Brian Gavin Diamonds, a Texas-based jeweler specializing in custom engagement rings and known for its signature line of cut “hearts and arrows” diamonds, wanted to get a full picture of its customers’ behavior across the purchasing funnel. The company's main customers are couples ages 18 to 45 who are shopping for engagement rings. Its ecommerce site is responsible for 95% of its sales, and international clients make up 20% of the company’s business. While planning its redesign, Brian Gavin Diamonds wanted to better understand how the customer service it provided over the phone influenced customers’ decisions to purchase, with the goal of driving additional online conversions. At the same time, the company also wanted to know how customers were navigating its e-commerce site and, most importantly, if they decided to make a purchase—or not.

BuildDirect, a virtual organization operating in over 100 countries, was experiencing rapid growth and was eager to improve the efficiency of its online spending. The company had a good marketing mix that combined search advertising, email newsletters, and online customer signups. However, the challenge was to improve performance by discovering which tactics worked and which didn’t. With a marketing budget that approached $1 million per quarter in the first years of operation, it was crucial for BuildDirect to optimize its spending. The company turned to Google Analytics (GA) to replace an existing analytics package, hoping to see immediate benefits.

Certain Affinity, a game developer based in Austin, Texas, was working on their first mobile title, Age of Booty: Tactics. They wanted to leverage analytics to inform game design and optimize monetization. The goal was to quantify and improve overall retention, monetization, and virality of the game. They also wanted to provide a timely cadence of analytics-driven feedback to influence development and live team. However, they were frequently frustrated by the cost, size, and limited flexibility offered by many analytics solutions.

Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, a luxury hotel company with more than 60 distinctive hotels and resorts worldwide, was looking to optimize its social media marketing efforts. The company uses Twitter to increase awareness of offers and drive traffic to sites within their portfolio. However, they faced a challenge in accurately identifying and tracking website traffic generated by their tweets. This was due to the fact that a significant proportion of Twitter traffic doesn’t originate from twitter.com; many Twitter users don’t use the web interface, instead employing one of the many desktop clients or mobile apps available. In addition, a link that’s been posted on Twitter might be forwarded via email or SMS. In all these cases, any traffic which in theory should be attributed to Twitter activities would be reported as direct or other referral traffic.

Gilt Groupe, a private shopping site based in New York City, aimed to capture more detailed information at the user level, obtain detailed data for every customer visit and touch point, connect website data to data warehouse, drive more qualified traffic to the website and improve ROI, and cross-reference user purchase behavior with demographic data. The company had implemented Google Analytics in 2011, replacing a previous solution. However, Gilt was subsequently attracted to Google Analytics Premium to access unsampled data and capture more detailed information at the user level in order to make decisions on statistically sound data. The company wanted to examine a wider variety of key metrics in order to gain a more holistic view of customers.

HomeAway, an online vacation rental marketplace, wanted to better understand the impact of paid search (both generic and brand) and display on conversion likelihood. Their goal was to drive site visits that convert to inquiries on the properties listed on their website. However, traditional Last Click models did not provide the full picture of the customer journey and the impact of different marketing channels. Therefore, they needed a more comprehensive approach to attribution modeling, which assigns credit to different consumer interactions that take place prior to a sale or lead.

InsureandGo, the UK's largest travel insurance specialist, was looking to gain a holistic view of the customer journey and understand the consumer decision-making process. The company wanted to apply these insights to optimize their website. They had been using Google Analytics for several years to gain insight into site conversion rates, funnels, customer behavior, and page optimizations. However, they wanted to increase their emphasis on comprehending the full customer journey. They wanted to understand the decision-making process in each area of the business, see what the different conversion rates are, and decide which products to display and where.

Klarna, one of the biggest providers in Europe of in-store credit and invoice-based payment solutions for the ecommerce sector, was facing a challenge with tracking customer interactions on their platform. The company's checkout solution was hosted on an iframe located on the merchant's domain, but the actual iframe contents were hosted on Klarna's own domain. This posed a problem as browsers such as Safari on iPhone and iPad, and later generation desktop browsers such as Internet Explorer 10 prevent third-party cookies by default. Many analytics solutions rely on the use of cookies, and Klarna was losing nearly all iPhone visits and many desktop visits due to this issue.

LaTienda, an award-winning, family-owned business supporting artisanal firms in Spain, was looking for opportunities to grow sales. They had been seeing great success with their online orders, but they wanted to understand the impact on sales of varying shipping rates for a subset of products. They knew that a key product category required more expensive shipping methods if it was too far from LaTienda’s Virginia warehouse. They grouped visitors into two regions: Region A visitors were close enough to the warehouse to always get reasonable shipping costs. Region B visitors were everywhere else, and had to use a more expensive shipping method for the key product category.

Ligne-en-ligne.com, a leader in the French diet and well-being market, relied heavily on its affiliates network to attract new members. However, the team identified a potentially threatening dependence as a large part of the subscriptions came from affiliates, accounting for the largest part of marketing expenses. The team wanted to understand the behavior of customers coming from affiliates, the primary sales driver, and how consumers who choose the highest value offers behave. They also aimed to diversify and optimize their digital marketing budget. To address these issues, they partnered with Keley Consulting, a Google Analytics Certified Partner, to analyze their traffic acquisition strategy.

A large telecommunications firm that uses digital advertising to increase brand awareness and drive sales sought to understand how display advertising, in combination with other channels, was helping to drive leads among small and medium-sized business customers. A heavy internet advertiser, the firm turned to Google Analytics Premium and MaassMedia to leverage advanced Data-Driven Attribution modeling. In taking this approach, it aimed to measure the impact of display touch points on lead generation and to make better decisions around budget allocation and optimization. The marketing division wanted to expand its reach into new customer bases. Display offered a significant new source of inventory, but it had traditionally been difficult to measure its impact on lead generation. Purely click-based metrics suggested that display was not providing enough return on ad spend. At the same time, view-through metrics did not take into account how display worked with other channels, such as paid search, affiliates and email. The team wanted an approach that would properly credit display touch points throughout the customer journey.

The New Brunswick Department of Culture, Tourism and Healthy Living (CTHL) and their agency, T4G, were looking to increase tourism to the province. They launched a website full of New Brunswick trip ideas to support CTHL’s summer campaign – “My New Brunswick Finds”. The primary goal was to increase engagement for two target audience segments with activities and experiences that suited their interests: “No-Hassle Travellers” and “Cultural Explorers/Authentic Experiencers”. CTHL needed support for the seasonal marketing campaign. They wanted to use analytics to evaluate its performance, and also influence decisions for future campaigns. Since the window to attract visitors is both short and competitive, they needed a platform that was agile enough to evaluate what was working and what wasn’t, and a partner who could make changes to strategy and tactics on-the-fly.

Nissan Motor Company, a global automotive company, wanted to gain a deeper understanding of their audience's product preferences to make informed decisions about serving demand in local markets. They own a network of websites worldwide that help consumers decide which Nissan vehicle they'd like to purchase. On these sites, visitors can explore products and services, download localized versions of promotional materials, and submit a reservation for a test drive. However, Nissan wanted to access much greater detail, such as users' preferences according to car type, model, and color, to measure more information about each inquiry within their Google Analytics reports and make better decisions about the allocation of inventory in local markets.

Novartis, a global leader in healthcare, operates thousands of websites worldwide, with about 130 focusing on corporate communications. Managing this number of sites requires ensuring that data from each website gets to the right person and that teams can confidently compare the same metrics to continuously improve the company’s sites for customers. Novartis wanted to consistently and efficiently implement Google Analytics Premium across its key communications websites, ensuring that implementation was done correctly on each individual page. A project of this scale requires many Google Tag Manager containers and Google Analytics Premium properties, so Novartis knew it would need to be able to quickly replicate any changes and updates made in one site to other sites. This includes copying Tag Manager tags, macros, and rules as well as duplicating settings and configurations in multiple Google Analytics Premium properties and views.

Obama for America (OFA), the official re-election campaign for President Barack Obama in 2012, needed to engage supporters, reach and influence persuadable voters, and activate supporters to vote. The campaign was time-sensitive and required quick and easy access to actionable data. The ability to do rapid, real-time optimization was especially important during the Presidential and Vice Presidential debates. The campaign needed to speak to their supporters and persuadable voters who were researching online during the debates. They needed to anticipate issue-related search terms that they would need to target, but they couldn’t be prepared for every possibility.

On the Beach, a leading UK travel agency, was looking to drive increased sales and grow their business online. They offer value for money flights and hotels to the world’s most popular beach holiday destinations, providing consumers with a huge selection of travel products, including 50 million airplane seats and more than 30,000 hotels. In a highly competitive market, On the Beach wanted to ensure that its search campaign was optimised for return on investment. The company does not run any TV advertising, so generic (non-brand) search is crucial for introducing the brand to the buying public. However, the value of generic search can be difficult to measure when using a ‘last click wins’ attribution model.

Optimizely, a leading online A/B testing and experience optimization platform, was seeking a data-driven solution to provide rich user insights and to re-engage users. The company wanted to show customized messages based on a customer’s stage in the relationship with the brand, with the aim of advancing them to the next step in the customer journey. The challenge was to find a granular yet simple way to remarket to visitors at specific points in the sales funnel using a data-driven analytics platform that’s native to Google AdWords.

APMEX, one of the nation’s largest precious metals retailers, was facing a challenge. Despite being a large company, its marketing resources were limited. However, the company was committed to providing its online customers with a concierge-level customer experience, similar to the personal experience customers get over the phone. To stay on top of its customers’ needs and emerging trends in ecommerce, the APMEX team had been using Google Analytics 360 for more than five years. They were looking for a solution that could help them deliver more personalized customer experiences.

Domino's, a leading pizza delivery chain in the U.K., Republic of Ireland, Germany, and Switzerland, was facing challenges in integrating marketing measurement across devices and creating a holistic view of customer behavior. The company's success stemmed from early investments in strong e-commerce and m-commerce platforms that facilitated easy pizza purchases. However, the siloed analytics data from channel-focused tools restricted the team's ability to gain insights across all devices and channels. The team realized that valuable data insights were waiting just out of reach. To drive success, they knew they must break down silos, connect data sets, and gain efficient reporting for a more holistic and actionable view of customer behavior.

MercadoLibre, one of the largest e-commerce sites in Latin America with over 130 million registered users, sought to grow its revenue by leveraging its proprietary audience data. The company's high traffic volume offered unique opportunities for advertisers to reach large audiences with high purchase intent across a wide range of product categories. However, to maximize these opportunities, MercadoLibre needed to segment its audience data more effectively and package it into Programmatic Guaranteed deals. This would allow advertisers to target users more likely to buy their products and tailor their creative executions for each segment, thereby increasing the effectiveness of their campaigns.

Panasonic, a global product manufacturer, was facing challenges in managing and analyzing its marketing data across various divisions and advertising platforms. The company was struggling to fully understand which keywords and display ads were driving real audience engagement with their website. The lack of a unified view of their marketing data was hindering their ability to treat it as a common corporate asset. Additionally, Panasonic was finding it difficult to reach the right customers and improve their digital marketing performance.

Reebonz, a luxury marketplace for high-end fashion products, was facing a challenge in understanding the impact of their ads along an increasingly fragmented customer journey. With the rise in worldwide mobile usage, the company wanted to understand how their ad spend was reaching and influencing users who convert across devices. The company was keen to discover the influence of mobile on their own path to purchase. They were working with multiple partners to leverage best-in-class capabilities across insights and execution, but needed a more integrated and comprehensive view of their customer journey across devices.

Sephora, a beauty giant with 2,300 stores in more than 30 countries, including 17 stores in Singapore and Greater Southeast Asia, was facing a challenge in measuring the offline impact of its online ads. The brand's digital team was confident that its efforts were driving store visits, but it had no way to prove this. The complex decision-making journeys consumers make as they move between online and offline channels presented a unique set of challenges and opportunities for the brand. Sephora wanted to better understand the purchase journeys of its loyal customers and measure the full impact of its digital marketing investments.

Skyscanner, a leading global travel search company, wanted to understand anonymous customer behaviour on a more granular level. They were keen to dig deeper into the data to get more insight and further optimise their products. Skyscanner wanted to drill down into specific markets, device types and marketing channels. Plus, certain teams within the company wanted to understand the performance of individual site functionalities. They needed to see how well interactions with given functionalities affected conversion rates. Finally, the company wanted to create detailed cohorts to understand how users interact with Skyscanner over time.

TalkTalk, a leading provider of broadband, TV, and phone services in the UK, wanted to gain a better understanding of its customers and reach them with more relevant campaign messages across channels to win more sales. The company aimed to integrate its own CRM system data with Google Analytics 360 to gain deeper insights into customer behavior. The goal was to increase return on investment and generate incremental sales. The challenge was to integrate customer product information from the CRM system into Google Analytics 360 using custom dimensions and utilize DoubleClick Bid Manager integration with Analytics 360. The company also aimed to execute audience sharing with AdWords and run an Analytics 360-enabled remarketing campaign.

Teach For America is an organization that recruits distinguished individuals to become teachers in low-income communities to confront educational inequality. These individuals are some of the most desirable job applicants in the world, pursued by big brands offering big salaries. Keeping these applicants engaged throughout a rigorous selection process is essential. The challenge was to stay top-of-mind with these illustrious applicants. Some qualities valued by Teach for America are difficult to quantify, like leadership or passion for equality while others are fairly easy. For example, an applicant’s GPA helps the organization understand the individual’s academic achievement. Teachers with backgrounds in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) are in high demand by schools around the country, so Teach For America is focused on attracting more people with these backgrounds into the corps.

TransUnion, a global credit information company, was seeking to increase marketing efficiencies across its AdWords and DoubleClick campaigns. The company aimed to increase the number of conversions and test a variety of audience lists without increasing tagging complexity. TransUnion wanted to find more customers while reducing waste in search and display campaigns. Specifically, the company wanted to make marketing efforts as efficient as possible while driving higher conversion rates on AdWords and DoubleClick ads. As a Google Analytics 360 customer for over three years, it was natural for TransUnion and its agency, Digitas, to examine audience behavioral data from Analytics 360 to execute more effective remarketing.

U.S. Cellular, the fifth largest telecommunications provider in the US, was facing a challenge with their multi-channel marketing efforts. They were noticing that sales originating from online media were being mis-credited to offline channels such as in-store and telesales. This was causing artificially inflated offline sales numbers, which was clouding the team’s ability to accurately forecast sales by channel, perform customer value analyses, or optimize their media mix. The company needed a solution to correctly credit online sales to digital media, accurately forecast sales by channel, and optimize the media mix.

eFinancialCareers, the world’s leading financial services careers website, was handling more than 4 million job applications from 19 global markets on its site each year. The company wanted to make better use of Google Analytics 360, part of the Google Analytics 360 Suite, as a strategic aid, not just an analytical tool. The company's main goal was to boost the number of job applications coming through the website from programmatic ads. To achieve this, they needed to gather and analyze behavioral, demographic, and geographic insights about site visitors to make sure it was attracting and retaining high-caliber candidates.

Erwin Penland, an innovative agency, was tasked by its client, Advance America, to grow business without raising the budget. The goal was to attract as many prospects as possible while driving down effective cost per conversion (eCPC) to make existing marketing budgets work harder. The agency had been using last-touch ad server data to guide display and search investments. However, looking only at last touch attribution leaves much of the customer journey unmeasured. This limited view doesn’t credit all channels and touchpoints, or reveal cross-channel impacts. Erwin Penland needed a more holistic view to help Advance America succeed.