Google Analytics 360 (GA360) offers advanced capabilities beyond the free version of Google Analytics, empowering organizations to enhance data accuracy, scale insights, and make informed decisions that drive revenue. If you’re considering an upgrade, here are the top three reasons why investing in GA360 is a game-changer.
1. Enhanced Data Collection & Reporting Limits
Why This Matters:
GA360 significantly enhances your data collection and reporting limits, providing more flexibility and accuracy for your marketing analytics. With 1,000 shared exploration reports per property (compared to 500 in the standard version), GA360 supports sampling limits of 1 billion events per query (versus 10 million for GA standard). Additionally, unsampled explorations are exclusive to GA360, giving you access to full, accurate data.
GA360 also increases the limits for event parameters, user properties, and calculated metrics:
- Per event: 100 event parameters (27 item-scoped), 100 user properties
- Per property: 125 event parameters (25 item-scoped), 125 user properties, 50 calculated metrics
- Value limits (characters): Event parameter: 500, User property: 36
Business Value:
- Increased accuracy: Access to unsampled data ensures more precise reporting, empowering organizations to make more confident, data-driven decisions about marketing effectiveness.
- Optimized marketing investments: By tracking detailed events and user properties, organizations can allocate resources where they matter most, maximizing conversion and revenue.
- Enhanced user segmentation: With higher limits on key events and audiences, organizations can create more granular targeting, leading to better engagement and higher conversion rates.
- Better performance tracking: The ability to analyze unsampled data means better insights and improved decision-making.
2. More Powerful Integration/API Capabilities
Why This Matters:
GA360 offers enhanced integration and API capabilities, enabling seamless connections with first-party Google Marketing Platform (GMP) tools such as Campaign Manager 360, Display Video 360, Search Ads 360, and Salesforce. While these integrations are also available within GA Standards, some of the key upgrades for GA360 include:
- Hourly exports
- Higher audience and conversion limits
- Higher API quotas
Additionally, GA360 provides BigQuery Daily Export and allows for the export of up to 20 billion events per day (compared to just 1 million events in the GA Standard version). GA360 licensed properties also get access to an additional export option that is not available to GA Standard licensed properties called Fresh Daily Exports. This export type provides regular intervals of updates to the data set that is more complete data export than the Streaming Export option, but also significantly earlier than the one-time Daily Export option.
Business Value:
- Improved customer activation: Enhanced API and integration capabilities lead to more personalized, scalable campaigns across platforms, maximizing reach and engagement.
- Effective remarketing: Leveraging higher limits on audience and conversion data supports better remarketing efforts, driving more sales and revenue growth.
- In-depth analysis: The ability to export billions of events daily allows for deep analysis at scale, unlocking insights into user behavior and market trends that guide strategic decisions. This also opens the door to eligibility for advanced modeling use cases.
3. Increased Data Retention Limits
Why This Matters:
GA360 offers extended data retention limits, allowing organizations to store event-level data for up to 50 months (compared to only 14 months in the GA Standard version). This extended retention provides more robust year-over-year analysis capabilities, allowing organizations to spot trends and behaviors over a longer period.
Business Value:
- Long-term trend analysis: Extended data retention allows organizations to analyze historical customer behavior and trends, leading to more informed strategic planning.
- Improved customer retention: The ability to track long-term data helps organizations fine-tune their customer retention strategies, increasing loyalty and lifetime value.
Bonus Features
1. GTM360 License and Added Benefits
When your organization purchases a GA360 license, it also gets access to a Google Tag Manager 360 license. The GTM360 license unlocks some key features such as unlimited workspaces (as compared to just 3 in the standard version), which enables business users to more effectively collaborate, and reduces the risk of impacting others’ work. GTM360 also supports zones and approval workflows, allowing teams to streamline tagging updates and maintain governance best practices.
Business Value:
- Enhanced teamwork: Unlimited workspaces ensure smoother collaboration without interfering with other teams’ work.
- Faster tagging updates: Concurrent updates enable more agile workflows, improving overall efficiency and reducing time to launch campaigns.
2. Alpha and Feature Pilot Opportunities
With a GA360 license, clients gain exclusive access to feature pilots and alpha testing of certain features that are going to be released to Google Analytics in the future, enabling organizations to test and provide feedback on these features. This helps organizations stay ahead of the curve by adopting new capabilities before they become more widely available to standard licensed organizations.
Business Value:
- Early access to new features: Testing new features provides organizations a competitive advantage by getting first-hand experience with the latest tools and capabilities.
- Direct feedback to Google: Organizations can share active feedback from their experiences concerning these feature that may help evolve the platform to better meet their business objectives and needs.
Additionally, dedicated live support requests can serve as an ability to share direct product feedback concerning current or upcoming features with Google. This provides GA360 licensed organizations the ability to contribute towards future feature enhancements and developments in Google Analytics.
Final Thoughts: Is GA360 Right for Your Business?
If your organization relies heavily on data-driven decision-making, the benefits of upgrading to GA360 far outweigh the costs for organizations requiring advanced data capabilities. From enhanced data collection and powerful integrations to longer data retention and exclusive features, GA360 provides the tools necessary to maximize marketing ROI and business intelligence.
Considering the upgrade? InfoTrust, a Google Marketing Platform Sales Partner, can help you navigate the transition and ensure you maximize the full potential of your organization’s GA360 license. Contact us today to get started!
