New Apollo Solution for Migrating Complex Data to GA4

Apollo, the world’s first analytics management system, is also a powerful data migration tool with a built-in business requirement library and customizable triggers, variables, events, and tracking.

Easy migrations for complex data

If you’ve been around a while, you already know about using Apollo to automate and manage your Google Analytics 4 implementation, and you may already have heard how Apollo Free can help migrate your simple Universal Analytics implementations to GA4 at no cost to you.

Now, we’re happy to offer a new Apollo Migration property that automates the migration of your complex Universal Analytics implementations on websites that use Google Tag Manager. Apollo Migration is a new tier of support that makes complex data migration easier than ever.

Whether you’re leveraging enhanced eCommerce tracking or custom dimensions and metrics, using a data layer, or you are DOM scraping, the Apollo Migrations tier is a great choice to facilitate the translation of UA events to GA4 events, and, importantly, to save you tons of time.

Why are brands rushing to implement data migration software now?

The UA sunset date is July 1, 2023, which puts pressure on brands to migrate to the new analytics powerhouse, GA4. That means if you haven’t started the migration process yet, you’re likely already missing out on the opportunity for year-over-year comparisons in GA4 come this date.

What’s the difference between Apollo Free, Apollo Migration, and Apollo Full Access?

Apollo Migration is one of three Apollo properties currently available to our clients.

  • Apollo free is, well, free. Choose this property to quick start a new GA4 architecture from scratch or to migrate a simple UA implementation to GA4—without making data layer or data collection updates.
  • Apollo Migration is better suited for organizations that have more robust data collected in Universal Analytics today, such as custom dimensions and tricky eCommerce tracking. Choose this property to quickly start a migration to GA4, but note that for this tier, ongoing management features are disabled.
  • Full Access is right for you if you want to migrate a complex implementation and manage that implementation on an ongoing basis. This ongoing management is an incredible benefit of using Apollo that keeps your instance dynamically updated with quality data and saves you time and money.

What are the benefits of using Apollo Migrations?

Search Discovery, the creator of Apollo Migrations, is also a Google Premier Partner. This designation means that we’re in the top tier of Google’s most trusted partners for both licensing Google Marketing Platform and Google Cloud products (including Google Analytics 4) and providing end-to-end expert service for these products.

Our Google clients benefit from our relationship with Google, as we pass along exclusive content, cutting-edge implementation, training, and support, and access to proprietary tech accelerators like Apollo that speed time to market.

We also have extensive expertise in GA4 implementations—we’ve been delivering these since the platform was released in beta in 2019, and we think we’re on track to complete more GA migrations than any other Google partner. 

You can count on an Apollo Migrations offering, then, to deliver a smart, effective migration to GA4 for even your most extensive UA implementation. Instead of investing hours researching how to perform a GA4 migration (and then manually updating your implementation), you can take advantage of all the research that our Google experts have already done and automate tagging activities.

The Data Migration Process with Apollo Migrations

When creating a new Apollo property, simply select the Property Type ‘Migrate’. This property type will allow you to:

  1. Import an existing GTM container, including all of your UA Triggers, Tags, and Variables into Apollo
  2. Map your existing UA events to GA4 events – Quick callout that Apollo allows you to map to all of the GA4 recommended events for online sales. This means your enhanced eCommerce tracking with remain intact during migration
  3. Map your UA event parameters into GA4 parameters
    • Firstly, Apollo allows you to translate eventCategory, eventAction, and eventLabel into custom dimensions.
    • Secondly, Apollo allows you to map any existing UA dimensions and metrics into GA4 dimensions and Metrics.
    • Thirdly, Apollo allows you to map your enhanced ecommerce items into GA4 ecommerce items.Screenshot of Apollo GA4 Migration tool: Map your enhanced e-commerce items into GA4 ecommerce items.

Once you complete this mapping process, Apollo then provides:

  1. The opportunity to deploy GA4 tag configurations to the GTM container that contains your UA tags. This will allow you to run UA and GA4 in tandem, which is the recommended approach to the migration until the UA sunset date.
    • The GA4 tags leverage all the existing GTM triggers and variables that support your UA tags. Say “goodbye” to the weeks/months of tag configuration and data collection updates that were on your plate. Say “hello” to a ton of time you just got back!
  2. A ‘Solution Design Reference’ that outlines all the GA4 custom dimensions that metrics that should be configured in GA4, including the specific configuration for each. This makes the GA4 configuration process a simple task!
  3. A ‘Test Case Reference’ which outlines all the GA4 tags in your implementation, along with the data point tracked in each tag. This reference is especially helpful during tag validation!

How much does the Apollo Migrations offering cost?

Apollo Migration properties only cost $500 per month. So, you could easily complete your GA4 migration for $1,000.

Get Apollo GA4 migration quick starts with Apollo's built-in library of customizable triggers, variables, events, and tracking. Easily migrate existing implementation to GA4.

We’d love to answer any questions you have about Apollo! Let’s connect