Integrate Google Analytics data with FastSpring in 4 steps
Simply integrate Google Analytics data, such as channel and landing page information, into FastSpring so you can run reports that show you where your signups, customers and revenue are coming from.
Do you truly understand your business’s important metrics? Metrics like which marketing channels and campaigns bring in the bulk of your customers, revenue, and sign-ups? This information is vital to your company’s growth.
Google Analytics is a great tool which helps provide some of this insight. However, it can’t pinpoint and tell you which of your visitors have been converted into customers, how much they pay you, their lifetime value, how frequently they churn, etc.
In order to obtain this kind of information, you need to send the Google Analytics data to your billing platform so that you can divide your revenue reports according to channel and campaign.
No worries if you have no idea how to do this. This article will provide you with step-by-step instructions so that you can use Attributer to send Google Analytics data into FastSpring.
What is Attributer?
Essentially, Attributer is a snippet of code that you place on your site. Once up and running, Attributer starts to scan some technical data to identify where your visitors come from.
After determining their origin, each visitor is grouped according to Channels (like paid social, paid search, etc.) This categorised data is then stored in a cookie in the visitor’s browser.
Whenever a user signs up for your product, Attributer passes the channel information and the lead’s details to FastSpring.
When the data reaches FastSpring, you’ll be able to answer questions such as the following:
- How many customers have I generated from my Google ads?
- What’s the average MRR of customers from my LinkedIn ads vs. customers from my Facebook ads?
- What’s the churn rate of customers from organic Google searches?
Integrate Google Analytics data and Paddle in 4 steps
Using Attributer to connect Google Analytics data with Paddle is easy. Here's how to do it in 4 easy steps:
1. Add hidden fields to your forms
The first step is to add multiple hidden fields to your sign-up forms. These hidden fields include:
- Channel
- Channel Drilldown 1
- Channel Drildown 2
- Channel Drilldown 3
- Landing Page
- Landing Page Group
The other option is to write a simple piece of javascript to pull the data from the cookie and send it through to FastSpring when a user completes a signup form. This is handy if you have Google or Facebook signup options where a user can create an account without actually completing a form. For more information on this, check out this help article.
2. Automatically fill hidden fields with Google Analytics data
Attributer looks at where your visitors come from and once they complete a form on your website, it populates the hidden fields with Google Analytics data.
As an example, if I was a marketer at Dropbox and a visitor came to my website from a brand campaign in paid search, it would populate the hidden fields as follows (depending on the UTM parameters I used behind my ads):
- Channel = Paid search
- Channel Drilldown 1 = Google
- Channel Drildown 2 = Brand campaign
- Channel Drilldown 3 = Dropbox
On top of the information on channel, it would also capture the visitor's first landing page (i.e. dropbox.com/blog/best-crm-software) and the first landing page group (i.e. /blog)
3. Google Analytics data appears in FastSpring
As soon as a user submits a form on your site, the Google Analytics data stored in the cookie, along with information entered by the user, are immediately passed to FastSpring.
4. Run reports to understand which channels are driving leads, customers and revenue
When the Google Analytics data reaches FastSpring, you can start running reports that display your many subscription metrics organised by your customers’ marketing channel and/or campaign of origin.
These include:
- New trials added each month by channel or campaign
- Trial to customer conversion rate by channel or campaign
- New customers added each month by channel or campaign
- New MRR added each month by channel or campaign
- New ARR added each month by channel or campaign
- ARPU by channel or campaign
- Lifetime value by channel or campaign
- Customer churn rate by channel or campaign
- MRR churn rate by channel or campaign
What data gets passed into FastSpring?
Based on our experience, we here at Attributer believe that there are two major elements for attribution:
- Channel - How did visitors arrive on your site? Usually one of organic search, paid search, paid social, referral, etc.
- Landing Page - What content did they find compelling? It could be your features pages, blog, ebooks, etc.
Driven by providing you with answers to these questions and helping your business’s growth, we have built Attributer.
1. Marketing channel data
Attributer instinctively records the information on which channel your leads have come from (i.e., paid social, referral, direct, etc.) as well as additional detail on each channel (i.e., for paid search, it also captures the campaign, ad group, keyword, etc.)
2. Landing page data
Attributer automatically captures the first page the lead sees on your website (i.e., dropbox.com/blog/best-file-storage-tools) together with the category of the page (e.g. blog).
This information is excellent for looking at the performance of all your related content as a whole. For instance, you will be able to see the number of leads your entire blog section has generated. Moreover, you will also be able to zoom in on individual blog posts’ performance regarding lead and customer generation.
What you can do with all this data?
Having the Google Analytics data in FastSpring can be useful in several ways, including:
1. Report on channels
When the Google Analytics data is inside FastSpring, you're able to create reports that provide answers to questions like:
- How many signups did you get from your Google ads?
- What's the signup-to-customer conversion rate of leads from Google ads?
- How many customers have been generated by your Google ads?
- How much MRR or ARR has been generated by your Google ads?
- What's the lifetime value of customers from your Google ads, and how does that compare to other channels?
- What's the overall ROI of your Google ads (spend/revenue generated)?
You can create reports in FastSpring's local reporting tools or pass the data to one of many analytics and business intelligence tools that integrate with FastSpring to build more in-depth reports there.
2. Report on content
Seeing as Attributer also captures data about your visitors’ landing page and the page’s group, you can also build reports that provide you insight into your site’s content performance.
For instance, you can create reports that answer questions like:
- How many signups did I get from my blog?
- Which blog posts have delivered the most signups?
- Which blog posts are converting people into customers?
- What is the ROI of my blogging efforts?
You can also look at how specific sections on your site perform in terms of their conversion rate to customers. So, for example, you can see that while your blog might be attracting a lot of visitors and signups, only a small number are actually converting into customers. Armed with this information, you can now decide whether to continue or allocate your time and resources elsewhere.
Wrap up
If you’ve been meaning to send Google Analytics data into FastSpring, then Attributer is an excellent tool to aid in this.
Attributer is easy to install, and once it’s working, you will be able to build detailed reports and dashboards right inside FastSpring. These reports and dashboards can show you the performance of your content, SEO efforts, advertising campaigns, and more.
The best part is it’s free to get started! So start your free trial today and find out if it works for you.
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About the Author
Aaron Beashel is the founder of Attributer and has over 15 years of experience in marketing & analytics. He is a recognized expert in the subject and has written articles for leading websites such as Hubspot, Zapier, Search Engine Journal, Buffer, Unbounce & more. Learn more about Aaron here.