Posting Custom Events to Google Analytics

Many people use Google Analytics for tracking AdWord conversions and for aggregate anonymous data reporting. To assist with this, ActiveDEMAND can be configured to post events to Google Analytics. While ActiveDEMAND can be used with pre-configured events, custom events in Google Analytics Universal as well as in GA4 offers more flexibility and power.

Using custom events grants further control over when ActiveDEMAND tells Google Analytics that a conversion has happened. Unlike the pre-configured events, you now have much more complete control over when and what to fire events for. Our favourite use here is to throw an event when a lead passes the filters to be sent to sales, or when a lead is claimed by sales. Now you’re getting “sent leads” or “claimed lead” as conversions in Analytics and Google Ads, which for some companies, is a much higher signal of a quality lead than a regular conversion. You can also enter an event value, allowing for varied values in Analytics and better ROAS calculations.

See this article about setting up Google Services in ActiveDEMAND: Integrating with Google Services

Once you have the Google Services integrated with ActiveDEMAND (specifically Google Analytics), ActiveDEMAND will automatically post events to GA whenever a tracked number is called or a form is submitted. If you want to shut this feature off or customize the event behaviour, turn off the auto-posting feature in ActiveDEMAND (Account Settings- Google Integration)

Customizing the Event Behavior:

ActiveDEMAND has a Post Event to Google Analytics workflow action object.  This allows you to fully customize the Label, Event, Category, Value, and timing of the event posting to Google Analytics. In your Autoresponders or Custom Workflows,

You can use dynamic fields to populate the data in the GA event. 

For example, you could put this into your Sales Notification Workflow and wait, for example, for a deal value (custom field) to appear. Then once you have a deal value, post the value with the session that triggered the conversion. 

Posting GA4 Events

You can easily add both GA4 custom events to ActiveDEMAND workflows.

Add the event name, parameters, and user properties you wish.

Ideas:

• Post event to Google Analytics on chat
• Post event to Google Analytics when a lead is sent to sales
• Post event to Google Analytics when a lead is claimed by sales
• Post event to Google Analytics on email open
• Post event to Google Analytics on form submit
• Post event to Google Analytics on phone call
• Post event to Google Analytics on twitter follow

Creating Events and Conversions in GA4 from ActiveDEMAND events

Just detecting form submits is too high level and you may want to separate events for different forms.

To create a custom event in GA4 for a specific ActiveDEMAND form, you can use a matching condition like this:

You can either match on form_name or form_id, but make sure you've added them as Custom Definitions before using them.

 Supported GA4 event parameters for FormSubmit:
 
form_id: will correspond to the AD form ID
form_name: will match the AD form name with spaces
page_location will give the page URL
page_title will give the page title tag

campaign, medium, source as per usual

To set up GA event goals, please read this article (Setting up call form goals in Google Analytics)