How to load data from Drift to BigQuery

Learn how to use Airbyte to synchronize your Drift data into BigQuery within minutes.

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Set up a Drift connector in Airbyte

Connect to Drift or one of 400+ pre-built or 10,000+ custom connectors through simple account authentication.

Set up BigQuery for your extracted Drift data

Select BigQuery where you want to import data from your Drift source to. You can also choose other cloud data warehouses, databases, data lakes, vector databases, or any other supported Airbyte destinations.

Configure the Drift to BigQuery in Airbyte

This includes selecting the data you want to extract - streams and columns -, the sync frequency, where in the destination you want that data to be loaded.

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TL;DR

set up Drift as a source connector (using Auth, or usually an API key)
set up BigQuery as a destination connector
define which data you want to transfer and how frequently

You can choose to self-host the pipeline using Airbyte Open Source or have it managed for you with Airbyte Cloud.

This tutorial’s purpose is to show you how.

What is Drift

Advertised as the “First and only revenue acceleration platform,” Drift provides an array of conversational tools in one place. Live chat, email, video, virtual selling assistants, Drift intel and prospector, and more are all smoothly integrated for a seamless and frictionless communication experience. Putting the personal touch back in marketing, Drift’s Conversational Marketing and Conversational Sales helps companies personalize business/client encounters and grow revenue faster.

What is BigQuery

BigQuery is an enterprise data warehouse that draws on the processing power of Google Cloud Storage to enable fast processing of SQL queries through massive datasets. BigQuery helps businesses select the most appropriate software provider to assemble their data, based on the platforms the business uses. Once a business’ data is acculumated, it is moved into BigQuery. The company controls access to the data, but BigQuery stores and processes it for greater speed and convenience.

Integrate Drift with BigQuery in minutes

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Prerequisites

A Drift account to transfer your customer data automatically from.
A BigQuery account.
An active Airbyte Cloud account, or you can also choose to use Airbyte Open Source locally. You can follow the instructions to set up Airbyte on your system using docker-compose.

Airbyte is an open-source data integration platform that consolidates and streamlines the process of extracting and loading data from multiple data sources to data warehouses. It offers pre-built connectors, including Drift and BigQuery, for seamless data migration.

When using Airbyte to move data from Drift to BigQuery, it extracts data from Drift using the source connector, converts it into a format BigQuery can ingest using the provided schema, and then loads it into BigQuery via the destination connector. This allows businesses to leverage their Drift data for advanced analytics and insights within BigQuery, simplifying the ETL process and saving significant time and resources.

Step 1: Set up Drift as a source connector

1. First, navigate to the Drift source connector page on Airbyte's website.

2. Click on the "Create new connection" button.

3. Enter a name for your connection and click "Next".

4. Enter your Drift API credentials, including your API key and API secret.

5. Click "Test connection" to ensure that your credentials are correct and that Airbyte can connect to your Drift account.

6. Once your connection is successful, select the data you want to replicate from Drift.

7. Choose the replication frequency and the destination where you want to send your data.

8. Click "Create connection" to finalize your Drift source connector on Airbyte.

9. You can now monitor your data replication and manage your connection settings from the Airbyte dashboard.

Note: It is important to ensure that your Drift API credentials are correct and up-to-date to avoid any issues with data replication. Additionally, make sure to select the appropriate data to replicate and choose a suitable replication frequency to meet your business needs.

Step 2: Set up BigQuery as a destination connector

1. First, navigate to the Airbyte dashboard and select the "Destinations" tab on the left-hand side of the screen.

2. Scroll down until you find the "BigQuery" destination connector and click on it.

3. Click the "Create Destination" button to begin setting up your BigQuery destination.

4. Enter your Google Cloud Platform project ID and service account credentials in the appropriate fields.

5. Next, select the dataset you want to use for your destination and enter the table prefix you want to use.

6. Choose the schema mapping for your data, which will determine how your data is organized in BigQuery.

7. Finally, review your settings and click the "Create Destination" button to complete the setup process.

8. Once your destination is created, you can begin configuring your source connectors to start syncing data to BigQuery.

9. To do this, navigate to the "Sources" tab on the left-hand side of the screen and select the source connector you want to use.

10. Follow the prompts to enter your source credentials and configure your sync settings.

11. When you reach the "Destination" step, select your BigQuery destination from the dropdown menu and choose the dataset and table prefix you want to use.

12. Review your settings and click the "Create Connection" button to start syncing data from your source to your BigQuery destination.

Step 3: Set up a connection to sync your Drift data to BigQuery

Once you've successfully connected Drift as a data source and BigQuery as a destination in Airbyte, you can set up a data pipeline between them with the following steps:

Create a new connection: On the Airbyte dashboard, navigate to the 'Connections' tab and click the '+ New Connection' button.
Choose your source: Select Drift from the dropdown list of your configured sources.
Select your destination: Choose BigQuery from the dropdown list of your configured destinations.
Configure your sync: Define the frequency of your data syncs based on your business needs. Airbyte allows both manual and automatic scheduling for your data refreshes.
Select the data to sync: Choose the specific Drift objects you want to import data from towards BigQuery. You can sync all data or select specific tables and fields.
Select the sync mode for your streams: Choose between full refreshes or incremental syncs (with deduplication if you want), and this for all streams or at the stream level. Incremental is only available for streams that have a primary cursor.
Test your connection: Click the 'Test Connection' button to make sure that your setup works. If the connection test is successful, save your configuration.
Start the sync: If the test passes, click 'Set Up Connection'. Airbyte will start moving data from Drift to BigQuery according to your settings.

Remember, Airbyte keeps your data in sync at the frequency you determine, ensuring your BigQuery data warehouse is always up-to-date with your Drift data.

Use Cases to transfer your Drift data to BigQuery

Integrating data from Drift to BigQuery provides several benefits. Here are a few use cases:

Advanced Analytics: BigQuery’s powerful data processing capabilities enable you to perform complex queries and data analysis on your Drift data, extracting insights that wouldn't be possible within Drift alone.
Data Consolidation: If you're using multiple other sources along with Drift, syncing to BigQuery allows you to centralize your data for a holistic view of your operations, and to set up a change data capture process so you never have any discrepancies in your data again.
Historical Data Analysis: Drift has limits on historical data. Syncing data to BigQuery allows for long-term data retention and analysis of historical trends over time.
Data Security and Compliance: BigQuery provides robust data security features. Syncing Drift data to BigQuery ensures your data is secured and allows for advanced data governance and compliance management.
Scalability: BigQuery can handle large volumes of data without affecting performance, providing an ideal solution for growing businesses with expanding Drift data.
Data Science and Machine Learning: By having Drift data in BigQuery, you can apply machine learning models to your data for predictive analytics, customer segmentation, and more.
Reporting and Visualization: While Drift provides reporting tools, data visualization tools like Tableau, PowerBI, Looker (Google Data Studio) can connect to BigQuery, providing more advanced business intelligence options. If you have a Drift table that needs to be converted to a BigQuery table, Airbyte can do that automatically.

Wrapping Up

To summarize, this tutorial has shown you how to:

Configure a Drift account as an Airbyte data source connector.
Configure BigQuery as a data destination connector.
Create an Airbyte data pipeline that will automatically be moving data directly from Drift to BigQuery after you set a schedule

With Airbyte, creating data pipelines take minutes, and the data integration possibilities are endless. Airbyte supports the largest catalog of API tools, databases, and files, among other sources. Airbyte's connectors are open-source, so you can add any custom objects to the connector, or even build a new connector from scratch without any local dev environment or any data engineer within 10 minutes with the no-code connector builder.

We look forward to seeing you make use of it! We invite you to join the conversation on our community Slack Channel, or sign up for our newsletter. You should also check out other Airbyte tutorials, and Airbyte’s content hub!

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How to Sync Drift to BigQuery Manually

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FAQs

What is ETL?

ETL, an acronym for Extract, Transform, Load, is a vital data integration process. It involves extracting data from diverse sources, transforming it into a usable format, and loading it into a database, data warehouse or data lake. This process enables meaningful data analysis, enhancing business intelligence.

What is Drift?

What data can you extract from Drift?

Drift's API provides access to a wide range of data related to customer interactions and conversations. The following are the categories of data that can be accessed through Drift's API:

1. Conversations: This includes data related to all conversations between customers and agents, including conversation history, transcripts, and metadata.

2. Contacts: This includes data related to customer profiles, such as contact information, company details, and activity history.

3. Events: This includes data related to customer behavior, such as page views, clicks, and other actions taken on the website.

4. Campaigns: This includes data related to marketing campaigns, such as email campaigns, chat campaigns, and other promotional activities.

5. Integrations: This includes data related to third-party integrations, such as CRM systems, marketing automation tools, and other business applications.

6. Analytics: This includes data related to performance metrics, such as conversion rates, engagement rates, and other key performance indicators.

Overall, Drift's API provides a comprehensive set of data that can be used to gain insights into customer behavior, improve customer engagement, and optimize business processes.

How do I transfer data from Drift?

This can be done by building a data pipeline manually, usually a Python script (you can leverage a tool as Apache Airflow for this). This process can take more than a full week of development. Or it can be done in minutes on Airbyte in three easy steps:
1. Set up Drift to BigQuery as a source connector (using Auth, or usually an API key)
2. Choose a destination (more than 50 available destination databases, data warehouses or lakes) to sync data too and set it up as a destination connector
3. Define which data you want to transfer from Drift to BigQuery and how frequently
You can choose to self-host the pipeline using Airbyte Open Source or have it managed for you with Airbyte Cloud.

What is ELT?

ELT, standing for Extract, Load, Transform, is a modern take on the traditional ETL data integration process. In ELT, data is first extracted from various sources, loaded directly into a data warehouse, and then transformed. This approach enhances data processing speed, analytical flexibility and autonomy.

Difference between ETL and ELT?

ETL and ELT are critical data integration strategies with key differences. ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) transforms data before loading, ideal for structured data. In contrast, ELT (Extract, Load, Transform) loads data before transformation, perfect for processing large, diverse data sets in modern data warehouses. ELT is becoming the new standard as it offers a lot more flexibility and autonomy to data analysts.

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Warehouses and Lakes

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How to load data from Drift to BigQuery

Learn how to use Airbyte to synchronize your Drift data into BigQuery within minutes.

Try Airbyte Cloud free

Deploy Airbyte Open Source

Step 2: Setup BigQuery

Step 3: Setup a connection Use Cases Wrapping Up

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Example H3

Sync data between Drift and BigQuery

Get your data syncing in minutes

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TL;DR

set up Drift as a source connector (using Auth, or usually an API key)
set up BigQuery as a destination connector
define which data you want to transfer and how frequently

You can choose to self-host the pipeline using Airbyte Open Source or have it managed for you with Airbyte Cloud.

This tutorial’s purpose is to show you how.

What is Drift