One of the major selling points for Google Analytics 4, when it was released in late 2020, was the inclusion of predictive analytics metrics, a Big Data feature that until then had largely been the domain of enterprise analytics packages.
Now that Google has announced that GA4 will replace Universal Analytics for all users by July 1, 2023, it’s worth a second look at how GA4’s predictive analytics can impact your business.
Business data is inevitably distributed across multiple systems. However, we know that customers are not prepared to deal with that kind of complexity, especially when they see little relevance or value to the task at hand. A typical location for this kind of friction is in the integration of the Content Management System (CMS) and the Customer Relationship Management system (CRM). Integrating the two can help provide a seamless experience for the customer and increase the overall usability of your website.
We’ve worked with many marketing automation platforms and have written about custom integrations using MailChimp, Salesforce, Marketo, HubSpot, and Bronto. Recently, we’ve been impressed by the combined power of Bronto’s fields, segments, and workflows. Fields are user metadata and can be updated remotely via the Bronto API. Segments are automatically generated lists of users who meet the segment’s criteria. Finally, workflows are intelligent triggers that can be used to initiate a complex series of events. The combination of these features can be extremely powerful for marketers looking to send customized messages to highly targeted lists.
For instance, we recently built a CMS-based blogging platform for FindaTopDoc, a client that showcases medical professionals and their content. Their blog posts go through a series of editorial controls before they are made publicly visible, and if the author has opted-in and configured social sharing, the published posts are also shared to the author’s social media accounts.
Some time ago I wrote a blog post about integrating Salesforce and Marketo in a web marketing solution powered by a content management system (in this case, the eZ Publish CMS). Recently, Mugo had the opportunity to migrate one of our clients from Marketo to HubSpot. The decision to move to HubSpot was made for non-technical reasons; regardless, it is useful to review the technical differences and challenges when it comes to integrating the marketing systems with a content management system.