Hi Everyone,
This is Edward, Founder of Littledata, making it easy for modern DTC brands to get accurate data.
2022 has been a bumper year for Littledata. We extended the product to work with BigCommerce as a data source, and Facebook Ads as a data destination. And after closing a funding round during a tricky period in the financial markets last summer we’ve grown the team to 40 people globally.
I’m immensely proud of the glowing reviews we get from customers, and we’ve now been judged as a category leader by G2. It’s been great to see customers like Geologie driving a 25% increase in retention using the improved subscription data available with Littledata. Customers drive Littledata forward, and I always welcome your feedback on where we can take the product next.
As something festive for this time of year I wanted to add a data twist to an English classic – the Twelve Days of Christmas. Here it goes!
On the twelfth day of data,
My analyst sent to me:
Twelve reports drumming
Management reports are the beating heart of any digital business and you need to be able to trust the data you make decisions from in 2023.
I recommend Google Analytics 4 as a powerful, free way to build reports on online marketing, merchandising, customer experience and more. And if you find GA4 a bit ugly you can use the same events in Looker Studio (previously Data Studio) to build pretty management reports.
Eleven data piping
DTC companies generate valuable first-party data from their customer interactions – but are you piping that data to marketing or analytics platforms where you can make use of it?
Littledata pipes first-party data from Shopify and BigCommerce into the platforms that brands rely on – Google, Facebook and hundreds of others via Segment.
Ten charts a leaping
Data doesn’t come to life until it’s visualized and, as much as I like the chart designs in Shopify Analytics, Google Analytics 4 provides more than ten powerful ways to look at your customer behavior.
You can use the GA exploration module to build whatever you fancy, including customer behavior, sales performance and checkout funnels.
Nine feeds to Looker
If you want more from your charting, look to Looker. Google has rebranded Data Studio to be Looker Studio – and it’s still the same fast and free data visualization suite.
Connecting a Google Analytics 4 source is easy, and if the reports don’t run fast enough for you try hooking Looker Studio up to BigQuery.
Eight ROAS
If you’ve given up on measuring Return On Advertising Spend by campaign in 2022, don’t despair!
For Facebook Ads there is a fix in the form of Facebook’s Conversions API, sending the conversion events via Littledata’s servers. And for Google Ads you can import conversions from Google Analytics to improve attribution and measure ROAS.
Seven data warehouse
Is building a data warehouse on your long to-do list for 2023? Even if you don’t have the budget or bandwidth for deeper data analysis now, it could be a valuable asset for the future?
Well you can tick this task off today! GA4 includes a free data feed into BigQuery – Google’s high-scale cloud warehouse. Hosting your event data in BigQuery will cost no more than tens of dollars a month, and from there you could pipe it into another data store of your choice: Snowflake, AWS RedShift or even SQL Server.
Six orders matching
Accurate management reports need accurate event data to feed them. If your store made 6 orders, you’d expect to see 6 orders in Google Analytics right?
Wrong! Stores which rely on the thank you page being tracked to feed an order into GA see only 5 of these 6 orders. A 20% loss of orders and revenue will put a big dent in the trustworthiness of your reporting, and it is totally fixable with server-side order tracking.
GA4!
Google Analytics 4 is the latest version of GA, and the only version you can use from July 2023. It’s a must for any brand wanting a single source of truth on marketing performance, and powerful ways to share data across Google’s marketing platform.
Get started today with Littledata’s GA4 connector! You’ll at least need 6 months of historical data, so it can’t wait until July to get started.
Four CAPI birds
Facebook Conversions API (CAPI) was one of the big marketing innovations of 2022. It’s the only way to get back some of the lost visibility on Facebook Ads due to iOS 14, and power advanced targeting like dynamic product ads.
Earlier this year we launched Littledata’s Conversions API destination for Shopify and BigCommerce to make it super-easy to match Facebook Ads to online conversions. It can’t wind back all the changes to cookies and browser tracking, but it can boost your Facebook performance by 34%.
Three UTMs
UTM tagging – decorating the link clicks from your online marketing campaigns – is still the bedrock of marketing attribution. Littledata can help you link orders to landing pages, but your company needs a consistent UTM tagging system to get the most from your reporting.
Luckily common platforms like Klaviyo and Google Ads have tools to make this UTM tagging easy.
Two data truths
ONE – brands that invest in better data get better growth. See case studies of Grind Coffee, Rothys and Geologie.
TWO – Google Tag Manager brings as many problems as it solves. Don’t waste weeks getting server-side Google Tag Manager to run – license a proven server-side data platform.
And events in Big-Quer-er-er-ry!
The icing on the Google Analytics Christmas cake for me is the fast and reliable data feed into Google BigQuery, and from there into Looker Studio or any reporting tool of your choice.
For $99 a month you can now license the kind of data pipeline that enterprise brands have spent hundreds of thousands building. There really is no trade off between accuracy and cost saving.
Have a very happy Christmas, and wishing your family, team and data a safe and successful 2023!
Best wishes,
Edward
