Piotr Korzeniowski: While creating content, you need to keep up with various news and trends from the industry. How do you approach this ever-changing landscape of web analytics? Can you share tips on how to stay up-to-date?

Jude Onyejekwe: I rely on various sources to stay informed about industry developments and changes. I frequently review the announcements of Martech vendors and follow the LinkedIn accounts of data leaders and Martech vendors. I draw inspiration from my work experiences, insights shared by recognized experts, or discussions with fellow marketing analysts. What I found most practical is to observe the challenges faced within my analytics community. Being an engaged member gives an ultimate insight on real-life examples of problems other users are facing.

Being an engaged member gives an ultimate insight on real-life examples of problems other users are facing.

Jude Onyejekwe

Piotr Korzeniowski: Have you observed any influence of being an active community member in your professional life? Could you share some examples of how it can help create new opportunities?

Jude Onyejekwe: There are three direct influences that I can easily point out.

First, you get free access to the experts in the field. The community has helped me find the answers to some of my measurement challenges. One particularly valuable experience was the help of Kuba Bomba from Piwik PRO. He used his expertise to help me resolve my tracking issue concerning the consent banner to manage GTM tags. I decided to write a blog post about it that could help more people with a similar problem.

Also, you acquire knowledge. I have decided to implement a web analytics tool, Mixpanel, on the DumbData website, even though I had only beginner’s knowledge about it. Through the community, I could access interactive product education sessions that addressed common questions and concerns about the product. It was enlightening to witness other community members asking similar questions while the engineers and experts from the company generously shared their expertise during regularly conducted webinars.

Finally, as a community member, you can gather new ideas for your content. Some challenges and discussions have sparked ideas that motivated me to write about topics relevant to the measurement field.

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Piotr Korzeniowski: A lot of SaaS companies right now want to be community-driven. In your opinion, what can they do to create a better experience of being part of the community and engage more active users?

Jude Onyejekwe: SaaS products can enhance the community experience by incorporating certain elements: humanity, curation, democratized knowledge sharing, care, and recognition.

As for SaaS companies, they should act as curators and distributors by sharing information about innovations community members are doing. This can be a detailed guide on customer wins, innovative product usage, or solution built on top of their product. Such a proactive stance has proven highly beneficial in stimulating my own innovation in the past.

Companies can also organize frequent Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions, allowing the community to get answers to burning questions about product usage. It was instrumental in how I learned a particular analytics software. Monthly or bi-weekly product update sessions are also essential to inform the community about recent developments.

Basically, it is important to establish an ecosystem that caters to beginners and helps them understand the product. Community experts, who generously contribute their time to help, should be greatly appreciated. It is immensely valuable that members can submit feature requests and product ideas while actively building what the community truly needs.

Piotr Korzeniowski: Being inside numerous communities around marketing and analytics, did you spot any specific trends shaping the community and its members?

Jude Onyejekwe: One consistent trend that has persisted since the beginning of communities is the desire for a supportive environment where challenges are promptly addressed and resolved.

However, an up-and-coming trend I have observed is the emergence of specialized sub-communities dedicated to helping the industry’s beginners. These communities prioritize providing necessary resources and guidance to master skills and establish successful careers. This focused approach contributes significantly to beginners’ growth and development while starting their journey in the field.

One consistent trend that has persisted since the beginning of communities is the desire for a supportive environment where challenges are promptly addressed and resolved.

Jude Onyejekwe

Piotr Korzeniowski: What is the most rewarding part of actively participating in a community around SaaS products?

Jude Onyejekwe: It has been a tremendous source of inspiration, aiding my knowledge acquisition and career development. Also, it has provided me with valuable access to free assistance from other experts, fostering the growth of my professional network.

Jude Onyejekwe, Marketing Analytics Specialist at Hedy and Hopp and co-founder of DumbData
Jude is an analytics specialist working with businesses across diverse industries in Africa, Europe, and North America. His passion for writing and assisting non-technical marketers to thrive in the ever-evolving realm of analytics gives him great satisfaction. Currently, he works as a marketing analytics specialist at Hedy and Hopp. He also co-founded a resource hub called DumbData.

The post Jude Onyejekwe: SaaS products can enhance the community experience by incorporating humanity, knowledge sharing, and recognition. appeared first on Piwik PRO.

Product: Shift to analytics focused on data integration and activation

After positioning ourselves as the best alternative to Google Analytics for a while, we’re now changing the narrative. Why?

We’ve mentioned GA in our communication to give our potential users a good reference point on what to expect from our platform. Since then, Piwik PRO has become its own thing, known for its focus on privacy and security, and a data-driven approach. With an increasing number of users, a fast-growing community, and expansion in new markets, we simply don’t need to be defined by our competitors anymore.

Going forward, we want to introduce features that will make our users’ work easier, and give them more flexibility and power to decide what marketing tools they use and how.

This means further developing our platform’s data integration and activation possibilities. To me, these are the last missing pieces of the puzzle to achieve our current goal – becoming the leading integrated analytics platform. How are we making this happen?

To start, you can easily integrate all the modules of Piwik PRO Analytics Suite, supply the platform with data ingested from different tools and export the data for further analysis. We’ve also been developing a new customer data platform (CDP), which revolves around making data activation easy. Now you can connect your analytics to external systems, activate the data, and reach users in personalized ways.

Despite extending our product with an activation piece, we will never forget that digital analytics is at the heart of what we do, so we also add new analytics features. From smaller changes, like the option to share reports via a link with people who don’t have a Piwik PRO account, to those most requested by our community – like the possibility to use one email address in multiple instances. To help people start their analytics adventure with Piwik PRO, we’ve also released migration tools from Universal Analytics and Google Tag Manager to Piwik PRO.

The same is true for the ecommerce features we’re working on – we wanted to give our customers more flexibility in their analyses. That’s why we’ve introduced new product-scoped custom dimensions to enrich their data and ecommerce tag templates for ease of use. And, of course, there is much more to come.

Business: Further expansion with partner support

Piwik PRO’s business is booming, with great numbers across all markets.

Here are some insights:

• Our annual recurring revenue (ARR) increased by almost 80% in the last 12 months, while the number of clients grew by 90%.
• In France, our ARR grew 4 times, and the number of clients increased 3.5 times.
• The DACH region noted an ARR growth of more than 45% and a 35% increase in the client number.

This shows how far we’ve come in the past year.

To keep it going, we want to solidify our positions in key markets – DACH, Benelux, Nordics and the booming US market – and expand our reach in France even more.

Every day, we work with exceptionally talented people who help us bring privacy-friendly analytics to businesses of all sizes. Partners are now responsible for 21% of Piwik PRO’s won deals, plus they help us maintain the peak level of quality. Kudos to all of our partners, with special thanks to our top performers – Dentsu, Knowit Experience, Comprend, and Hopkins.

Our growth concerns the whole organization, from internal processes to quality-of-life product improvements. This means our clients, users, partners – and employees – can expect better experiences. If it weren’t for all of them, we simply wouldn’t be here today.

Community: Building lasting relationships and getting visibility through cooperation and education

The whole Piwik PRO team and I are excited to see our community grow and become more engaged, with the first leaders emerging. I want to thank all of our supporters and constructive critics for all the hard work and infinite feedback that shapes our product and helps us make it even better. Giving recognition and appreciation to those who trust us is our priority, and we make sure your efforts never go unnoticed. 

You might have seen us at key community events this year – many of them we both attended and sponsored. As people hear more about Piwik PRO, they are eager to use it to the fullest. We’ve been expanding our training resources to help them. You can now use our Academy with free Analytics and Tag Manager courses created by Anil Batra and Optizent, and there is more to come. I want people to get value from our product, so we are concentrating on mid- and expert-level education.

Company culture: Strengthening existing employee-first values

A great product is built by a great team, so I want to make Piwik PRO an even better workplace. The best way to do it is by staying true to our core values: You know the context. You make an impact. You are relevant. All team members have full insight into every aspect of the product and its development. They bring their ideas to the table and determine what they work on and how. They have a voice in all initiatives, every step of the way. 

Employees’ well-being is our priority, and we want to keep them closer in the remote reality. We’re constantly expanding our benefit package – the most recent additions include life insurance for every employee, workation, and sabbatical leave.

Moving forward to user-first analytics

We’ve hit a significant milestone with Piwik PRO’s growth. Our platform has matured and expanded, gaining a firm position in the analytics industry. Above all, we bring value to our customers, which is a highlight of our success, because it’s people that we care about the most.

Once again, thank you to the whole Piwik PRO team, our customers, partners, friends and supporters. But, as we celebrate the past, I’m even more excited to see what’s in store for us next – here is to writing the next chapter together!

The post Charting a new course for Piwik PRO: bringing more value to the clients as an integrated analytics platform appeared first on Piwik PRO.

Data quality can be a major challenge for companies to become data-driven. Instead of randomly collecting every possible piece of data, digital analysts must focus on what’s relevant.

Anil Batra

Piotr Korzeniowski: Web analytics is a highly dynamic field. Its global market is expected to reach $11.35 billion in 2026 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.57%. What trends should data analysts follow to stay relevant in the industry?

Anil Batra: The field is indeed very dynamic and continuously changing, which makes it very hard for marketers to keep track of everything that’s happening.

We’re seeing a shift in the types of data that allow for targeting each particular person. There are individual-level, hit-level, or customer-level data. Each type demands different responsibilities to ensure the data is not misused. Furthermore, we should think about customer privacy as well. Also, as machine learning and AI come into play, now is the perfect time to figure out how this will affect everyone’s job. So a lot of tagging, reporting, insights and actions will become driven by AI, and this is something marketers and analysts will have to adapt to.

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Piotr Korzeniowski: Data analytics is a steady job sector with high employee demand – there are 13k job offers at this moment in just the US, according to Glassdoor. Why is the situation in this industry so optimistic? Can we expect some changes in the face of the upcoming recession?

Anil Batra: This shift in technology has made companies aware that they need data. That is why they’re looking for people who can implement the right analytics solutions, make sense of all collected data, and use it to optimize marketing activities, sales funnels, and websites. They need people who can run tests to figure out what’s working and what’s not.

That’s why marketing specialists are in demand – to drive more revenue and profit, and to know how to cut costs.

But for each specialist, there is also a need for analysts just at the beginning of their path. Senior specialists can think about strategizing to the next level while supported by junior specialists who put pixels, collect certain pieces of data, use PowerPoints or Excel sheets to gather the data and use Tableau or Looker Studios to visualize it on the charts.

This shift in technology has made companies aware that they need data. They’re looking for people who can implement the right analytics solutions and optimize their marketing activities.

Anil Batra

Piotr Korzeniowski: From your observations, what are the most crucial skills worth working on depending on whether you are a junior, mid, or senior in web analytics? How do those career stages vary, and what should web analysts focus on in each stage?

Anil Batra: There are several levels of success along your path.

At the beginning of your career, you have a basic understanding of digital analysis but no experience in the field. As you move to the next level, you’re starting to learn the role of web and digital analytics.

Then, you develop deeper technical reporting and analytics skills that you can use to start working with stakeholders, finding ways to push the technical envelope, uncovering insights, and connecting them to business goals. That’s what senior analysts and managers do.

As you reach a certain point in your career, you can choose two different paths – technical and business.

Suppose you are going in a technical direction. In that case, you need to learn JavaScript, know how to work with various tools and how to integrate them. On the business path, you need to know how to generate deeper insights and help define goals, metrics, and KPIs.

Then, if you want to become an expert, you need to know how to integrate first-party data, third-party data, and to combine offline and online data. You can also do cross-channel data planning, run AB test personalization and targeting.

Finally, you influence executives and develop a vision for the organization. You know how to leverage this data and where the primary focus should be placed. That’s when you become a leader that develops and executes the company’s vision, works closely with other executives, obtains the necessary resources, and grows mentors.

Every stage requires a different skill set. I always tell people that they need to comprehend and develop their mindset first, and only then can they understand how data works for them. This is what I teach at Optizent Academy as well.

Piotr Korzeniowski: The global economic situation is turbulent right now. The looming recession will take a heavy toll on marketing budgets, with many companies facing austerity. What challenges and opportunities await marketers? What do they have to prepare for?

Anil Batra: Marketers have to think: how do people in my organization know my value? The money they’re spending has to be justified. There needs to be a clear-cut understanding of what they are doing and what value they are bringing. This starts with data and numbers.

They have to start pushing those numbers as a part of their reports or ROI calculations and educate everybody on how marketing is helping various parts of the business.

That’s the approach, and that’s where the value is – not only in a recession or during times of prosperity, but all the time.

Piotr Korzeniowski: The issue of privacy is gaining significant momentum in the marketing world in terms of data collection. What advice would you give fellow data analysts and marketers on tackling privacy problems in their daily work?

Anil Batra: Data analysts have the biggest challenge in keeping track of privacy regulations that differ across countries, regions, and states. They need to cooperate with various departments within an organization, especially with legal teams, to explain what they’re doing and to check whether or not it’s compliant with the relevant regulations.

If you send data to Facebook, Google Ads, and other solutions, you need to ensure individual customers’ privacy and preferences. Having that constant communication between teams is going to be critical for analysts. Privacy is already gaining more and more momentum in many countries, and these developments will only continue.

Seeing the need to collaborate on a range of diverse issues, we created Optizent Academy. The idea behind it is that not everybody can know everything, but people can collectively share their knowledge and grow their skills exponentially. Being part of a group means that you can learn and grow much faster by exchanging experience, knowledge, and ideas. It makes everyday work more manageable. Together we can solve problems immediately instead of spending hundreds of hours identifying the proper approach.

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The post Anil Batra: People need to comprehend and develop their mindset first to understand how data works for them appeared first on Piwik PRO.

Let’s start with the main question – what is Piwik PRO Core, and who does it target?

Szymon Grzesiak, Performance Marketing Manager at Piwik PRO: Piwik PRO Core is a free version of the Piwik PRO Analytics Suite platform. It allows those looking for comprehensive web and app analytics to use our product without time limits and completely free of charge. What makes Piwik PRO Core different from the paid version of our platform is its limit of measured actions. However, it’s definitely enough to understand the benefits of the platform.

This plan is targeted at a wide range of users – marketers, analysts, freelance website developers, or even bloggers who run their own, often small, projects. Piwik PRO Core allows everyone, even those with small website traffic, to easily collect data under GDPR thanks to the included Consent Manager. I think the best recommendation is that I use this plan privately – on my automotive hobby pages.

Piwik PRO Core is one of the many concepts that have evolved into fully-functional solutions. How did the whole idea start?

Kuba Bomba, Chief Product Officer at Piwik PRO: After several years of intensive work, we were convinced we had created a very good product. The problem, however, was our visibility on the market. What’s the point of having a great product if nobody knows about it?

Dominika Gruszkiewicz, B2B Marketing Manager at Piwik PRO: This topic also appeared in our marketing brainstorming sessions – how can we make the product available to a broader audience? Previously, it was not technically possible. Even test versions were handled by contact with sales, which did not allow us to achieve the necessary scale effects.

Kuba: Finally, someone uploaded an interesting report on Slack, which focused on trends in purchasing digital products. It showed that many users wanted to avoid talking to sales. They preferred to test the product themselves and only interact with a human if necessary. The cherry on top of the decision-making process was our strategy at that time. We were aiming to become the best Google Analytics alternative. And if we wanted to be competitive in that space, we needed a freemium product.

Dominika: We reached the point where we were ready to open up to the world, both in our platform development and within the company. As marketing specialists, we saw this as more than an opportunity to promote the company. We were also glad that other people in the industry would finally have the chance to use our product in their daily work or while pursuing their marketing passions after hours.

But we were still a few steps away from implementing the idea. What were the beginnings of this process like?

Maciej Zawadziński, Founder and Member of the Supervisory Board of Piwik PRO: Before starting the project, we created a group representing a broad perspective – marketing, sales, customer support, product, design, and management. In this structure, we conducted a market analysis, focusing on our direct competition and other companies offering B2B products in the freemium model.

We know you wanted the project to be co-created by every Piwik PRO employee. That sounds like a noble idea, but what about the actual approach? How did you bring this vision to life?

Maciej: Based on what we discussed in the smaller group, we presented our project during an internal webinar to collect feedback from our colleagues. The idea resonated immediately – questions, comments and suggestions appeared at this very first meeting. We also launched surveys for the entire company and a Slack channel for people interested in the initiative. Some ideas, such as the demo data page or the bug bounty program, were implemented during the next stages of product development.

We also continued our regular meetings and intensive cross-team work on implementing Piwik PRO Core. It took us several months to prepare for the product release. During one of our regular company meetings two months before the official launch, we presented the final shape of the project to the entire company. Since launching the product, we have continued to meet less frequently to fine-tune it.

Finally, it was time to start. What did the implementation of Piwik PRO Core look like from a behind-the-scenes perspective?

Szymon: The beginnings of the Core plan looked much different from what they look like now. We didn’t know if the project would be a success. There was no full automation. We decided to approach the whole process carefully, limiting the number of new accounts.

From February to September 2021, we gathered users for the waiting list through a simple form. All applications were sent to a spreadsheet, and we successively sent codes to create accounts. In the meantime, our marketing team participated in the design and automation implementation between the CRM system and the product.

In October 2021, when it turned out that our assumptions were on target, we decided to switch to automatic sign-ups. We also introduced full automation in creating instances. Since then, we have been optimizing the entire process, introducing changes that improve registration conversion and increase instance usage.

Dominika: This ‘soft’ start allowed us to test the processes and improve them based on feedback from the first users – in setting up accounts, taking the first steps in the product, and the way we communicated the plan in our marketing materials. All these insights from our users contributed to the later success of the official start of the Core plan.

Has adopting the freemium model led to any changes in the product?

Kuba: Yes, definitely. At first, we were terrified because, from the technical side, the product was not designed to support thousands of accounts. This required significant architectural changes. The soft launch, when we gave access to the product to early adopters, allowed us to collect a lot of feedback and test the platform on a slightly larger scale. However, it was still a comfortable and safe environment because we kept certain limits on the number of simultaneous accounts. Thanks to this approach, we gained some time to implement architectural changes. We redesigned the database model and created a special API that allows users to create instances from outside the organization.

During the initial discussions stage, you have considered building a community around Piwik PRO Core. How did you approach it?

Kuba: During the brainstorming, there was a reasonably obvious fear that the freemium model would bring many more support requests, which we could not handle, or the quality of support for paid plan users would worsen. We knew the best solution to this problem was creating a community around the product. We knew it would take years to see the effects of such a move, so initially the forum was attended mainly by people from inside the company. Over time, however, this began to change, and now our users help each other more and more.

The start of our community forum also had an interesting side effect – we gained another source of invaluable feedback, which we meticulously record every time it appears.

Personally, I contribute quite a lot to our forum. I treat it as an exciting escape from everyday duties. Also, I can keep an eye on problems that inevitably arise with the product.

After over a year and a half, we have almost 5,000 tracking accounts and 3,700 users who log in to the Piwik PRO Core interface at least once a month. These numbers are still growing. We can say without a doubt that the project has been a success. What would you say if you had to point to the three most important factors contributing to it?

Kuba: First of all, we have had an advanced product developed by our employees for many years. Also, we focus on inter-team cooperation in our daily work. This success results from the entire company’s efforts, and it’s not possible to point to one person who contributed the most. Openness to changes, both on the business and technology side, was also very important.

And as a bonus – beyond the scope of our influence – we were also favored by changes in our competition, especially the termination of Google’s Universal Analytics.

Let’s go back to the beginning of this conversation. We mentioned that entering the freemium segment was a bottom-up initiative, which, with the support of the organization’s decision-makers, became an important component of our business activity. Implementation of such initiatives requires a specific organizational climate. What is this climate at Piwik PRO?

Kuba: It works because we precisely outline the business environment and strategy at the board level. However, when it comes to how we implement it, we give a lot of freedom to people. As it turns out, they pay us back with great ideas that we can proudly write about after they’re adopted.

The post The behind-the-scenes success story of the Piwik PRO Core plan appeared first on Piwik PRO.

Piotr Korzeniowski: The news that Google will sunset Universal Analytics and replace it with its very different successor, Google Analytics 4 (GA4), has caused a lot of commotion. How did the community of marketers and analysts react to this news?

Jason Packer: “Commotion” is definitely the right word. That will only grow in volume as we approach the UA sunset date and business stakeholders become more widely involved, even though Google had made the decision about moving away from UA clear years ago. When they announced the sunset date, the broader industry started to pay attention.

GA4 has had the most positive reaction among technically-oriented analysts, who can appreciate how it is significantly more sophisticated than UA. Also, they are not bothered by the move toward BigQuery and Looker Studio. The reaction has been primarily negative among the SEO community, who do a lot of ad-hoc analysis and focus on inbound traffic more than on-site activity, especially those who work with significant numbers of small individual sites.

While analytics technology has always changed quickly, it seems we are at an inflection point in the maturity of analytics and tracking. Knowing how to come up with requirements and create a framework for tool evaluation is a lot of work, but it can pay off in the long run.

Jason Packer

Piotr Korzeniowski: Why should marketers consider GA alternatives? What challenges may an organization face if they migrate to another analytics platform, and what benefits can it bring?

Jason Packer: Despite the title of my book being “Google Analytics Alternatives,” I dislike framing other web analytics tools as “alternatives.” Certainly, GA is far and away the most widely installed web analytics tool, but it shouldn’t be treated as the default one. Other solutions shouldn’t be considered only after GA has been found problematic, but evaluated on their own merits per use case. The most effective solution may still be GA4, but we shouldn’t assume that will always be true.

Migrations can be very challenging, but with the sunset of UA, we are at a junction where everyone using traditional GA has to migrate — either to GA4 or something else. I’ve encouraged people to view this as an opportunity to improve their implementations.

Spend some time re-evaluating rather than rushing through a migration that attempts to simply replicate legacy installations. If an organization has years of UA experience behind them, they are bound to find improvements if they do an informed migration.

Even though the UA sunset date is fast approaching, spending a little more time and effort now could save a lot of headaches in the future. Letting Google auto-migrate your UA property to GA4 is even worse, potentially putting off decisions about your implementation until a point where there is no UA data being actively recorded to help fine-tune the migration.

Piotr Korzeniowski: What prompted you to approach the topic of Google Analytics alternatives and publish a book about it? Have you seen the demand for this type of publication before? What was your approach to the subject and the writing process from behind the scenes?

Jason Packer: I’ve always been interested in various analytics tools and wanted more deep and unbiased analyses of those tools. Especially when I started writing the book in April 2022, much of what I could find was top ten lists containing reworded marketing claims from vendors rather than real-world evaluations. I felt it was essential to have actually used the products evaluated, not just seen demos.

My approach to writing is to investigate questions I am curious about for myself, rather than trying to fill some demand. In this case, I was confident other people had the same questions I had, so I put in the additional effort of creating a book.

Spend some time re-evaluating rather than rushing through a migration that attempts to simply replicate legacy installations. If an organization has years of UA experience behind them, they are bound to find improvements if they do an informed migration.

Jason Packer

Piotr Korzeniowski: For your book, you had to research every analytics vendor thoroughly. Can you share any teaser insights from your findings for your book? What exciting trends and tendencies did you observe while analyzing so closely different options on the market?

Jason Packer: One of the most interesting things I noticed were two opposing trends. One was a trend towards tool unification, where a single tool (or tool suite) can provide a wide range of solutions: web analytics, product analytics, consent management, tag management, session capture, a/b testing, site speed monitoring, site uptime monitoring, etc. Matomo is a good example of this, offering many of those features.

The countervailing trend was towards very high degrees of customization and depth within data collection itself. Snowplow is a good example of this, offering a deep and customizable data collection platform far beyond what UA can do.

Piwik PRO is taking a well-considered middle road with these two trends — offering a fairly broad set of solutions (web analytics, tag management, consent management, and CDP) while providing depth and sophistication in the core analytics.

With UA, a single-page small business site with 100 sessions a month was running the same tool as a complex ecommerce site with millions of pages and sessions, both for free!

Those two use cases require different solutions: a simplified web analytics tool for the former and an enterprise-level tool for the latter. UA tried to be everything to everyone, and while it succeeded at that to a surprising degree, that’s not a model the industry is likely to follow going forward.

Piotr Korzeniowski: Since you received positive feedback from the analytics community after your first book, do you plan to write another one? Are there any analytics-related topics you would like to explore further in the future?

Jason Packer: The analytics community has been very supportive, which I really appreciate! The main reason I wrote the book was to share knowledge that might help other analysts, so hearing from readers that my book could do that is what it’s all about.

If you asked me the day after I published if I’d write another book, I’d have said: “never again”! Now that some time has passed, it would be fun to write another one… So we’ll see. I’ll likely go back to blogging for a while (hopefully at a higher frequency than before). Currently, I’m most interested in privacy and consent, bot detection, and site speed.

Jason Packer
Analytics Engineer and Owner at Quantable Analytics

Jason runs Quantable Analytics, a small consultancy focused on growth-stage companies looking to mature their data practices. Prior to Quantable, Jason held a wide range of jobs in IT: Unix sysadmin, ISP network tech, SEO specialist, front end engineer, etc.

The post Jason Packer: The term “Google Analytics Alternatives” itself is problematic, enshrining GA as the default choice appeared first on Piwik PRO.

• Vadim Baele, Head of Digital Analytics and CRO at Customer Collective
• Philipp Loringhoven, Freelancer for Marketing Analytics and Strategy
• Piotr Słonina, Head of Customer Experience at Piwik PRO

In search for the best Google Analytics alternative

Last year, Google happened to be at the center of the legal storm. There were many reasons for it – the Schrems II ruling, the EU-US personal data transfers, and various DPAs’ rulings, as well as the sunsetting of Universal Analytics and some criticism of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) performance.

Adapting to these new legal circumstances took a lot of work. “Stress for clients and users, lots of questions and uncertainties – nothing was clear at the beginning,” says Vadim. “We had to adapt because without gathering customer consent, we could even lose up to 65% of the traffic,” adds Piotr.

The concerns around Google Analytics 4 have opened a window of opportunity for other analytics platforms to shine. However, looking for the best alternative is not an easy task.

“Change is never easy, and since alternatives offer completely different data models and reporting, not only marketing has to adapt, but also management. But we must remember that GA4 is not the right choice for everyone,” says Piotr.

“The question is – can I trust the data in my web analytics platform? I can’t find a tool that measures everything, but there are alternatives that can be trusted,” adds Philipp.

Customer data platforms – a crucial element of modern marketing stack

As third-party cookies are practically dead, marketers need to come up with other ways to collect data about visitors and clients. That’s why there is a rise in the popularity of customer data platforms (CDP). But what should a good CDP offer?

“A good CDP is the one you’ll know how to use,” says Piotr. “You want to be connected with as many sources as possible, but you need to know how to activate your data – otherwise, you only have a tool without bigger value.”

Vadim thinks that the real-time feature is the most important. “CDP should be able to respond in real time. It should give you the data really fast, so it would help optimize your website, as much as its content.”

“CDP enables you to personalize relationships with established and new customers,” adds Philipp. “It’s always about customer experience first and then about the brand.”

Collecting data in the privacy-oriented environment

What really matters in privacy-friendly data collection is the value of the gathered information. “If you want your data to be valuable, it has to be enriched with other sources,” thinks Philipp. “The better feedback from customers you get, the better services and data quality you can offer.”

“You need to change your mindset – consider each browser and its limitations, and think about how you collect the data. The impact of this legal perspective is really impressive, so we need to adapt ourselves to the new way of analytics,” adds Vadim.

The key to successful data collection is to focus on the customer. According to Piotr, “you can’t think that much about the marketing stack. Think about the customer journey and its important touchpoints, then come up with the plan and choose the right ecosystem.”

“Try to better understand customers and journeys by owning your data, then think about what to share with which advertising platforms,” adds Philipp. “Take privacy matters seriously.”

Marketing forecast for 2023: skills, technology & privacy

We hope this summary gives you an overview of the most important trends in marketing technology for 2023. To learn more about our experts’ take on this year’s trends, sign up for the whole series of on-demand video talks about essential marketing skills, regulatory changes, and key technologies.

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Marketing forecast for 2023: skills, technology & privacy

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The post Valuable data collection in a privacy-first world – the experts’ take on marketing technology for 2023 appeared first on Piwik PRO.

• Aurélie Pols, privacy engineer and DPO at mParticle
• Luiza Jarovsky, researcher and author of The Privacy Whisperer, the largest independent privacy newsletter
• Maciej Zawadziński, CEO at Piwik PRO

The most important privacy-related events of 2022

What were the key regulatory changes that influenced marketing in 2022? Our experts pointed to the Digital Services Act (DSA), the Digital Markets Act (DMA), and post-Schrems II decisions regarding EU-US data transfers.

Moreover, Aurélie mentioned the fine imposed on Sephora for sharing data with third-party advertising networks and analytics providers. She also thinks that Japanese companies will become more privacy-compliant, as one company from there was fined for violating GDPR. Luiza pointed out that the speed at which new privacy legislation is planned and approved in the EU is also worth attention.

However, a key event took place at the beginning of 2023. The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) fined Meta Ireland for breaches of GDPR – 210 million euros for Facebook and 180 million euros for Instagram. “This will change the industry, as lots of parties and courts might be involved,” summarizes Aurélie.

How to become more privacy-focused in 2023

Valuable marketing strategies should be built around privacy compliance. “For businesses to thrive, you need to have stability in the legal environment,” says Maciej. “Otherwise, you spend a lot of money on things that don’t create value.”

Luiza adds, “every team should be involved to understand the privacy regulations. We should work together to know what benefits we can bring to users, how privacy in tech works in practice, and how to implement it. That’s the way to be successful and privacy-compliant in 2023”.

Aurélie also puts her focus on working together within teams. “2023 is going to be a challenging year, but it’s about collaboration with smart people around you.”

Are data clean rooms the solution for personalized marketing without third-party cookies?

Data clean rooms are one of the latest inventions for collecting data without third-party cookies. These are pieces of software that allow for targeted advertising campaigns to be done in a privacy-friendly way.

To use a data clean room, two entities, for example, an advertiser and a publisher, upload first-party data. Then, the data is encrypted using various privacy protection measures, such as pseudonymization, restricted access, differential privacy, or noise injections. Both parties get information in the form of cohorts and aggregated reports. This process leads to data activation, which means the data can be used for lawful and targeted marketing.

Data clean rooms promise personalization that doesn’t violate user privacy. They ensure that collected data stays within the data clean room and isn’t shared with anyone else. It all sounds perfectly safe, but is it compliant?

“The question is – can we get consent for doing that on our side? Probably the vendor will say yes, but I have some doubts about it and also about how the consent was collected,” says Maciej. Luiza adds, “from a legal perspective, we’re skeptical if anonymization is even possible.”

“If you act as a data clean room – you’re providing a handshake between a data processor and data controller. But isn’t it bringing obligations with respect to lawful bases before engaging in these handshakes?” wonders Aurélie. “Because of the purpose of data clean rooms – their obligations should actually be higher than data controllers.”

Marketing forecast for 2023: skills, technology & privacy

We hope this summary helps you understand the importance of cultivating privacy-oriented marketing and gives you some advice on achieving that. To learn more about our experts’ take on marketing trends for 2023, sign up for the whole series of on-demand video talks about essential marketing skills, regulatory changes, and key technologies.

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The post Privacy compliance in 2023 – the experts’ take on marketing and data protection appeared first on Piwik PRO.

• Mikko Piippo, Co-founder of Hopkins
• Anil Batra, CEO at Optizent
• Mateusz Krempa, CRO at Piwik PRO

Understanding business goals

Learning how the company operates, its main goals, and how the data you collect can be used to achieve them – that’s what matters. But how to make sure that all these goals are clear? “Ask questions and get clarification from other people,” says Anil.

To truly embrace all the key performance indicators (KPIs) from different teams, marketers should also develop their soft skills to the maximum. The most valued ones are teamwork, communication, critical thinking, and interpersonal skills.

Cross-team cooperation

Speaking of the required skills, the one our expert considers to be the key is cooperation. “Learn to work with people from different cultures and understand differences between them – skills, ideas, backgrounds,” says Mikko.

Marketers shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help and should know who to turn to for answers. As no one can know everything and specialize in every field, it’s good to be a team player.

Our experts also emphasize the importance of cooperation with legal teams, especially regarding privacy compliance: “Privacy laws are constantly changing. Marketers should have a broader awareness of what’s happening, but it is impossible to know every law. That’s why they need to cooperate with legal teams,” says Anil.

“The legal teams should be able to translate complex definitions into simple language. That’s when everyone can understand why there are legal limitations and what steps need to be taken to comply,” adds Mateusz.

Becoming data-driven

As more and more companies say they are data-driven, there is a question of whether they know exactly how to achieve it.

“The first thing about becoming a data-driven company is to have high-quality data. Then comes the proper mindset,” says Mateusz. “It’s impossible to have a fully data-driven company with poor data quality. If people don’t trust your data, they won’t be interested in what your company offers,” adds Mikko.

On the other hand, Anil considers mindset as something that starts the whole process. “If you want your company to be data-driven, begin with the right mindset. That’s what leads to having good-quality data.”

There are many ways for companies to be data-driven – but that is a topic for further discussion.

Marketing forecast for 2023: skills, technology & privacy

We hope this summary encourages you to review our marketing forecast for 2023. To learn more about the experts’ take on this year’s marketing trends, watch our whole series of on-demand video talks about essential marketing skills, regulatory changes, and key technologies.

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Marketing forecast for 2023: skills, technology & privacy

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The post Key advice for data-driven companies – the experts’ take on marketing skills for 2023 appeared first on Piwik PRO.

Narrowing the issues with GDPR to marketing operations, if we equate online marketing only to cookies, I think there is still a lot of work to do in this area in Poland. But it is getting better, primarily due to good practices coming from other countries through group supervisory companies. Big players set the example for SMEs. I think this snowball effect of compliance is gaining momentum, although for now, it is relatively the size of an ice cream scoop. The main challenge, however, is that cookies in Poland are, in principle, regulated by the Telecommunications Law, not by GDPR. And the competent authority is the telecommunications authority, not the data protection authority.

Maciej Zawadziński: In the last four years, the Polish DPA hasn’t imposed such enormous fines for non-compliance with GDPR as other European authorities. But 2022 was a year of record-high penalties for Poland. Is this a growing trend? Can we expect more penalties in the future?  

Mikołaj Otmianowski: From my perspective, we can expect more penalties in the future. But let’s remember that a financial penalty is supposed to be the last resort. It is supposed to be a deterrent, but also has to be adequate. The idea is to punish the controller and not destroy their business. However, we can see that the authority is taking steps in the right direction. What is particularly interesting is their initiative to evaluate compliance of mobile apps in 2022.

I think that the lack of guidelines and training from the DPA is one of the biggest challenges for controllers and processors, especially for small and medium-sized businesses. In Poland, we look up to offices from France, Germany and Spain and try to adapt our behavior to their guidelines.

Mikołaj Otmianowski

Maciej Zawadziński: US BigTech is struggling with GDPR compliance. DPAs in France, Spain and Ireland have imposed gigantic fines on many US tech organizations. What is the Polish DPA’s stance on BigTech? In your opinion, will there be any action taken against companies such as Google or Facebook?  

Mikołaj Otmianowski: There is no official position from the Polish DPA on the BigTech issues. I think that the lack of guidelines and training from the DPA is one of the biggest challenges for controllers and processors, especially for small and medium-sized businesses. In Poland, we look up to offices from France, Germany and Spain and try to adapt our behavior to their guidelines. Even though there may not have been fines levied against Google or Facebook in Poland, it is worth noting the proceedings the DPA is conducting against VINTED. It could be an interesting case.

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Cory Underwood: US businesses are interested in how the changes in privacy laws in Europe affect the larger ecosystem for data collection – Piwik PRO

Maciej Zawadziński: The Polish website ChronPESEL.pl and the National Debt Register recently conducted a survey where they asked Poles if they knew how to ensure the security of their personal data, among other things. As much as 90 percent of the respondents confirmed that they do.  How do you feel about the outcome of this research? Are Poles really that good with securing their personal information? 

Mikołaj Otmianowski: It’s a typical research problem. If the interviewers asked the participants if they knew how to secure their data, I expect many of them would be embarrassed to say that they don’t. Some may not be aware that they can’t.

I get the impression that every so often, we can read another story in the media where someone got scammed by a fake love interest or something like that. Even though this isn’t about phishing, but rather extortion of money, the pattern is the same. With the training on the implementation of GDPR at workplaces, people are learning how to protect their data. Although knowledge is spreading, there is still a fair amount to do in this area.

Maciej Zawadziński: Let’s narrow down user privacy to the area of online marketing.  What actions do Poles take, and what software do they use to protect their personal information?

Mikołaj Otmianowski: I would distinguish between actions taken to protect user privacy and personal data. For example, an entity may ensure full security of data but process a great deal of personal data and violate privacy. I’d say that Poles opt for a standard solution, like privacy mode in the browser, when it comes to using privacy software.

For data protection, they may choose to set up alerts that will inform them about an attempt to steal their credit card data. I doubt it goes beyond that.

Polish entrepreneurs are vendors of the world’s top solutions for email marketing, cookie management and data analytics. I think more and more companies realize that complying with GDPR is a business opportunity and a competitive advantage.

Mikołaj Otmianowski

Maciej Zawadziński: The global privacy technology market has been on the rise for some time now. Is the privacy tech sector well developed in Poland?

Mikołaj Otmianowski: The privacy market is growing at a dizzying pace. Using GDPR management software as an example, there is talk of annual growth of 30% to 40%. There are quite a few new types of software to assist administrators in managing GDPR compliance. Polish entrepreneurs are vendors of the world’s top solutions for email marketing, cookie management and data analytics. I think more and more companies realize that complying with GDPR is a business opportunity and a competitive advantage.

Maciej Zawadziński: Recently, DAPR launched a new app, called RED INTO GREEN (RIG). Could you tell us a bit more about it?

Mikołaj Otmianowski: RIG is a piece of software dedicated to organizations that want to comply with privacy laws, particularly GDPR. It has been designed for data protection officers and their teams. The application allows for performing and updating risk analyses under GDPR. It also enables its user to run data breach risk assessments, legitimate interest assessments, keep all the required registers and much more.
Key RIG features are ERP system class reports, linkages, and automation of data management in the application. On top of that, it offers a verified methodology of risk estimation, which allows for adjusting the level of analysis to the needs of the organization.

Currently, we are working on synchronizing GDPR risk analysis with cybersecurity. Integration should be ready by the end of this year.

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Four years into GDPR

How EU businesses have responded to the new privacy compliance challenge

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Mikołaj Otmianowski
Legal Counsel, DAPR sp.z o.o.

Mikołaj’s professional experience includes many years of work as a legal advisor in Poland and abroad, a department director in listed company Polimex-Mostostal, as well as in his own law firm and several legal-tech startup projects. Mikołaj is also the Chairman of the Legaltech Commission at OIRP Warszawa.

His extensive legal knowledge, a passion for legal tech, and the ability to connect the right people have led to the creation of the methodology employed by the REDINTOGREEN tool. This methodology has a significant impact on the comfort and quality of the work of data protection officers. Currently, he is focusing on cybersecurity issues in organizations.

The post Mikołaj Otmianowski: Awareness of GDPR in Poland is very high. The challenge is in its practical application. appeared first on Piwik PRO.

Cory Underwood, Platform Engineer at Search Discovery:From a legal standpoint, they don’t. The definitions of personal data differ not only between the US and the EU, but also between states. The American legal structure centers around “notice and consent”, and privacy isn’t a core right granted to us by our Constitution in the same style as in the EU. We have the right to avoid illegal searches by the government, but if we’re giving data to a company, that exchange often doesn’t enjoy the same legal protections, except where elsewhere defined in law.

America is also divided in what to do about that, as we lack a federal privacy law. Some states such as California have passed very progressive privacy laws, while others, like Utah, have adopted laws that are very weak. It’s not clear to me which level of standard may ultimately become the baseline for a federal effort.

I think there’s a concern around advertising and data collection in Europe for international brands. It feels like many of the recent decisions involving GDPR leave no chance for brands to comply, as the issue is between the US and EU governments and not between a specific brand and the EU.

Cory Underwood

Maciej Zawadziński: A lot has happened in the fields of privacy and MarTech in the EU since summer 2021: the invalidation of Privacy Shield , noyb’s complaints, rulings by DPAs against Google Analytics, record GDPR fines, and more. All this was quite the talk in the EU – how is this news being received by the marketing community in the US?

Cory Underwood:It makes a lot of headlines for the media in the States as well. As for how much this drives compliance, that varies between companies. In the US, businesses are more interested in how the changes in privacy laws in Europe and elsewhere affect the larger ecosystem for data collection. Especially how they lead to things like app tracking transparency, mail tracking protection, and the new Google Play store policies around advertising.

I think there’s a concern around advertising and data collection in Europe for international brands. It feels like many of the recent decisions involving GDPR leave no chance for brands to comply, as the issue is between the US and EU governments and not between a specific brand and the EU.

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Maciej Zawadziński: Big Tech companies such as Google or Meta are under constant legal and media fire in the EU for their monopolistic tendencies and compliance issues. How does the situation look in the US?

Cory Underwood:Google, Meta and others are currently facing antitrust investigations by multiple states. The discussions here are more around monopolistic issues rather than compliance. The USA doesn’t have federal privacy standards. Unless it’s a special category of data, such as children’s data or health, or specific kinds of data defined at a state level, theBig Tech companies can avoid a lot of the compliance issues domestically.

Maciej Zawadziński: Some Big Tech companies try to evade fines by implementing new technical features in their products. Recently Google added a reject all button to consent forms on YouTube. What other technical changes can we expect in their products that aim to address compliance issues?

Cory Underwood:I think we’ll start seeing more operating system changes, as we’ve seen in iOS and Android. I also suspect the Internet of Things, such as smart speakers, will likely face a lockdown in the next few years. This technology is one of the remaining forms that haven’t been evaluated in terms of privacy to date. We’re already starting to see that with the movement of processing the speech to on-device.

We’re also not done yet on the browser front. The Internet Engineering Task Force has advised thatcookie handling will likely get worse before it gets better, and have modified recommendations regarding cookie lifetime to be capped at a recommended 400 days. This means there will be no more tracking users for years just because you happened to place a cookie on their browser at some point in the past decade.

I’m very skeptical about a federal data protection law this year, and depending on how the midterm elections go in the States, we may not get one in the next two years. There’s a very real possibility that the US winds up in a “patchwork” law scenario, where most of the states have different privacy laws in place.

Cory Underwood

Maciej Zawadziński: Is there any chance that the US will introduce a federal data protection law in the near future? If so, what would such a law look like? Would it resemble the GDPR in any way?

Cory Underwood:I’m very skeptical about a federal data protection law this year, and depending on how the midterm elections go in the States, we may not get one in the next two years. There’s a very real possibility that the US winds up in a “patchwork” law scenario, where most of the states have different privacy laws in place, in the same way the US insurance industry developed. It’s a direction I’d very much like to avoid. However, I just can’t see Congress concentrating on this until next year at the earliest. Even if they were to prioritize it, I’m skeptical we’d get agreement on something as strict as the California law.

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Cory Underwood, Platform Engineer at Search Discovery

With over 15 years of experience in optimization, analytics and web development, Cory works with clients to help them understand the impact of privacy regulations and technical changes to their marketing tech stacks. He also advises them as to potential changes that need to be made.

Cory’s blog focuses on A/B testing, personalization, privacy, and analytics. His mission is to keep the larger analytics community informed of technical changes imposed by outside forces that could impact their implementations and reporting. You can regularly find him engaging with the community on these topics in the Measure.chat.

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