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Google > Case Studies > U.S. Cellular reveals the true impact of digital media on sales with Google Analytics 360

U.S. Cellular reveals the true impact of digital media on sales with Google Analytics 360

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Big Data Analytics
Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics

Applicable Industries

Telecommunications

Applicable Functions

Sales & Marketing

Services

Data Science Services

The Challenge

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.

About The Customer

U.S. Cellular is the fifth largest telecommunications provider in the United States. The company has more than 10.6 million customers and operates retail stores in 426 markets across 49 states. The company's headquarters is located in Chicago, Illinois. U.S. Cellular uses multi-channel marketing efforts to drive mobile phone activations through three primary sales channels: online, in-store, and telesales. The company was facing a challenge with their sales originating from online media being mis-credited to offline channels.

The Solution

To address this challenge, U.S. Cellular turned to Google Analytics 360, part of the Google Analytics 360 Suite. They partnered with Cardinal Path, a digital data analytics firm, to integrate Analytics 360 with BigQuery, a platform that allows flexible analysis of large datasets. The teams then analyzed terabytes of data from Analytics 360 and other systems. They mined Analytics 360 data along with data from the company’s internal data warehouse and other outside data sources to map user paths and construct an end-to-end analytics framework. This allowed each transaction to be tied to customer behavior across sales channels. After building a scalable, automated analytics framework, the team reclassified roughly half of the activations in U.S. Cellular’s internal management report as digital activations previously attributed to offline channels.

Operational Impact

With a repeatable process for reclassifying offline activations, U.S. Cellular now has a new dashboard that they can use to forecast sales and share data throughout the organization.
With a clearer picture of the true role of each channel, they can also more appropriately align compensation to real contribution.
Throughout this process, the team investigated the role of each channel at different stages in the consumer’s purchase journey. Examining the full journey will enhance forecasting capabilities at U.S. Cellular by properly crediting digital media for its role in driving online and offline sales.

Quantitative Benefit

Reclassified roughly half of the activations in U.S. Cellular’s internal management report as digital activations previously attributed to offline channels.