How to integrate 6sense with Google Analytics

Kimberly Conklin
Kimberly Conklin Posts: 377 6senser
edited March 28 in General

Curious about how to integrate 6sense with Google Analytics?

Thanks to our friend Justin Dunham at Ercule, here is a step-by-step article on how to set up the integration and gain a more comprehensive outstanding of your website's performance and the behavior of specific accounts.

****UPDATE!*****

The above article references the 6sense Webtag 1.0 - here is the accompany 6sense Knowledge Base article for that.

New customers only have access to the 6sense Webtag 2.0 and should refer to these instructions.

Tagged:
«1

Comments

  • shastert
    shastert Posts: 7 ✭✭✭✭

    Is is possible to push segments into GA4?

  • Hi there, this is possible. GA4 introduced a lot of complexities and new functionality. We have just about finalized our GA4 migration internally at 6sense and will soon be providing a complete walk-through of how to accomplish this. Appreciate your patience!

    Adam Kaiser

    VP, Growth Marketing

  • Karen S
    Karen S Posts: 5 ✭✭✭

    Is there an ETA on the "complete walk-through of how to accomplish this"? Definitely looking forward to that! My 6sense dimension in GA4 all show "not set"; I've been relying on Universal Analytics for info.

  • Brandon McBride
    Brandon McBride Posts: 265 ✭✭✭✭✭✭

    Hey, I'm off until Wednesday but let me know if you don't have it figured out by then. We've had it set up for a while now in GA4. I'm happy to help.

  • Karen S
    Karen S Posts: 5 ✭✭✭

    @Brandon McBride are you pulling the custom dimensions into GA4? Would love to hear how you made that work. I'm not sure what I have wrong in my implementation.

  • Brandon McBride
    Brandon McBride Posts: 265 ✭✭✭✭✭✭

    Yes, we're pulling in company name, buying stage, etc. and then importing them as user dimensions into GA4.

    When I get my work computer today I'll pull up the tags and take some screenshots for you.

  • Jason Pereira
    Jason Pereira Posts: 1 ✭✭✭

    @Brandon McBride Thanks for sharing this Brandon, really helpful.

  • Raj Bakker
    Raj Bakker Posts: 4 ✭✭

    Hi @Brandon McBride Thank you for posting this up. Especially the trigger element for 'Send company details' which is not in the official documentation


    I'm trying to create some custom dimensions in GA4 off the back of these, and have run into this error.


    Have you encountered this yet?



  • Karen S
    Karen S Posts: 5 ✭✭✭

    @Brandon McBride

    I can see my 6si_company_details firing in the Events report of GA4, but my custom dimensions are still returning (not set) and I see nothing in the debug panel. I've gone through everything in GTM and can't find where I messed up. Any suggestions?

  • Brandon McBride
    Brandon McBride Posts: 265 ✭✭✭✭✭✭

    @Raj Bakker I have run into that. It has to start with a letter. I just ended up naming it "company_name" all across the board. It made it a lot easier to reference.

    @Karen S Do you have a screenshot or two of what you're seeing?

  • Karen S
    Karen S Posts: 5 ✭✭✭

    @Brandon McBride , I am fairly certain that the issue is operator error, and I'm also fairly certain that I'm staring right at the error and just can't see it.

    Any help you could give me would be extremely appreciated!!!

    ~Karen

  • Brandon McBride
    Brandon McBride Posts: 265 ✭✭✭✭✭✭
    edited July 2023

    @Karen S

    Okay, I think I have it. Your web tag is good to go, but you have "Send 6Sense Company Details to GA4" triggering on 6Sense Company Details Loaded OR All Pages.

    You don't need it on the All Pages trigger. The "6si_company_details_loaded" trigger is an event that fires at the end of the 6Sense web tag. Using this trigger ensures that the details are sent to GA4 only once they've been loaded by the 6Sense web tag.

    If it fires on all pages, it opens the possibility that the GA4 event will fire unrelated to the 6Sense web tag, resulting in empty values as the standard pageview event may load before the user properties do . There are a few reasons this could happen, but the short version is to just use the "6si_company_details_loaded" as your only trigger to ensure it happens right after the web tag deploys in the initialization step.

    Now, it looks like you're already doing this, but for anyone who isn't yet - here's how you add your user properties as custom dimensions so that you can filter on them in Explore reports, Looker Studio, etc.

    In the custom definitions section of your settings:

    Go to Create New and do something like this:

    As you can see with Karen's work, it's okay to name them almost whatever you want. GA4 gets uppity about starting things with a number and capital letters in the technical values, so I tend to keep everything lowercase and underscore in GA4 and GTM so I don't have to worry about remembering what matches what. Feel free to capitalize the Dimension Name, though.

    When you're done, you'll see a bunch of stuff that looks like this in the list:

    And if you want to make sure data is coming through, besides the debug tool, you can build a simple Explore report for traffic by buying stage:

    These things are super ugly, though. Looker Studio or BigQuery all the way.

    See? So much nicer, relatively speaking. Guess when I started tracking? You can do this with ICP traffic, too, if you can define your ICP in ways outside of a segment (character limits in GA4 for user properties are a buzzkill). Decision and Purchase traffic is growing, which is great. Awareness is a large percent of total due to some in-depth blogs that drive a lot of organic traffic.

  • Raj Bakker
    Raj Bakker Posts: 4 ✭✭

    I have a similar setup to Karen except I had my tag trigger on just the '6Sense company details loaded trigger'


    Mine is still not pulling in the user properties in debug mode - will update you all as I'm going through 6Sense support.

  • Brandon McBride
    Brandon McBride Posts: 265 ✭✭✭✭✭✭

    Good luck @Raj Bakker. Let us know what happens.

    If anyone is cool with it, I'm happy to take a look inside of your GA4 and GTM instance, free of charge.

  • Karen S
    Karen S Posts: 5 ✭✭✭

    @Brandon McBride I would definitely be cool with it! I'm still unable to get this to work in GA4. Fortunately, still collecting data in Universal, but I'm sure that will stop soon :-(

    My "Universal tag," using the original script, is firing twice (6si_send_cd_to_GA). My new GA4 event (Send 6sense Company Details to GA4) is not firing at all, but the new script (6sense Web Tag 2.0) is loading.

    I would greatly appreciate any help!!

  • Brandon McBride
    Brandon McBride Posts: 265 ✭✭✭✭✭✭

    @Karen S It looks like you have two 6Sense tags potentially? 6Sense Page View Tracking on the right and the Web Tag 2.0 on the left. I'll send you a message and if you want to provide access I can take a look.

  • charlotte.spangler
    charlotte.spangler Posts: 55 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Brandon McBride I am also having issues getting my GA4 data for company name/domain to show up. I've got it on 6sense company details loaded. I've followed the instructions but still can't get the individual user properties to show up in GA4. Thank you!

  • Brandon McBride
    Brandon McBride Posts: 265 ✭✭✭✭✭✭

    @Kimberly Conklin I'm happy to continue helping others troubleshoot their GA4 integration, but would you prefer I do it here or in a separate thread?

  • @Brandon McBride Let's start a new thread with GA4 in the title so folks can search it. 😎

  • Brandon McBride
    Brandon McBride Posts: 265 ✭✭✭✭✭✭

    @charlotte.spangler Feel free to head over here and share some screenshots. https://revcity.6sense.com/home/discussion/500/ga4-company-data-troubleshooting-with-brandon/p1

    @Raj Bakker If you still need help, please reach out there as well.

  • Raj Bakker
    Raj Bakker Posts: 4 ✭✭

    Hi team,

    6Sense has almost finished updating the support article now - in order to push segments to GA4, or other custom model intent scores, it should be contained in their new article.

    My setup now working fine.

    https://support.6sense.com/knowledge-base/11867180025747-install-the-company-details-api-on-google-tag-manager-6sense-webtag-v2-0/?#google-analytics-ga4

  • Brandon McBride
    Brandon McBride Posts: 265 ✭✭✭✭✭✭

    @Raj Bakker Glad to hear your setup is working. Does that include the variable names listed ending in "_6si"? The people who have had trouble implementing have all had that addition to the variable names, but their implementations work once removed.

  • Raj Bakker
    Raj Bakker Posts: 4 ✭✭
    edited July 2023

    @Brandon McBride

    Upon further inspection in the doc - the variable names in my tag manager set up start with 6si_, (unlike in the setup doc)

    (my variable in GTM)


    (new Variable in the setup doc)


    My 'Send 6sense company details to ga4' tag contains these property names and values - notice how the _6si is at the end for the property name and value now.



    Somehow this all works, and is pulling in the data to GA4 with user properties following this naming convention


    Now I'm totally unsure of why that works, and I haven't really even started on the custom dimensions yet as I'm sure something else will either be wrong in the documentation or my implementation.


    This set up was done through 6Sense support having access to our systems as well, so consistency between doc/implementation makes me all the more confused.

  • Hi everyone!

    Alan from the Product team here. I wrote the article, and most other Company Identification API integration articles.

    Please take a look at the latest version of the GA4 guide: https://support.6sense.com/knowledge-base/11867180025747-install-the-company-details-api-on-google-tag-manager-6sense-webtag-v2-0/

    This updated guide has all of the latest data layer variable naming conventions in a table for your reference.

    • @Raj Bakker - You may have data layer variables in GTM set up with the "6si_" at the front of the variable name due to older versions of the integration articles we have published. To fit with the naming convention requirements of GA4 as you identified earlier, we updated the variables to reflect this best practice.
    • Also @Brandon McBride the issue you identified may be due to the older version of the recommended variable names. If you have not moved to WebTag 2.0 yet, then the data layer variables are set based on the custom JS code pasted into GTM. This could be simply the key names without "_6si" which might be why removing it fixed the issue. If you move to WebTag 2.0, we take care of pushing the data layer variables for you without extra custom code, and those variable names are under the "Create Variables in GTM" section.


    Also, I definitely welcome any feedback or requested clarification on the GA4 and other Company Identification API articles!

    -Alan

  • Brandon McBride
    Brandon McBride Posts: 265 ✭✭✭✭✭✭

    @AlanStrahinic Hey! Thanks for checking in. We're currently using Web Tag 2.0 with non-_6si variable names. That section still recommends the _6si variable names, which may be causing the confusion.

    Also, thank you for your articles. I wouldn't have been able to set anything up without them.

  • @Brandon McBride That's great to hear! Thanks for reading 😁

    In regards to the non-_6si variable names, we are actually pushing both to the data layer with WebTag 2.0 which is why they should both work for you. The variables ending in _6si were added in a more recent release than the other variables without the suffix, so unfortunately for that to take effect you would have to re-publish the WebTag 2.0 to refresh the hosted JS in your WebTag 2.0. Most likely you had a 2.0 without the _6si published, and just re-publishing would now cause the _6si variables to be available (you can re-publish by making any change in the 2.0, saving, then reverting that change and saving again).

    Anyway, all of that isn't needed since you were able to figure out the older variable naming convention!

    GA4 put us all through the ringer, and unfortunately this means we had some delays in getting all the pieces in the right places in time! Thanks for you patience and hopefully now everyone can have success in their integration!

  • Brandon McBride
    Brandon McBride Posts: 265 ✭✭✭✭✭✭
    edited August 2023

    Just had a chat with @AlanStrahinic and we managed to figure out the issue. Alan re-published our web tag and all variables are now coming through. I'm getting pretty close to doxxing myself, but here are all of the variables that come through the Web Tag 2.0:

    As you can see, you have the standard set of variables without 6si, as well as a set of variables with 6si at the front and the back. It looks like Web Tag 2.0 pushes through every iteration of variable that 6Sense has had so that whatever your Google Tag Manager setup was, it should still work without the need to reconfigure. Just have your Web Tag 2.0 re-published if it isn't working (or @AlanStrahinic - is there a way we can do this on our own? I didn't have any luck going through the setup steps again for the Web Tag 2.0 so it must have been something else).

    EDIT: Also wanted to note that there are several new variables here to play with.

  • Currently, the easiest way for everyone to refresh their data layer variables (vs. reaching out to 6sense Support) like we did above is to add a temporary setting change, such as the MetaTags feature. Save and Exit, then go back and remove it. This settings change will refresh the WebTag 2.0 hosted code to include all latest releases and enhancements.


  • Adam Bullock
    Adam Bullock Posts: 6 ✭✭✭

    Running into issues here - and did this last step. We'll see if that fixes things :)