INBOX INSIGHTS, July 30, 2025: AI Integration, Google Tag Gateway - Trust Insights Marketing Analytics Consulting

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INBOX INSIGHTS: AI Integration, Google Tag Gateway (2025-07-30)

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Where to Start with AI Integration

Last month, I watched a friend’s team spend three weeks trying to connect their new lead scoring LLM to their existing CRM system. What should have been a straightforward integration turned into a technical nightmare because they skipped the fundamentals.

This week’s reader question hit on exactly this pain point: “What is the best way to integrate different software systems with AI?”

Here’s what most people get wrong: they jump straight into the technology without understanding what they’re working with. It’s like renovating your kitchen without knowing where the plumbing runs—you’ll end up with expensive surprises. What’s not a surprise? What I’m about to tell you.

The 5P Framework for Integration Success

I’ve found the most reliable approach is working systematically through five key areas before you start connecting anything:

Purpose: Get specific about the business problem you’re solving. Not “we want to use AI” but “we need to eliminate 3 hours of daily manual data entry between our CRM and email platform.” Use this clarity to prioritize which integrations actually matter.

People: Identify who owns each system, who will champion the integration, and who needs training. Most integrations fail here—great technology with unprepared people equals expensive shelf-ware.

Process: Map your current workflows visually. Where does data flow now? What manual steps exist? Then design how it should work with AI. Establish governance rules upfront: who approves changes, how do you test, and what happens when things break?

Platform: Choose integration tools your team can actually maintain. Sometimes Zapier beats enterprise solutions if your team can manage it long-term. Focus on reliability over flashiness.

Performance: Track both technical metrics (uptime, error rates) and business impact (time saved, ROI). Set up monthly reviews to catch problems early and optimize continuously.

Start Small, Build Confidence

Pick one integration that solves a real pain point for your team. Work through the 5Ps systematically. Document what you learn. Build on that success for more complex projects.

The key is creating a foundation that your team can actually maintain, not just implement once.

Where to Go Deeper

If you want the complete playbook with worksheets, checklists, and templates for each step, the AI-Ready Marketing Strategy Kit walks through this entire process in detail. It includes prioritization frameworks, readiness assessments, vendor evaluation questions, and performance tracking templates—all the practical tools that turn this framework into action.

Get your copy of the AI-Ready Marketing Strategy Kit here.

And if you already have the Kit and just want someone to do it for you, give us a shout!

But honestly? Just working through the 5Ps on paper will reveal most of what you need to know about your next integration steps.

What’s the one manual process between your systems that drives your team crazy? That’s probably where you should start.

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In this week’s Data Diaries, let’s dig into something that largely missed all the headlines a month ago: Google Tag Gateway.

Never heard of it? In all the deafening shouting about AI, it’s easy to miss the boring infrastructure stuff.

What is Google Tag Gateway?

If you’ve heard of server-side tracking, where you set up a server that hosts analytics scripts on your domain (to make it look like Google Analytics or other tools are on your domain rather than a Google domain), Google Tag Gateway is a low effort, low cost alternative.

You have to already be using some kind of Content Delivery Network (CDN) like Cloudflare, Akamai, etc. for it to work. The upside is that a Cloudflare account can be free or very low cost. We use the $20/month version at Trust Insights and it’s worth every penny for added configuration options and features.

Once you install and turn on Google Tag Gateway, it interacts with your CDN and serves up Tag Manager containers that appear from your domain via your CDN.

Okay, But So What?

The reason for using server-side tracking is to increase tracking accuracy. Today, many browsers and devices block third party tracking; tools like ad blockers will simply not load a Google Tag Manager container. This means you have potentially a significant portion of your website traffic that is never recorded at all.

Using server-side tracking fixes that to a degree, recovering some of that data. It will never recover it all – some browsers and devices will aggressively block any kind of tracking script – but it can make a sizable difference in your web analytics accuracy.

The challenge until now has been that setting up server-side tracking is an expensive pain in the butt. You have to commission a server, set it up, get it serving tracking scripts, connect it to your analytics infrastructure, and then pay sometimes hefty service fees for both the tracking service and the server itself.

Google Tag Gateway is a diet version of this. It uses your CDN’s built in server hosting (for example, Cloudflare Workers) to serve up your Tag Manager container, taking the burden off you of setting up all that plumbing.

How Much Does It Cost?

It depends on your website and your CDN. For example, Cloudflare workers serve 100,000 requests per day for free. After that, paid plans begin at $5 per month.

Why is it basically free for most sites? Because Google’s ad scripts are substantially harmed by privacy blockers, and Google Tag Gateway allows companies doing advertising to serve up more accurate Google Ads tracking.

How Do You Set Up Google Tag Gateway?

This is the nice part. It’s super straightforward as long as you have a compatible CDN. Note that you MUST have admin access to both Google Tag Manager and your CDN.

Go to the Admin in your Google Tag Manager.
On the right side, under the Container label, look for Google Tag Gateway at the very bottom. If there’s a label that says “Not set up” then it’s time to get to work. Tap it.

You’ll see the setup screen. It will automatically check if your domain uses a supported CDN. In the example, we see that Katie’s domain is served by Cloudflare, so we just sign into Cloudflare. Note that you MUST be signed into the same login account as your Cloudflare account.

Tap Complete setup, and you’re done. Now, Cloudflare will serve Google Tag Manager on your behalf, improving your analytics accuracy.

That’s it. No fuss, no muss, easy cleanup.

Now What?

Google Tag Gateway is basically a light version of full server-side tracking. It only works with Tag Manager, so if you use other systems like Tealium or Adobe Launch, you need to go the full server-side tracking route. But for the average company using just the GTM/GA 4 stack, it’s super simple, very low cost or free, and requires almost none of the technical headaches of server side tracking for most of the benefits.

If you use a ton of tags that are outside Tag Manager, Google Tag Gateway will be of limited use to you. But if you’re serving up everything or almost everything in Google Tag Manager, Google Tag Gateway is an easy win for improved analytics data.

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