Last year, there were discussions about Google Analytics transitioning users to Google Analytics 4, as Universal Analytics was going to be phased out completely. This shift towards event-based reporting instead of session-based reporting was not entirely new to brands that rely on data for analysis, reporting, and retargeting customers. Littledata has been working with brands that have been utilizing granular event-based data for some time now to enhance the user journey and increase conversions. This highlights the importance of subscription data in improving business outcomes. Adapting to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) will require some adjustment, as with any new tool. Although it has a distinct appearance and user experience, it offers even greater capabilities for ecommerce managers. Littledata’s app connects automatically with BigCommerce and Shopify and Shopify Plus merchants to ensure precise subscription data in GA4, and in this article, I will outline the most beneficial features they have discovered thus far. Event based tracking Event-based tracking in GA4 captures specific actions or events on a website or app, providing more detailed data about user behavior than Universal Analytics, which focused on sessions and pageviews. This includes clicks, scroll depth, form submissions, video plays, and more. See Google’s full list of events that are tracked automatically.  Implementing event-based tracking in GA4 can help businesses understand user behavior and engagement, optimize their website, identify growth opportunities, and make data-driven decisions to improve their bottom line. This includes highlighting products and product groups based on granular browsing data captured through event tracking.  Automatically tracked events do not include important ecommerce actions like purchases, subscriptions, and refunds. Shopify's Google sales channel also does not provide complete tracking. Ecommerce sites need a custom setup or automated server-side tracking to ensure accurate conversion tracking. If you are using Skio events captured can be very useful for campaigns—for example using specific events to trigger workflows in Klayvio to drive higher engagement and AOV.  Flexible reporting GA4 has new features including no event collection limits, cross web + app tracking, explorations, and faster reporting. An early limitation was reporting, but Google has added an Explorations tab that makes it easy to deep dive into data by channels or demographics. Popular exploration types include free-form, funnel, and path. Creating an exploration by dimensions, metrics, or segments is now easier. Creating these for your unique subscription types, segments, or product types can do wonders for diving into data for analysis right in GA4. Remembering that the accurate data captured is key to the results.  The phrase garbage in garbage out applies here when you are only using client-side tracking or native store tracking. Littledata has gone to great lengths to enable merchants to have accurate data stitched together with server-side tracking so that the information you have in GA4 can be your single source of truth.  As mentioned, it takes time to learn a new tool but the Littledata team has made it incredibly easy with free GA4 courses that walk you through how to build your own ecommerce reports in GA4.  Here are our three popular setup videos for ecommerce reports in GA4: Sales performance report Checkout behavior report Creating segments for subscriptions Knowing how customers discover and interact with your brand can help with customer retention and acquisition. Identifying successful channels that drive subscriptions and high AOV can help ecommerce managers predict and allocate resources effectively. Streamlined audience building Google is encouraging users to link their Google Ad's account to GA4, which is seen as a better option than Universal Analytics in the long run. This will provide merchants with a direct view of the customer journey and allow them to create audiences from any combination of dimensions, metrics, and events found in GA4.  Google will automatically make two audiences for users based on purchases and all users, making audience building easier. Similar audiences or segments will be faded out by May 1st, 2023, to enable users to shift to using first-party data and Google's optimized targeting feature.  Littledata customers have been using their data to create audiences for years, and this connection is now even more important as GA4 data will guide Google Ad campaigns. The best part of sending this data directly to GA4 is that you will have the historical data from the time of implementation. Given that Google Analytics is not going anywhere this also gives brands piece of mind even if they are using alternative third party tools like Glew, Daasity, or Triple Whale to send their data for reporting purposes. Littledata benefits Skio brands by working with server-side tracking and third party integrations — helping sort out that the data is accurate and deduped before it reaches your GA4, Meta, TikTok, or Pinterest destinations giving you maximum control over your data for making better decisions.   Export raw data to BigQuery The ability to export from Google Analytics 4 (GA4) directly to BigQuery has opened up new possibilities for ecommerce managers to take their data analysis to the next level.The integration of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) with BigQuery has provided ecommerce managers with fresh opportunities to enhance their data analysis. Previously, these users were dependent on a GA360 account to obtain raw, row-level data and create unsampled reports or run their own algorithms. But now, with GA4 + BigQuery, users can access these features without requiring a GA360 account. This ability is particularly beneficial for ecommerce businesses, as it offers a robust data warehouse solution and provides an insurance policy for brands that want to own their own data for future analysis. With GA4 + BigQuery, users can harness the power of raw, row-level data to gain deeper insights into customer behavior, identify new opportunities, and optimize their marketing strategies. Ultimately, this new ability is a game-changer for businesses that want to take control of their data and leverage it to drive growth and success. Many brands are sending their data to GA4 from GA4 to BigQuery as a precautionary measure, even if they are not yet prepared to utilize or examine it in BigQuery. Reasons very but for the majority of brands they want the data collected and stored, so it is accessible in the future. Therefore, we highly suggest that anyone considering a data warehouse should begin using both BigQuery and GA4.  Third party apps are prioritizing GA4  GA4 only weeks away from being THE ANALYTICS TOOL — with sunsetting of Universal Analytics in July 2023 — for online merchants and brands. Providing more event based data than ever before that stands on privacy, first party data, and server-side tracking. Littledata helps top subscription brands track their data from Shopify and BigCommerce into GA4, ensuring accurate data and analytics by combining server-side and client-side tracking to combat cookie blockers from iOS updates and new privacy rollouts. Subscription tools like our partners at Skio come highly recommended by brands in all product vertical types: life food and beverage, fitness and health, and fashion. Having a tool like Skio to drive brand loyalty through new and robust subscription features is key for any brand looking to grow. Pairing this with Littledata for your conversion tracking into GA4 is the perfect way to level up your insights and data acumen. The benefit is that Littledata supports server-side tracking for brands to track all orders and give visibility to if those orders are one-time orders or recurring.  This adds tremendous value to subscription brands who want to drive campaigns based on high LTV and AOV—through accurate subscription data that can be missed completely with native tracking efforts or client-side tracking alone. For example, Littledata calculates LTV for brands automatically and sends it to your destinations like Google Analytics where you can filter by channel.  We've chatted with current and future Skio customers who rave about their platform for brands to drive more customer engagement and features to manage subscriptions. By combining Littledata with Skio you will get the most complete view and best attribution. Enabling you to take full advantage of the launch of Google Analytics 4 without the hassle of implementation or data maintence. Curious if you have any data tracking discrepancies?  Check out our free tool, GA4 Conversions Checker, to see if your ecommerce store is tracking the data properly, here. Or you can install Littledata instantly by connecting your store for a 30 day free trial. 

Fun fact: Littledata started in the UK! We've continued to expand around the world, but we've retained a core team around London, including Littledata CEO Edward Upton. So some of our team didn't have to travel for to get to the IRX event in Birmingham (in the UK not Alabama...) this week. It's already in full swing and it's been great for our team to catch up with friends and Shopify partners old and new, including tech partners like Klaviyo (they're a headline sponsor of IRX this year) and agency partners like Swanky. We're especially excited for Ed's May 25th panel appearance on developing a data-driven loyalty strategy that drives conversion and customer satisfaction. He's appearing alongside in-house experts from Trinny London, Avon and EvolveYou to chat about how data-driven retention strategies can change the game when it comes to both loyalty, upsells and ultimately customer happiness. Stop by and say hi! Loyalty and retention are common themes these days, as brands of all sizes adapt to CAC constraints and increased online competition from both new digitally native brands and legacy brands that finally made the leap online (often stimulated by the pandemic context). But do you know how to use data to optimize results? The most successful Littledata customers are all using data to improve loyalty and retention. Their top strategies are: Understanding LTV by channel. Knowing AOV, purchase rate and customer lifetime value (LTV) by channel is essential, especially for subscriptions, so you can target customers who will naturally be more loyal. Building out data-driven personalization. Using first-party data to optimize engagement and provide a better customer experience automatically Leveraging customer data and analytics to create targeted and engaging loyalty initiatives. This is where popular apps like and Yotpo, Smile and Loyalty Lion come in. In today's highly competitive Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) landscape, building customer loyalty is crucial for sustainable growth. Brands are using data for everything from product testing to audience building in Facebook and Instagram, and as DTC brands continue to proliferate across a wide range of industries and verticals, implementing effective loyalty programs can provide a competitive edge. If you can't make the panel, feel free to reach out to our data team for a demo of Littledata, a free GA4 data audit, or check out the refcent case study with skincare mavens Geologie, who used Littledata's ecommerce data platform to drive a 25% increase in subscriber retention. Now that's what I call optimization -- whether you spell it optimize or optimise :) PS. Missed the Birmingham show? We'll also be at the London event in October. Stay up to date with our events listing.

LTV, or customer lifetime value, is a key metric in ecommerce that measures the total amount of revenue a customer has generated for a brand. Merchants knowing their LTV is important because it allows ecommerce businesses to make better decisions about customer acquisition, retention, and pricing. In this article we partnered up with Swanky to give you a breakdown on how you can do this yourself. Before we dive in though — here are some specific reasons why LTV is important in ecommerce: 🎯 Better customer acquisition decisions: Brands are looking to stretch their budgets and get the most out of their ad dollars. Knowing the LTV of customers can help merchants build audiences or target look-a-like audiences that are more likely to engage and buy again. One example is when merchants know the LTV of their customers is high, they generally are willing to spend more money upfront to acquire them because they know they will generate more revenue over time from that customer. 🛍 Improved customer retention: Understanding LTV can also help ecommerce merchants grow and improve their customer retention. By identifying customers with a high LTV brands can create targeted retention strategies or campaigns to keep these customers engaged and coming back for more. We share some ways to take action on this below. 💸 Pricing decisions: LTV can also help brands make better pricing decisions. If the LTV of customers is low, brands may need to lower their prices to remain competitive and attract more customers or build a strategy to move those customers to a higher AOV or priced product. On the other hand, if the LTV is high, merchants may be able to charge a premium price or offer a subscription because customers are willing to pay more. These are great things to A/B test on your website or ad campaigns to see how your low or high LTV customers respond.  Overall, LTV is a critical metric for ecommerce businesses to track. The Littledata app does automatically through our Shopify/BigCommerce to Google Analytics 4 connection. Which provides valuable insights through accurate attribution that shows customer behaviour and lifecycle events. This tracking helps merchants analyse and create action plans for their customer acquisition, retention, and pricing. What LTV tracking looks like in action by setting up an audience based on high customer values Recently we caught up with Tom Cox of Swanky, a leading Shopify Plus agency with offices in the UK, Australia & France who said, “By tracking CLTV, you can see which customers are generating the most value for your business. This information can be used to target your marketing efforts and sales strategies more effectively. Importantly, identifying high value customers makes it easier to target them with marketing campaigns.” LTV is an important focus for Swanky and their clients but how do they execute?  Here is one way they use Littledata to drive their LTV efforts in Google Analytics 4: 1. Create custom dimensions in GA4 to report on Customer Lifetime value of users ( https://help.littledata.io/posts/customer-lifetime-value-google-analytics/) 2. Calculate the LTV of your top 10% of customers. 3. Create an audience in GA4 by going to Admin → Audiences → New Audience 4. In the audience definition, choose the parameter lifetime_revenue_littledata 5. Then using the LTV figure you calculated earlier, specify a filter to only include users whose LTV is higher than that value 6. You can now use this audience to sync to Google Ads, and also understand which channel acquired those customers. Using behaviour reports, funnels and path exploration reports you can observe how valuable customers are interacting with your brand There are several reasons how this targeting can really fuel growth for brands but as we’ve seen the global market dictate—brands are focusing heavily on their customer retention rates this year. On the topic of retention Tom said, “By understanding why high value customers have churned, you can take steps to prevent them from leaving.” tactics like, “loyalty programs, improving customer service experiences, and providing more personalised marketing” you can really move the needle.  If you’ve yet to create an audience using the handy walkthrough above now is the time to give it a go. Merchants who know their customers LTV and can attribute the channels they are coming from such as organic or paid performance like Google, Facebook, Pinterest, and TikTok ads will have an edge on retargeting and creating lookalike audiences based on accurate data and analytics.   How LTV and CAC enables better decision making  No matter how good your customer acquisition strategy is, all marketers are looking to increase LTV of their customers and decrease Cost of Acquisition Costs or CAC for short. For those new to the term it is the total cost that a business incurs to acquire a new customer. It can be calculated by dividing the total cost of acquiring new customer over a specific period (such as a month or a quarter) by the number of new customers acquired during that same period. This will give you the average cost of acquiring a single new customer. For example, if a DTC brand spends $10,000 on marketing and sales activities in a month, and acquires 100 new customers during that same period, the CAC would be $100 ($10,000 / 100). This is a big topic among marketers looking to optimize their existing channels and ad spend. When chatting about CAC Tom mentioned, “by knowing how much it costs to acquire a new customer, you can make more informed decisions on how to allocate your marketing budget” and as many marketers know running campaigns proof is in the pudding when it comes to forecasting and maintaining ad budgets in any organization.  Tom recommends those using Littledata to head over to GA4 and use the parameter purchase_count_littledata that is automatically generated by Littledata’s tracking script!  1. Create custom dimensions in GA4 to report on purchase_count_littledata parameter ( https://help.littledata.io/posts/customer-lifetime-value-google-analytics/) 2. In most standard reports, there is an option to “Add comparison” 3. Then choose the purchase_count_littledata dimension (that you created earlier), and choose dimension value 1 to select only new customers. 4. The report will now show the comparison between the segments you have created Knowing the costs and the channels that contribute to that first time customer can be an incredibly powerful tool and insight to campaign management, acquisition strategies, and a/b testing of new tactics or channels. There is a fine line betweening knowing your channels which many marketers do—and having the data to back it up!  A few points to take away on the importance of CAC for your brand: Helps measure effectiveness of campaigns Allows for better budgeting and financial planning  Helps determine LTV of customers—allocate those resources accordingly  Helps Identify areas of improvement—prevent high CAC to wrong target customer In conclusion  We would be remiss if we didn't highlight a real brand who has put these solutions into practice and at scale—Geologie. Geologie's implementation of Littledata has yielded impressive results for their subscription business. Over the past three years, they have experienced continuous growth of over 150% without any additional expenses on customer acquisition. Moreover, their data-driven approach has led to a remarkable improvement in retention rates, increasing by 25% year-over-year. Clearly, Littledata has been instrumental in driving Geologie's revenue and LTV to new heights. Swanky reminded us that most of the data is right in front of us and while we can take action now it's important to view how CAC is changing both on the regular and over the course of time. Knowing what channels are driving high LTV customers isn’t a cure all but it will give you the insights you need to target, build, and manage effective campaigns. For many—this is one of many data problems blocked by lack of an inhouse data team—fortunately agencies like Swanky have the experience to partner with your brand. We at Littledata couldn’t ask for a better crew — they put into action the accurate data and tracking we provide for merchants of all sizes across the globe.   For more information about Swanky you can visit their website. If you have any questions on tracking, attribution, or otherwise please reach out to Littledata for a free data chat. In the meantime, stay curious and be inspired by data. It is one of the best ways to understand your customers.

What if we told you that the best way to boost Average Order Value (AOV) is to stop focusing on AOV?  Yes, it’s counterintuitive. But when your brand tries to increase AOV just for increasing AOV’s sake, it can often be ineffective and even off-putting for consumers. After all, nobody wants to feel like they’re being pressured to spend more money. Luckily, there’s an easy solution to combat this — and it all boils down to intention. Your subscribers are human first and foremost, and as is the case with any other relationship, they need to feel valued and appreciated. By shifting your brand’s attention away from solely increasing AOV and instead focusing on adding real value to your subscribers, you can organically heighten engagement, improve your customer retention, and ultimately increase your AOV.  [note] Don’t miss crucial subscriber data by using Littledata’s app with Smartrr to capture checkout events through client-side and server-side tracking. [/note] Here are the retention-driving, value-adding components that your eCommerce brand should target, which will subsequently lead to increased AOV: Utilize Personalized Recommendations & Exclusive Add-ons Cross-selling and upselling are the two main strategies that typically spring to mind when anyone talks about increasing AOV.  When considering a value-adding approach for your subscribers, a different and more effective way to think about cross-selling and upselling is through personalized product recommendations.   In general, personalization is becoming more essential (and powerful) for eCommerce businesses. About 71% of consumers are expecting a more personalized experience from the brands they interact with — so playing up an individualized approach is an effective way to keep subscribers engaged (and organically encourage them to spend more).  Lean into your subscriber data to make specific, personalized recommendations to your subscribers based on products they’ve purchased in the past as well as products that other subscribers have previously purchased together. This way, you’re only recommending highly-relevant products that are significantly more likely to delight each subscriber.  And the best part is that happy subscribers are proven to spend more — which increases your AOV. 54% of retailers reported that product recommendations were a key driver of AOV, and leaning into personalization has been shown to account for a 25% revenue boost for DTC brands. In other words, prioritizing the end consumer is an evidently lucrative move.  As for an effective location for cross-selling and upselling — a good tactic is to display one-time add-ons in your customer account portal. And to take your add-ons to the next level, you can add a layer of exclusivity.  A key component of keeping subscribers engaged is by reminding them as often as possible that being a subscriber unlocks perks that one-time purchasers don’t get.  Featuring a subscriber-only exclusive one-time add-on creates the sensation for subscribers that they’re VIPs, thereby increasing the likelihood that they’ll want access to the product. We’ve seen some businesses even offer merch as a one-time add-on as an additional way to level up the overall brand experience.  ARMRA offers a branded tote bag as one of their one-time add-ons. Lean Into a Loyalty Program Loyal customers are the bread and butter of subscription brands, and that’s because they’re accurately known for being the most profitable. Just a 5% increase in customer retention rates has been shown to cause profits to spike by 25% to 95%, and loyalty programs specifically have been proven to increase AOV by about 14%.   Of course, loyalty isn’t something that can be created with the snap of your fingers; it has to be earned, and that takes time. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t strategies to help the process along.  Loyalty programs are one of the easiest and most effective ways to encourage retention. A strong loyalty program provides valuable rewards as subscribers continue to stay and spend money. Consumers can accrue points with each purchase and exchange them for free products, discounts, exclusive items, and more.  Loyalty programs also put subscribers in control of their experience, allowing them to select whatever is most valuable to them. Take L’AMARUE, for example. Subscribers can decide to redeem 100 points to quickly unlock $10 off, or they can delay gratification and choose to save 475 points for The Face Cream.  By associating spending more money with tangible rewards, you create a positive feedback loop each time your loyal subscribers buy additional products. Much like the name implies, this encourages subscribers to remain loyal to your brand and keep coming back for more.  Offer Free Shipping  Free shipping is a low-lift strategy to add value to your customers, and the ROI is significant. Consumers are fairly adamant about despising shipping costs. One study found that 77% of consumers have previously abandoned a purchase altogether if they weren’t pleased with the shipping options, whereas 84% went through with a purchase specifically because shipping was free. Additionally, a different study found that 90% of online consumers said that the ability to unlock free shipping directly motivated them to buy more.  For one-time purchases, one of the best value-adding strategies is to institute a free shipping threshold. If you provide free shipping for orders over $50 and a consumer spends only $43, they’re way more likely to toss on an additional $15 product to access free shipping.  Looking beyond one-time purchases, it’s a good idea to offer free shipping for all of your subscribers. For one, this creates a sense of exclusivity associated with your subscription offering, which is a great way to foster loyalty. But it also gives subscribers a sense that they’re saving money with each purchase, especially if you’re transparent about these savings.  Chillhouse lists “Free Shipping, Always” as the first bullet beneath their PDP. Strikethroughs or clear deductions are an excellent way to illustrate savings. At every chance you get, be sure to highlight the amount of money subscribers save by not paying for shipping. This subconsciously makes your consumers feel as if they have a little extra money to spend, and it encourages them to add on another item. Once again, beginning from a place of providing consumers with real value results in the opportunity to boost your AOV.   Implement Product Bundling Product bundling is the ultimate paradox. By grouping products together and offering a discount, you give subscribers the perception that they’re getting more for less — when in actuality they usually wind up spending more than they would have if the products weren’t bundled. That’s because the concept of saving money incentivizes consumers to buy a bundle even if it includes a product or two that they wouldn’t have purchased separately. And an added perk of getting subscribers to try a product they might not have tried is you increase the likelihood that they’ll love the new product and come to rely on it, purchasing it again in the future as a result.  Here are a few strategies to help optimize your product bundles:  Just like with free shipping, be sure to make your subscribers’ savings evident on your PDP with strikethroughs and/or different colored fonts.  Allow subscribers to customize their bundles. This way, you can play into personalization, flexibility, and ensure subscribers get exactly what they need.  Monitor your analytics to see which items are commonly bought together to identify future bundles. Product bundling has repeatedly been shown to increase sales, and optimizing your bundles to provide your consumers with the best value will only further drive revenue.   Highlight Trending Products  While we’re on the topic of customer account portals, another way to drive engagement and boost AOV is through utilizing trending upsells.  Generally speaking, tacking the word “trending” next to a product automatically adds value to it by tapping into social proof. If subscribers believe there’s buzz around an item, they’ll be more likely to want to try it.  The exciting part is that there are myriad ways to creatively leverage trending products in a way that adds value to your subscribers.  For example, Wholesome Story took advantage of trending upsells to provide educational factoids about a lesser-known product. This “Did You Know” angle spreads necessary awareness before subscribers buy a new product, taking out the need for any research. Nooma, on the other hand, used their trending upsells as a way to promote a rotating flavor of the month in order to keep subscribers on their toes and give them the chance to sample something new. This adds a level of freshness to subscriptions and keeps customers returning to their account portal each month to see what the new flavor is.  You can also go in another direction and feature a relevant influencer’s favorite products. The endorsement will only further boost social proof, which automatically adds value to your brand as a whole. After all, 61% of consumers trust influencers’ recommendations.  Wrapping Up: Adding Value to Consumers Leads to a Higher AOV All in all, the best way to approach increasing your average order value is by prioritizing and delighting your end consumer. By creating the best possible experience for your subscribers every step of the way, you’ll encourage retention, grow customer loyalty, and naturally drive revenue as a result.  This post is the product of a partnership between Littledata and Smartrr. Check out Littledata to optimize and scale your DTC brand with key data insights including subscription data, and visit Smartrr to level up your subscription offering and increase customer engagement.  – Written by Gaby Tegen  Bio:  Gaby Tegen is the Co-Founder & CEO of Smartrr, the leading Shopify subscription app built to increase LTV. In addition to offering out-of-the-box subscription models and a branded customer account portal, Smartrr elevates the post-purchase experience with loyalty rewards, referrals, bundles, and more. Recently, Smartrr raised $10M in Series A funding to further their mission of becoming the first comprehensive LTV platform in the Shopify ecosystem. For more information, visit https://smartrr.com/.

Grind had 11 brick and mortar stores in the UK before they dove into ecommerce on Shopify. It was not until the COVID lockdown that they moved from strictly brick and mortar to the ecommerce ecosystem. Before then, only half of a percent of their business was online! After they added subscriptions and built a data stack to inform the launch of new promotion methods, the business scaled to 50x revenue in just a couple of months. THE CHALLENGE Over the years, Grind built an incredible brand through their popular brick-and-mortar stores and newsletters, going beyond coffee to become a part of their customers' lives in a meaningful, authentic way. Grind is gaining awareness not just in their local region of London but celebrating subscribers from around the globe. After losing their offline (physical location) business practically overnight, Grind needed to quickly pivot to ecommerce and get an accurate picture of their online customer lifetime value (LTV) for “one-time” and “recurring” orders. They needed to see and report on customer behavior happening on their Shopify store to improve the checkout flow, build ideal customer profiles, retarget the right customers using dynamic social ads, and make crucial decisions using accurate data at the core of these efforts. THE SOLUTION Littledata's Recharge connection made it easy to get accurate sales data and marketing attribution across the subscriber journey. This smart technology connected Grind’s Recharge checkout with Google Analytics for accurate data about subscription revenue, including first-time payments, recurring transactions, and subscription lifecycle events. They were able to see LTV by channel and—critically—to predict where high- value subscriber growth was most likely to happen. It all came down to “measuring the difference in LTV for subscribers versus one-time purchasers” says Grind CMO Teddy Robinson. “Subscription revenue and return on ad spend (ROAS) were really the biggest top-line metrics for us.” RESULTS Subscription selling has created an exciting opportunity for the Grind ecommerce store to unlock potential revenue, build long-lasting relationships with their customers, and create a community among consumers. Building on their existing loyal customer base, Grind’s introduction of sustainable at home coffee pods— and tracking checkout events accurately with Littledata’s Recharge connection—Grind saw massive subscriber growth across paid and organic channels. They went from £10k to £500k monthly ecommerce revenue, and are have expanded internationally. A few takeaways of what Grind accomplished with Littledata: • 50x Subscription revenue in three months • 100% Recharge orders captured in Google Analytics • 28 Event types tracked in the checkout

Meta is pushing all ecommerce brands to implement the Facebook Conversions API. But what is it exactly? And what is the benefit of using an ecommerce data platform to push data back to Facebook? If you're running a Shopify store and you're not using Meta's Conversions API via Littledata, you're missing out on a lot of benefits that can help you drive more sales, grow your business and most importantly run higher converting Facebook Ad Campaigns. As Meta explains, the Conversions API can get you “closer to your customers” and help you “take advantage of first part data” from your Shopify store. But what does that all mean? Can’t you just add some extra code and be done with it? In fact, it’s not so simple. As with GA4 implementations, there are a lot of soft apps and integrations for Facebook Ads that work ok for very small merchants (less than $500k GMV). But serious brands need complete data in Meta — whether you’re focused on retargeting the checkout funnel, building better audiences, or just improving your overall top-line ad spend. Littledata has worked with several of the top DTC brands on Shopify and BigCommerce. Here are the top 4 reasons why you should reconsider your tech stack for advertising on Meta. These are the top benefits our most successful brands have seen after installing our Facebook Conversions API connection. 1. Better targeting of potential customers Meta's machine learning algorithm uses conversion signals to understand what type of people on their platform are likely to purchase products from your shop. By sending conversion event data to Meta, you're helping them understand your audience better and allowing them to target the right people with your ads. This can result in cheaper impressions and conversions for you. Think of this like training the platform to understand your ideal customer profile (ICP). Because Littledata tracks both one-off and repeat purchases (including subscriptions from apps like Recharge, Smarter and Stay Ai), you get complete data for both targeting and audience building (lookalike audiences with a higher LTV). 2. Improved ad performance Meta uses conversion signals to optimize your ads and find the highest quality potential customers within their user base. By sending Meta conversion complete event data and using it as the optimization event for your ads, Meta can show your ad to the right people at the right time, increasing the chances of them becoming your customer. This will cut down on wasted ad spend and increase overall conversions. 3. Better marketing attribution Meta's Conversions API allows you to send conversion event data to Meta from your backend systems instead of directly from the browser. This means that even if the user leaves the page quickly or has an ad blocker, the data is still being sent to Meta’s event manager. Using the Conversions API can improve the attribution of your conversions to your ads, which can result in better ad spend performance and audience building in the future. 4. More data to work with When you use the Conversions API, you can send personally identifiable information (PII) like email address, phone numbers back to Meta/Facebook. This allows Meta to match the user with their internal database and get a better understanding of who is converting on your site. It means that shoppers get better, personalized ads that fit their interests. You can also send Meta pseudo-anonymous data like IP address and user agent, as well as Meta's own cookies from the frontend. This gives Meta more data to work with and can help improve their targeting and optimization algorithms. How it works Littledata is the most advanced solution for Conversions API, but we didn’t get there by accident. Our Google Analytics integration has been the industry leader since 2017 and we used a similar framework to support CAPI so that brands can get complete, accurate data in Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads. In addition to the server-side tracking that’s automatically added by Littledata to capture everything that happens in your online store’s “lower conversion funnel”, such as checkout funnel activity and purchases, Littledata's integration with the Conversion API is superior to other solutions because of the way it sends the fbp and fbc cookies, which are crucial parameters for the event match quality score. Littledata ensures that an fbp is always available and automatically generates one in the event that the fbp parameter cannot be retrieved due to ad blockers. Additionally, the fbp and fbc parameters are passed with server-side events to ensure the highest event match quality. Why are the fbc and fbp parameters crucial for Meta CAPI? The event match quality score is an algorithm used by Meta to price impressions, choosing the right users within their user-base to target and provide you with the cheapest impressions and conversions. If the fbp and fbc parameters are not sent, the event match quality score will be negatively impacted, and Meta will not be able to optimize your ads to target the right users effectively. To overcome this, Littledata's integration with Meta Conversion API ensures that the fbp parameter is always available, even if it cannot be retrieved due to ad blockers. The fbp is automatically generated, and the user is attributed to it to ensure that the event match quality is not negatively affected. When using Littledata's integration with Meta's Conversion API, Shopfiy and BigCommerce brands can expect to see a boost in the number of conversions that Meta is able to attribute to their ads, resulting in significant ad spend performance and improvements to the overall ad campaign.  Still wondering how these four reasons work out in action? Check out how Flux Footwear used Littledata to support multiple data destinations. A shoe brand that embraced data when they kicked off their business, Flux saw amazing six-figure growth by making data-driven decisions with data they could trust.  On Shopify Plus? Book a Littledata Plus demo today. We’re happy to audit your Facebook data for free in advance of the call.

We’ve heard it said over slack, in-coffee break areas, and on countless community threads, “are you missing orders in Google Analytics 4?” Ecommerce managers know that measurement of data can be a compass for a brands overall marketing strategy from annual planning to one off campaigns. Unfortunately, we’ve seen nearly 20-30% of transaction data missing from merchants' stores in GA4 when they aren’t using Littledata – even if they’re using another Google Analytics app or Shopify’s Google sales channel! When this happens to key conversion data on orders it can create quite the problem for optimizing ecommerce marketing campaigns, let alone dealing with CAC constraints and increasingly competitive marketplace.  And let’s face the facts: if you don’t know which campaigns actually lead to sales, there’s no way your site will scale. While we’ve already solved the tracking bit to capture these events using the Littledata app we know that broadly many merchants and brands are still not aware they are losing data through their native ecommerce platform connections, or client-side tracking that can be easily blocked (and misses out on checkout funnel events, purchases, subscriptions, refunds, etc.). Which we can report is 100% annoying all of the time—so we created a solution, a tool, and a magical GA4 conversion checker that you can use right now, totally free. Yeah—we know, it’s basically the wizard school of free GA4 apps.  If that wasn’t enough, you can sign in with your Google account and check any properties or if you are unsure you can look up your Measurement ID to check if your data is flowing and correctly being tracked. Why is this important you ask? Because we’ve seen brands like Geologie grow year over year by operating off of accurate data and analytics. You will be able to make more informed decisions, compare performance across channels and devices, build way better audiences in Google Ads, and get a complete picture of who your most loyal customers are, whether you’re targeting subscribers or just high-LTV customers. No longer will you be asking the questions about if your conversions are being tracked correctly in Google Analytics 4 nor if what is in Shopify matches what you can see in GA4 reporting. Most importantly, you will not be wondering if your revenue is being tracked correctly—our checker works automatically with just a couple of clicks. Note: Did we mention the price? It’s free-ninety-free 🙂 Try out our GA4 Conversion Checker now and let us know what you think! And if you need help along the way during your data conversion journey the Littledata team is standing by to help out or you can get started with a 30 day free trial—no strings attached by signing up. During this trial you will be able to connect your Shopify or BigCommerce store in a few clicks to Google Analytics 4, monitor that your customer behaviour and conversion data is flowing correctly, and even build granular retargeting campaigns for customers dropping out of your checkout funnel. After that it's only a matter of time before you join the Littledata family as a monthly subscriber to our app that you can cancel anytime if you feel you are not getting ROI for our technology. 

Written by Nima Gardideh, Co-founder, President, CTO at Pearmill It’s now been two years since iOS 14.5 was launched. If you’ve been advertising for a while, you may have noticed the significant shifts in the performance of your ad spend on Meta and other performance-focused ad platforms. In this post, we’re going to discuss the best practices companies are using in 2023 and beyond to ensure they’re able to achieve the best results. The recommended approach at the end of this post is what we use with clients for whom we manage $100M+ of yearly ad spend aimed at acquiring profitable customers. Where is the industry headed? iOS 14.5, and the marketing industry in general, are moving towards a more privacy-centric approach to tracking consumers’ behavior on their platforms. At a high level, this means that platforms like iOS, Android, and even browsers like Chrome and Firefox are going to prevent ad networks like Meta and Google from getting per-user conversion details through automatic means. iOS 14.5 was the first shoe to drop, as Android added a similar approach in 2022, and 3rd party cookies are next (estimated 2024). The future of the industry doesn’t include stopping tracking altogether, but instead to moving toward anonymizing the data as much as possible. Ad networks should know “some number of people converted because of these campaigns”, as opposed to “these exact people converted after seeing this exact ad on your platform”. Meta’s Conversions API and Google’s Enhanced Conversions are solutions to this general shift in the market. They’re tools to help companies continue sending signals to these ad networks to help enable performance and decentralize tracking permission gathering to each company. Why is it important to send conversion data to Meta? Sending conversion signals to Meta is important because they use these signals to understand: What type of people on their platform are likely to purchase a product on your shop? Which of the ads, campaigns, and audiences in your ad account are bringing in paying customers? Which ads people are finding valuable in general (i.e. engaging and useful)? They want their users to enjoy the ads they see, and continue using their platform. Meta uses a machine learning algorithm to help price impressions, choose which users on their platform see ads you’ve produced, and look for the cheapest impressions for you automatically. This algorithm uses the conversion signals you’re sending to Meta as one of the most important factors to choosing the right people within their user-base to target. Meta is incentivized to give you the cheapest impressions (and cheapest conversions) because, if your unit economics are working from spending on their platform, you’re likely to spend more. When you send Meta conversion event data and, in a more technical sense, use that event as the optimization event for your ads, Meta does the work within its systems to find the highest quality potential customers within their userbase. It then shows them the ad you’ve produced at a time that they believe they’re most likely to become your customer. What are Meta Pixel and Meta’s Conversions API? Why should you use both? At the moment, there are two ways you can send events to Meta: using the Meta Pixel, and/or Meta’s Conversions API. Meta Pixel is a way to send conversion event data to Meta when the user is interacting with your site on the browser. For example, when someone adds a product to their cart, you can have the Meta Pixel send an AddToCart event to Meta to track that event. Or when they finish making a purchase, you can send a Purchase event to Meta. Meta’s Pixel sends the data from the browser itself. This comes with a few disadvantages: Since the data is being routed directly from the browser itself, there are ad blockers that sometimes prevent that data from being delivered to Meta. The data transfer requests sometimes fail. This can happen is if the user leaves the page very quickly, or if they have internet connectivity issues when the events are being sent to Meta. Meta’s Pixel tracking is also affected by iOS 14+ changes, since iOS has mandated that Meta request permissions for tracking the user when advertising through their usual methods. While the impact on desktop web is minimal (as of this writing), it still affects mobile web users, which is the majority of people who engage with ads. Meta uses the Pixel conversion events to attribute which ads, as sets, and campaigns the user has seen or clicked on before each conversion event. They generally do this by matching a first-party cookie that they generate to a unique ID they pass to your site when the user clicks on an ad (in a query parameter called “FBCLID”). These are all areas where Meta’s Conversions API can help! Meta’s Conversions API enables companies to send conversion event data to Meta from their backend systems instead of directly from the browser. For example, when someone makes a purchase on your site, you can send a purchase event to Meta from your backend even if the user closes their browser very quickly, has an ad blocker, or has disabled tracking on iOS. Similar to Meta’s Pixel, they use this data to try to attribute each conversion to an ad, ad set, and campaign that the user has previously seen or clicked on. Unlike the Meta Pixel, the way they attribute the conversion is beyond just the unique ID that they pass along: You can send them personally identifiable information (PII) like email address, phone number, etc., which they use to match the user with their internal database. You can send them pseudo-anonymous data like IP address, and User Agent (browser details). You can send them Meta’s own cookies from the front-end, which are generated by Meta’s Pixel. When using Meta’s Conversions API, it’s common to see a boost in the number of conversions that Meta is able to attribute to their ads. The attribution improvement can be as high as 10-25%, which can come with significant ad spend performance improvements. Meta even gives you a scorecard on how well they’re able to match conversions, and if the meta-data you’re sending them is useful: Screenshot of the Event Matching score in Meta’s Events Manager for events being enriched with Conversions API. How should you implement Meta conversion tracking for your e-commerce shop? Our recommendation is to use Meta’s Pixel and Meta’s Conversions API simultaneously. This approach ensures that Meta receives the maximum amount of conversion events to attribute to users and ads on their platform, which will ultimately help your brand achieve lower acquisition costs. There are a few technical implementations that are critical to get right when using this approach: Deduplication – sending conversion events from both the front-end (Meta Pixel) as well as the back-end (Meta’s Conversions API) means that Meta can double count conversions! For example, if you send a purchase event form the front-end and supplement that event with a purchase event from the back-end, Meta would accidentally count two purchases even though in reality there was actually one! Passing Metadata – Meta’s Conversions API needs metadata like email address, fbp/fbc (Facebook’s cookies), User Agent, IP Address, etc. to properly attribute conversion. This isn’t as technically simple as implementing the Meta Pixel. Freshness – when sending Conversions API events, it’s important to send events as soon as they arrive. The sooner Meta has the conversion data, the better the machine learning feedback loop for your ad spend will work. While these may be complicated technical implementation issues to handle, companies like Littledata have made the implementation of Meta’s Pixel and Conversions API much simpler by empowering marketers to simply enable these destinations on their platforms. If you’re looking to start implementing this strategy, sign up for Littledata and set up Meta’s Conversions API through them (Littledata's integration works automatically for Shopify and BigCommerce merchants!). Next stop, you’ll want to hit us up at Pearmill if you’re thinking about scaling up your advertising efforts. We can help you with growth marketing, ad creative production, conversion rate optimization, and attribution modeling!