customers in the user acquisition report, and then use engagement and retention reports to understand the actions taken by these customers and whether they remain after conversion.
Built for the long term.
Now is the time to focus on the fundamentals of digital marketing with intelligent analysis. This will enable you to meet:
- Growing consumer expectations.
- Regulatory changes.
- Shifting technological standards regarding user privacy protection.
With a new approach to data control, you can better manage the collection, retention, and use of your analytics data. More detailed controls for ad personalization allow you to choose when to use your data to optimize ads and when to limit their usage.
As the technological landscape continues to evolve, Google Analytics is designed to adapt to a future with or without cookies or identifiers. It employs a flexible measurement approach and will include modeling to fill in gaps when data is incomplete.
→ What will be the impact of Google Analytics 4
Audiences in GA4
In Google Analytics 4 (GA4), audiences refer to users who interact with your website, application, or other digital platforms. Audiences can be segmented based on user attributes such as demographics, behavior, and technology used. These segmented audiences can then be used for deeper analysis, aiding in understanding patterns and trends.
GA4 offers predictive audiences that use machine learning to predict future user behaviors. Audiences can also be used for remarketing in Google Ads, allowing you to target individuals who have interacted with your digital assets.
To summarize,
The key new features brought by Google Analytics 4 are:
- Advanced integration of Google’s machine learning models enables the new Analytics to automatically detect significant trends in your data and anticipate future actions.
- Google Analytics 4 is deployed across all your websites and applications, providing a more comprehensive view of how your customers interact with your business.
- The new Analytics 4 is designed to protect your customers’ privacy and can function without the use of cookies or identifiers. Google will use modeling (Google Signals) to fill in information gaps when cookies cannot be used.
- The features of Analytics 360, previously reserved for paid subscriptions, are now integrated into the free version of Google Analytics.
- Weaknesses identified in the Analytics application and website have been addressed, and e-commerce reporting and a Data Studio connector have been added.
Feel free to contact Eminence for assistance in implementing your Google Analytics 4.