The Massive Switch from Universal Analytics to GA4

On July 1, 2023, the new GA4 will provide marketers with a powerful look into their customers’ journeys across numerous websites, apps and devices. If your business isn’t preparing right now for this tectonic shift in digital strategy and measurement, your business could be left behind.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I am not an expert on exactly how to optimize for the changes Google is making. However, I hope this serves as a canary in a coal mine for what’s coming, and I encourage you to play around with the new landscape before it becomes reality.

In July, Google Analytics will no longer work as just a tool for reporting campaign results that provides unlimited data with no context behind it. GA4 is inching closer to digital innovation by using artificial intelligence and machine learning to collect data and deliver insights through event-based reporting. This change isn’t a simple upgrade to the Universal Analytics framework: it’s a brand-new way of collecting insights.

Universal Analytics uses a session-based format, and the basic unit of data collected is called a “ hit.” A hit is essentially a package of descriptors that captures a user’s interaction. The most used “hit” type in Universal Analytics is page views.

By contrast, GA4’s event-based format only tracks a user interaction that you specify it to track. Events represent a fundamental data model difference to the language on which we’ve built out KPIs—meaning that for your business to gain insights about your campaigns, you must know your customer, their patterns and your goals before setting up GA4 so that you have contextual data.

If that’s not enough, GA4 doesn’t care about your historical data and KPIs. After the official Universal Analytics retirement date, you’ll have access to it for six months. However, your old data won’t import into GA4 nor can you access your historical data through it.

GA4 will begin collecting data from the moment it is set up, and you’ll only have access to that information, making it a critical moment now to start assessing the forthcoming framework.

Tracking Across Websites Just Became Obsolete

The other massive change coming with GA4 is the loss of one of the most popular tools us data-driven marketers use to learn about customers, “cookies,” leaving the industry to search for new ways to fill the data void. If you’ve heard the term but aren’t t familiar with the lingo, cookies are the small identifiers that have tracked user behavior across the Internet since the mid ‘90s.

Google Analytics 4.0 Set to Disrupt Data Collection, E-Commerce and Marketing Initiatives

When cookies track users across multiple domains, they’re called third-party cookies. All too often, third-party cookies are executed lazily; we all know how lame it is to get an ad for something we’ve already purchased. As more and more websites collect cookie data from users, we can begin to paint a more detailed picture of who that user is, what the person likes and what they are likely to do.

But not all cookies are created equally. When cookies are only used on your website and don’t follow consumers after they leave, they’re first-party cookies. Generally considered more acceptable, first-party cookies are quite useful in a lot of ways: They remember your passwords, auto-fill forms, save items in your cart and suggest favorite products.

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They’re also the only form of cookies GA4 is allowed to use to track data.

To fill the data gaps, GA4 will leverage machine learning and other protocols in a process they’re calling “blended data.” A s a user travels throughout the Internet, their browser will use the new cookie-less algorithm to assign them to pre-made “interest cohorts,” along with many other users who have a similar history. With this approach, Google simulates user data rather than using third-party cookies.

This change single-handedly makes your first-party CRM data—or your Rolodex of data from your club members, repeat and first-time purchasers— the most important tool in your toolbox. (Not that it ever wasn’t, but it’s one of the easiest to overlook.)

Evaluating and mining your CRM data for sales opportunities is critical. Email marketing is one of the best modes of communication we have, and it’s one of the most trusted mediums across generations. Take this opportunity to look for new venues to connect directly to your customers and ensure you’re putting in-house systems into place to deepen relationships once you’ve established them.

There Are Benefits to the New Way of Collecting Data

What excites our marketing team at the Stoller Wine Group most about the new GA4 language is that the design model for event-based measurement is highly flexible, and its use can be extended well beyond today’s scope.

It’s an opportunity for us, as an industry, to embrace transformational change before it’s here. If we want to continue riding the digital high of pandemic-era wins, we must invest in the resources to tell us what’s working and how people are buying. We must focus on enhancing our digital spaces like we do our physical hospitality. We would never send a special pour of Pinot Noir to a table that only drinks Chardonna,y so why do we do that in digital?

What Should You Do Now?

Take a moment to ask yourself, “Where do we want to be in Q4 2023?” Start cultivating the digital tools needed to help you get there so you can reap the benefits for decades to come.

Importantly, make sure your digital partners prioritize keeping up with new technologies, too. Call your e-commerce, POS and CRM providers to ask them about GA4, and what they are developing to keep the wine industry moving forward online. Their involvement will be vital to our collective success, and we cannot accept them developing the tools after change comes.

If you take nothing else away, start thinking about how you want to structure your new KPIs and conversions under the new lens of GA4. WBM

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All wines sold in North America are eligible to enter the competition. Winning entries will be featured in the September and October 2023 issues of Wine Business Monthly. Winners will be announced via digital awards show in August.

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