This article was written by David Grotti, Growth Hacker at Ludos Pro, and co-authored with João Rezende, Growth Sr. at Printed. The translation and adaptation were done by Alexander Russo and Stefania Amortegui from the International Marketing Team.
Do you want to know how to create a dashboard in Data Studio, with live data about your Lead Base and utility with RD Station Marketing? 
Check out this step-by-step so you can start data analysis right now!
Important: This content implies customization and Advanced Edition, a process in which RD Station does not offer support or service.
What is data analysis?
In today's world, data processing occurs 24 hours a day. Data analysis turns numerical data into graphic information relevant to your business. In this way, it is enough to understand what is the most important information and the best way to see it.
Understanding this data and using it correctly is key to the success of your company. Finally, without information, we cannot grow and advance.
How data analysis works in decision making
Previously, decisions were made in unsophisticated ways, either through spreadsheets, personal taste, or just simple guesswork.
Today, everything works differently. Decision-making should be based on relevant data and information. Any company that wants to grow must have data as an ally in its strategy. As William E. Deming, considered a master of quality management, said, "you don't manage what you don't measure, you don't measure what you don't define."
According to estimates published in 2016 by The Wall Street Journal, an average adult makes 35,000 decisions a day, whether they are simple choices, such as what shirt to wear, what shoes to wear, or what to eat for breakfast, or even more complex ones, such as going to which university to go to if it is time to buy a house or make decisions at a professional level.
Therefore, it is important to define which metrics and KPIs are important to your company and how you can collect each of these data. Determine the best graphic style to visualize this data, read it, understand it, start planning, and ultimately make the best decision for your business.
The advantages of using Google Data Studio and data analysis
The advantages are many. Peter Drucker, known as the father of modern management, left two phrases about data analysis for history: "If you can't measure, you can't manage " and " what can be measured can be improved ." Following this line, we will now tell you the main advantages of data analysis:
1. Know your audience and customers better
Knowing your audience is essential to achieve success. Many times, people come up with ideas that are brilliant in their minds, but when they execute them, they realize that the pain or problem was not widespread.
Therefore, you must know your audience, understand their problems, help them solve their problem, and guide them toward a solution in their buying process.
Many times, your user may be learning more about the problem or even discovering at that moment that this problem applies to their reality. This is the Purchase Journey process. In this phase, help him by showing him that this pain can be resolved and that you really know how to help him.
RD Station has a Purchase Process Generator, where you can define and know the steps your leads take until they are ready to buy your product or service. Use the tool to make this process easier!
2. Help in reading scenarios
Data analysis helps you understand what works best for your audience, what content generates the most leads, what was the best content in a given month, what were the top acquisition channels, what was the position and size of the company that downloaded certain material, etc.
With this, you can anticipate the possible path that their leader will take. Through data analysis, you may, for example, discover that a contact who typically downloads x content ends up completing their purchase process by downloading y material.
Another relevant aspect is found in opportunities. Understand the pattern between them, what content drives the most leads, and what path they take to become customers.
3. Support decision making
Make decisions based on your company's data, determine the best path to follow, where to focus the investment of your resources, and what can be improved and what should be avoided.
With data, your decisions will be more accurate and have a better chance of success. Remember that saying that says “against the facts, there are no arguments”.
Step by step to create your Google Data Studio
Now that you understand what it is, why it's important, and what the benefits of data analytics are, we'll walk you through step-by-step how to create your own Dashboard Data Studio today.
The first step is to ensure that the data is being sent from your RD Station Marketing account to a Google spreadsheet, which will be connected to Data Studio for easy data visualization and analysis.
To achieve this, there are two possible ways:
- One of them is free, but requires the installation of a ready-made Google Script,
- And the other one is paid, but it does not require code manipulation and it is done with integration through Integromat.
We will teach you how to do both in this article.
Basically, the steps to create your analysis will be the following:
- Prepare the spreadsheet where the data from your RD Station Marketing account will be received.
- Create the integration with Google Script or with Integromat
- Connect the spreadsheet to Data Studio and set up your dashboard.
But first of all, we will show you some of the information that you can analyze. Remember that this information can only be analyzed if you have collected it in some way within RD Station. Some of the data are:
- Cargo.
- A number of employees.
- Profile.
- Source of the first conversion.
- First conversion.
- Last conversion.
- Total conversions.
Step by step to create your RD Station Marketing data analysis, with the free version using Google Script
Step 1: Create a spreadsheet in Google Sheets
Go to Google Sheets and create a blank spreadsheet. In the first row, enter the following information separated by columns:
- last_conversion.created_at
- name
- company
- opportunity
- last_conversion.content.identifier
It should look like the image below:
After entering the information, go to the menu and click on Extensions and then Application Scripts. A Google code editor will open.
Step 2: Set up and publish your script
At this stage, all the credit goes to Lauro Becker from the company Orgânica Digital. Here you can read the article (in Portuguese) that he wrote about the integration of RD Station with Google Sheets (without third-party tools).
The Lauro script allows you to receive information from RD Station. From here we give you all our thanks.
Sign in to Google Script with the same Google account used to access the spreadsheets and click “New Project”. You must create a new project for each webhook or automation flow that you want to receive information about. Name each script project with the name of the stage at which you want to receive the appropriate information. For example:
- Leads: RD+ Data Studio integration
- Opportunities: RD + Data Studio integration.
Feel free at this stage. The name does not interfere with the project, it only serves to support the organization of the information.
Now, replace the standard script code with the following code:
/*
* RD Station integration script with Google Sheets.
* Developed by Lauro Becker, from Orgánica Digital
*/
function doPost (e) {
var active sheet = SpreadsheetApp.get active sheet ();
var payload = JSON.parse (e.postData.Contents);
var RowContents = [];
var encabezados = ActiveSheet.getRange («A1:A») .getDataRegion () .getValues ()[0];
for (var i = 0; i < headers.length; i++) {
var header = headers[i];
var deep = header.toString () .split (».»);
var data Val = payload [«leads»][0];
para (var j = 0; j < deep.length; j++) {
var d = depth[j];
DateVal = DateVal[d];
}
RowContents.push (DataVal);
}
active sheet. AppendRow(content of the row);
returns "OK";
}
Save the script and access the “publish” menu and then “deploy as web application”.
At this stage, you should pay close attention to some points. In the tab, “Run app as:”, you must be linked to a Google email that you have control of since in the next step you will have to give access permission. In the “Who has access to the app:” tab, choose the option “anyone, even anonymous” - so that the RD Station webhook can access the script.
After this step, some questions about permissions will appear, choose a Google account and follow the process.
There will be a URL available in the next window. Copy it and save it, as we will use it in RD Station.
Step 3: Create the webhook in RD Station
Access your RD Station account, click on your user in the upper right corner and access the " integrations " option. After this step, go to " webhooks " click configure, and "create webhook".
Here you have two options for sending data, and my advice is to create one webhook for leads and one for opportunities.
To do this, fill in the information as shown in the following example:
In the URL step, insert the link we copied from the Google script. Make sure it is the correct script. If you created a script for Lead, insert it into the Lead webhook. All the data will be sent to this script, which will soon populate the information mapped to the spreadsheet.
Thinking about the lead webhook, set the trigger as conversion and, in the conversion events tab, leave the field empty so that all conversions are sent to your spreadsheet.
After this step, your webhook is now configured. You can test it by submitting a lead via the “verify” button. That way, the message "The server responded correctly!" appears. It should appear in the bottom right corner. If that doesn't happen, edit your webhook again.
If it makes more sense for your strategy to map one-off conversions, simply enter the conversion ID of the event you want to analyze. RD Station allows the creation of 10 webhooks.
Now, to create your spreadsheet with the opportunities, follow the same step-by-step mentioned above:
1 – Create a spreadsheet in Google Sheets.
2 – Configure and publish the script.
3 – Create the webhook in RD Station.
The difference between the spreadsheets lies in the webhook creation stage. This time, simply choose the chance trigger. Thus, all contacts that are marked as an opportunity will be sent to your spreadsheet.
Beyond the basics in Google Data Studio
Not enough leads and opportunities? No problem! You can send any lead from a specific flow to your spreadsheet.
Suppose you want to trace the complete journey from the RD Station control panel: lead, qualified lead, opportunity, and sale.
In this case, we have already learned how to map leads and opportunities. But how do you map qualified leads and customers?
It's super simple! Simply create a flow from marketing automation as follows: in the flow input, select the customer segmentation (funnel stage) and then the option “send Leads to your integration”. Now enter the URL of your script to start receiving the data.
You can repeat this process for any stream, but remember to follow the steps below:
1 – Create a new spreadsheet.
2 – Create a new script.
3 – Configure and publish the script.
4 – Paste the script code URL into the desired webhook or automation flow.
Note: It may take some time for the spreadsheet to start receiving the first contacts. Let it enrich for a few days, and while you wait, map the charts you'd like to analyze in your Dashboard Data Studio.
Create a live dashboard in Data Studio
Now is the time to create a Dashboard Data Studio so that you can analyze all this information and make the best decisions for your business.
Sign in to Data Studio with your Google account and click on “blank report”. In case you're not familiar with it, Data Studio is a free online tool from Google for turning data into custom informative dashboards and reports. Google itself offers these accessible Introduction to the tool courses.
After logging in, you must inform the source of your data, which in our case is Google spreadsheets. Click on “Connect to data” and then on “Google Sheets”. This will bring up all the spreadsheets you've created in Google Sheets. Select which spreadsheet you want to send and which tab your data is on.
Ready! The information is already connected to Data Studio and you can create the graphs that best suit your company.
In Ludos Pro, we created the following structure for our RD Station data analytics:
- Adverts.
- Leads.
- Opportunities.
- MQL A.
- PQL.
- Customers.
You can also go beyond RD Station! Other integrations can be done for free in Data Studio, such as with Google Analytics and Google Ads.
How to close the integration? Stepping through Google Script with a golden key
When preparing the spreadsheet, we focused on the last conversion data, but you can further enrich your analysis with this tip. In your Google Sheets spreadsheet, name only 3 columns, as follows:
- first_conversion
- last_conversion
- custom_fields
Once you've created these 3 columns, access your webhook and send a test contact:
In this case, all three columns will receive as much information as possible about your contacts. You just have to understand what data you need to collect and then assign it to the column following the correct structure.
If it is data about the first conversion, give it the name: first_conversion.field-name
If this is the last conversion, give it the name: last_conversion.field-name
Remember to always enter the structure exactly as it is, otherwise, the information will not be received.
In the case of custom fields, you can map them like this: custom_fields. field name
Por ejemplo: custom_fields.number-of-employees
It understands which fields you want to analyze and inserts each into a spreadsheet column, always following the correct structure.
The remaining advice is, to test the column with the information you would like to receive. Log in to your webhook and send a test contact.
If you don't receive your test contact, the problem is that you entered the wrong request in the column. In this way, RD Station cannot find the information you have requested or send you any data.
And if it works, just create your charts in Data Studio and run the analysis.
Here at Ludos Pro, our most important fields are:
- First conversion.
- Last conversion.
- Fuente.
- Profile.
- Interest.
- Cargo.
- A number of employees.
To map this information, we enter the following terms:
first_conversion.conversion_origin.campaign
last_conversion.conversion_origin.campaign
fit_score
interest
custom_fields.consultor-cargo
custom_fields.consultor-officials
Remember that for your company, the structure of custom fields may be different. Review the identifier of the custom field you want to analyze and enter it in the spreadsheet following the correct structure.
Prepare your RD Station Marketing data analysis step by step, with the Pro version without code, using Integromat.
Another way to create a dashboard in Data Studio based on R&D data, without getting involved in programming, is by using the Integromat. The step-by-step follows the same line as creating with Google Script, except that we replace the script creation step with the automation script creation step within Integromat.
To achieve this, we do the following:
1. Prepare the spreadsheet where the data from your RD Station Marketing account will be received.
2. Create the integration with Integromat.
3. Connect the spreadsheet to Data Studio and set up your control panel.
Step 1: Create a spreadsheet in Google Sheets
To do this, we'll use a Data Studio dashboard and spreadsheet template provided by Gabriel Cordeiro , from an article teaching how to integrate RD Station with Data Studio (in Portuguese).
To use the spreadsheet template, access the file and make a copy, like the image below.
Once the model is copied, we will create the integration with Integromat.
Step 2: Create the integration in the Integromat
Integromat is a tool that connects the APIs ( Application Programming Interface ) from different tools to facilitate the creation of integrations without code, that is, connecting tools without the need to be a programmer.
For our script, we need to take different actions to activate our integration. We have to:
1. Create a webhook within the Integromat.
2. Validate the webhook data structure by sending a test lead from RD Station, creating an automation that sends all new leads to our webhook address.
3. Once the webhook is validated, we will map the fields received in the webhook with the columns of the Google Sheets spreadsheet.
To create a webhook in Integromat, we create a new scenario and insert the tool's webhook module. After assigning a name to the webhook, a URL will be created that we will use to send the data from RD Station.
With our webhook URL in hand, we need to validate the webhook's data structure. For this, we created the automation that will send the data to the spreadsheet within RD Station. In this case, we are creating the integration that will send the lead data to the Data Studio dashboard. So we'll send the data of all new leads to the webhook URL.
We select the inbound trigger for new leads and insert an additional “send leads for your integration” step by pasting the URL generated by our webhook.
By activating the script, RD Station will start sending new lead data to the Integromat.
Once the webhook structure is validated, we can map the RD Station data to the columns of our spreadsheet. For this, we need to insert a new module into our Integromat script.
Select the “insert new line” action in the Google Sheets module of the tool:
- Selecting the line creation action in the Integromat Google Sheets module
From here, we select the sheet and tab to which we want to send the data and start mapping the fields that the webhook receives with the columns of the Google Sheets spreadsheet. See how the process turned out in our case, in the images below.
- Selection of the spreadsheet and the tab to which we want to send the data from RD Station
- Mapping webhook data to Google spreadsheet columns
For the avoidance of doubt, the following video shows this entire process, from the creation of the webhook within Integromat, through the validation of the data structure of this webhook and using a test form, to the creation of the automation in RD Station and mapping the fields to the columns of our spreadsheet model.
Step 3: Connect the spreadsheet to the Data Studio dashboard
In addition to the spreadsheet template, we'll also be using the Data Studio dashboard template provided by Gabriel.
To connect the sheet to the board, we first need to make a copy of the board. With our duplicate dashboard, we can insert new data sources, connecting to our spreadsheet's Google Sheets tab. To make this process easier, you can see the step by step in the following video.
Step by step to connect the spreadsheet to the Data Studio dashboard
And that's it! If you want to see not only lead data, but also qualified leads and opportunities, simply repeat everything step by step with the corresponding stage of the funnel.
Attention : this content implies Personalization and Advanced Edition , a process in which RD does not offer support or service .
This article was written by David Grotti , Growth Hacker at Ludos Pro, co-authored with João Rezende , Growth Sr. at Prontmed. The translation and adaptation was done by Alexander Russo and from the Marketing Team for International
