Struggling With Data Overload? This Fixes Your Ecom Analytics — Outi Karppanen | Winning Data-led Strategies for Ecom Growth, Why Prioritize the Right Data for Ecommerce, Common Marketing Data Mistakes, Strategies for Data-driven Marketing (#329)

In this episode of the eCommerce Coffee Break podcast, we dive into winning data strategies for e-commerce growth.

Our guest is Outi Karppanen, the lead marketing analytics strategist at Supermetrics.com. Outi shares her expertise on navigating the increasingly complex marketing analytics landscape, discussing how to make smart choices with data, handle privacy concerns, and optimize marketing efforts.

Topics discussed in this episode: 

• Why has the marketing analytics landscape evolved so rapidly in recent years
• How do companies navigate data complexity with privacy concerns
• What are the biggest mistakes companies make with marketing data, and how to avoid them
• Why is it crucial to prioritize the right data sources for eCommerce growth
• What challenges  businesses face with attribution, and how can they optimize marketing spend
• How smaller eCommerce businesses use marketing analytics to compete with larger companies
• Why first-party data's increasingly important, and how should businesses prepare
• What strategies help businesses implement data-driven marketing campaigns
  
  

Links & Resources

Website: https://supermetrics.com/
Shopify App Store: https://supermetrics.com/connectors/shopify
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/supermetrics/
X/Twitter: https://x.com/Supermetrics

Get access to more free resources by visiting the show notes at
https://t.ly/hUTQ8

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Transcript

Claus Lauter: Welcome to the e commerce coffee break podcast. In today's episode, we discuss winning data strategies for e commerce growth. Joining me on the show is Outi Karppanen. She is the lead marketing analytics strategist at supermetrics. com. So let's dive right into it. 

Voice over: This is the eCommerce Coffee Break. A top rated Shopify growth podcast dedicated to Shopify merchants and business owners looking to grow their online stores.

Voice over: Learn how to survive in the fast changing eCommerce world with your host Klaus Lauter and get marketing advice you can't find on Google. Welcome to the show. 

Claus Lauter: Hello and welcome to another. Episode of the e commerce coffee break podcast. Today, we want to find out more about data. We want to find out what kind of winning strategies you can use for e commerce growth when it comes to data.

Claus Lauter: We don't want to dive into and finding out what kind of data you need to use, where you need to make smart choices. And also privacy rules that comes with data and everything. So huge topic there. And joining me on the show today is Outi Karppanen and she's the lead marketing analyst strategist at supermetrics.

Claus Lauter: com. Oti uses her expertise in data to help marketing teams make smarter and more informed decisions. With over one decade of experience in media agencies, she has a deep understanding of the global marketing landscape. She worked with a diverse range of clients from FMCG and retail to e commerce, helping them to unlock the full potential of their brands and drive successful business outcomes.

Claus Lauter: So we have a lot to cover. Let's welcome her to the show. Hi, Outi. How are you today? 

Outi Karppanen: Thank you. I'm doing, I'm doing very great. Uh, weather is great here in Helsinki, Finland. What, which we always need to mention. 

Claus Lauter: No, that's perfect. It's always a good start. So let's dive into data. Let's dive into analytics.

Claus Lauter: Everything that comes with it. Um, there have been a lot of changes specifically in the last two, three years. Can you explain to me how the marketing analytics landscape has evolved over the last few years? 

Outi Karppanen: Yeah, happy to dive in. So we all know that it's very competitive and complicated landscape, and especially for e commerce companies, it's highly competitive and we need the data and insights, uh, for making the right decisions.

Outi Karppanen: And, and it. It's getting so much more complicated. I started a little bit over 10 years ago in digital marketing and comparing to that how it used to be back then we would have maybe Facebook back in the day but not even Instagram and direct buy and slightly just programmatic buying and yes analytics but very rudimental element of that to now it is just so much more complicated.

Outi Karppanen: And what we've lately been saying is it's, there is no clear funnel anymore from your, your customers don't move from awareness to purchase in a single clear A to B journey. It's just so much more complicated. It's back and forth between different sources and comparing and, Google calls this the messy middle.

Outi Karppanen: And there's a lot of articles about that. And they found out, for example, car buyers can have like 900 digital touchpoints within like a three month period. So it's, it's just going into a huge amount of data. And we see this from Supermetrics data as well, because we've been around since a while ago. And we see that the amount of data points and channels and touch points to measure customer journeys has increased 200 percent within the last three years, just only last three years.

Outi Karppanen: So it's, it's just much more. And the, all the regulatory uncertainty and privacy and news from yesterday, day of the recording of this came out that Google is not deprecating third party cookies. So everything's just up in the air. So it's, it's, uh, it's becoming very complicated and requires a lot from a person nowadays to handle it.

Claus Lauter: No, not everyone is a data strategist and companies, small and medium companies on the growing, um, way to become bigger, they're bombarded with more and more data. They using more systems, their tech stack becomes bigger. Every tool has their own reporting system, their own analytics system. And then if you dive in and take the time, you will find out nothing matches.

Claus Lauter: Thanks. Thanks. Uh, I've experienced myself last week, I was working with half a dozen tools to find out something and it was just impossible. So what do you see are the biggest mistakes companies make when they are looking at their marketing data? 

Outi Karppanen: Well, I think one is, is not knowing what to measure or what data to use.

Outi Karppanen: So we've sort of identified three different Um, sections to go over, like to focus on and to utilize for growth, first being data in. So you need to gather that data. All different platforms are saying different things. It's you want to be comparing apples to apples and not apples to grapes. One good example, for example, is video views.

Outi Karppanen: All platforms define it very differently. So you need to know what you're measuring. So, and you need to be measuring in a centralized, so gathering that data, uh, into more of a data warehouse into one single truth where you define these things, and then most likely also in on demand sort of decentralized way and looking at it in shorter or longer term.

Outi Karppanen: So just gathering the data in. It's the first step and the first thing that could be the mistake that, uh, e commerce companies are doing that they're either collecting everything or almost nothing at all. Second would be then how to utilize that data. So what to measure, what do I do with that data? What questions do I want answers to before you start actually then doing it?

Claus Lauter: Nope. Nope. You mentioned there's a ton of different platforms out there and I know that Supermetrics integrates with more than 150 platforms for a brand for e commerce business out there. I mean, it's very difficult. How do they find out? Which data to use and how to use the data correctly. You touched on that one, but with so many platforms, how does it work?

Outi Karppanen: I think it's important to look at what do you use to, for example, if we're talking about media buying or analytics, what are the main tools that you are using? So those would be the first ones to start gathering that data. More often than not, it is some type of analytics tool. Google Analytics is more, uh, common.

Outi Karppanen: One could be then Meta, so Facebook more platform or TikTok nowadays is rising. And then you might have some programmatic buying DV360 or other DSP that you're using. So That is defining your priority channels, or if you're using retail Amazon or something like that, those are your priority. Let's start with those and then add on CRM or any other data that you have.

Outi Karppanen: So prioritizing and defining the questions you want answers to. 

Claus Lauter: Okay. With Supermetrics, the integration always is very, very wide. And I think one thing, and you mentioned that, is like, um, different platforms measure different things differently or they name them differently. So you have a bit of a mismatch there.

Claus Lauter: How do you bring this together? 

Outi Karppanen: Yeah, we luckily have a tool within our platform that is, uh, for transforming the data. So that we've sort of done the thinking for anyone, uh, that. We look at, let's say, Google Analytics, Meta, and let's say, Google Ads, and we've identified that impressions means this in each of these channels, or a budget, or a campaign name is defined like this.

Outi Karppanen: So we have, uh, tools, uh, helping customers with that so that you don't have to do it manually, because that's basically how you would have to do it is define this and this and this mean this. And it's, uh, quite a lot of work to do the more platforms you're using. 

Claus Lauter: Attribution is always a big topic. And you said the funnel, you mentioned it before, there's 900 different touch points when somebody wants to buy a car.

Claus Lauter: And I think even if you're buying some apparel, um, you might come from one platform and then you go to another one and then at the end you buy it either on TikTok shop or on a Shopify store or wherever you buy it. Yeah. And attribution, most providers out there want to claim the attribution for themselves.

Claus Lauter: Google wants to have the attribution. Facebook wants to have the attribution. So it becomes really difficult where to put your marketing spend. Give me a bit of a background. How does it work? What's your approach on this? 

Outi Karppanen: Yeah. So overall, I think we're moving past last click attributions and the like, or first click, uh, attributions to data driven attribution.

Outi Karppanen: Good thing about attribution, it is fast and easy to scale. Minuses, you're only most likely looking at digital, but if you work in e commerce and you're not doing any marketing besides digital. It will give you a lot of answers, but it only looks at, as you said, the attributed sales. And even if you try to do the data driven attribution and try to get sort of, um, get those double conversions out of it, um, it's still not incremental sales.

Outi Karppanen: It's just looking at, this is the sales we got and you don't know if you would have gotten it anyway. Um, Good for daily channel optimization and campaign optimization. 

Claus Lauter: Hey, Klaus here, just a quick one. If you like the content of this episode, sign up for our free newsletter, commerce Smarter Shopify Merchant.

Claus Lauter: In just seven minutes per week, we create content from more than 50 sources, saving you hours of research and helping you stay on top of your e-commerce game with the latest news, insights, and trends every Thursday in your inbox, a hundred percent free. Join now at newsletter dot eCommerce coffee break.com.

Claus Lauter: That is newsletter dot eCommerce coffee break. Can you give me a example of one of your client's case study? You don't need to name the brands. Um, what kind of results they saw after bringing all the data to them together and have a, what you called a, uh, one proof of, of truth or one kind of truth. 

Outi Karppanen: Um, so we've gotten a few good results with clients.

Outi Karppanen: Um, we've seen that they can improve up to, I think it was 35 percent their results when they started optimizing it through attribution. So it is about doing. analyzing it and then testing it out. But I think what's also good in addition to just doing attribution is then combining it with MMM or incrementality experiments.

Outi Karppanen: So not just looking at the attribution that gives you the best results, uh, in the cases we've seen with our customers. 

Claus Lauter: What's the usual, um, onboarding process because everyone has a different tech stack. So I think that can be quite difficult and lengthy or correct me if I'm wrong. How does that work? 

Outi Karppanen: So, uh, within our platform, um, basically you would have access straight away.

Outi Karppanen: So then it's about how quickly you can do it. But of course we can help with the onboarding. I think overall we, and we do help with the onboarding. We. cover it within two weeks to month, a month and a half, depending on, of course, the timeline and how many people need to be on boarded. But the platform is quite easy to use.

Outi Karppanen: You just connect all the platforms you want and all the sources. And then where do you want it to go? Um, is it a centralized solution of data warehouse or more of an on demand on to like Looker studio? Uh, and then you just. Start working on it. Um, you can start simply with some dashboards or then go to more complicated, like the data warehouse solutions.

Outi Karppanen: So actually it's quite quick to get used to it. I started using super metrics back in 2017 when I was working in a media agency. And of course we, the platform wasn't as complicated or as expensive as it is now. But, um, it was quite fast. We just, uh, 10 people, digital team started to use it and do all the reporting and dashboards, uh, in a matter of weeks.

Claus Lauter: Good point. I want to touch on that. So you were in an agency who's the normally the user of supermetrics was in on organization was an agency. Is that marketing? Who is it? Yeah, so we've 

Outi Karppanen: sort of identified two different, um, target groups in a way. Um, one would be the data team and that's where the centralized solutions would be.

Outi Karppanen: Those one more often than not the raw data from the platform so that they can create the one single truth and manipulate and transform the data as they see fit, or you fit, or I fit. Utilizing our, uh, solutions for that. The other would be then, uh, the marketing team. So it could be the digital buyers or the CMO wanting to see quickly some dashboards, like more of the on demand on how are my campaigns doing exactly now, or we have a Black Friday campaign going on, what, how is it performing and wanting to make quick decisions.

Outi Karppanen: So we clearly see that, uh, it should be used by sort of the two different. Sections of the marketing team, the data, and then the digital buyers. 

Claus Lauter: I want to touch a little bit on, um, that there's less data than there was like in the golden year, the golden years, five, six, seven years ago when Facebook was giving us everything in the kitchen sink.

Claus Lauter: So these times are over. They will not come back. Apple has done quite a bit of damage when it comes to data or giving data to us as marketers. Um, how do you deal with this and how does, um, privacy concerns play into this whole game? 

Outi Karppanen: Yeah. I think it's, it's. Interesting how we've gone from working in industry for 10 years, going from little by little, getting more data and the glory days of, as you said, the everything, and you can do anything you can just imagine, which then resulted in all these privacy, uh, regulations.

Outi Karppanen: Uh, we've gone to back into the, Oh, how do we work and what data can we rely on? So. We see it's, we've actually read a lot about the Google's modern measurement playbook that introduces the framework of utilizing all of these different attribution, incrementality, and MMM to work together to get the best data.

Outi Karppanen: Because it is the reality, everyone's going into their own like little meta world and Google world and not sharing the data together. So you can't rely on just only those platforms, what they're getting. You need to analyze the data yourself. then that means you need to be doing it on multiple levels. So looking at short term and longer term.

Outi Karppanen: But yeah, it's complicated. It's a messy, messy, messy situation. It 

Claus Lauter: is a messy situation. So specifically smaller medium enterprises have a hard time. They don't necessarily have a data team and data strategists and data scientists and so on. How can a small business, um, use marketing analytics, like Supermetrics to compete with bigger companies?

Outi Karppanen: Yeah, I think it gives you an advantage of Being able to then easily get the data into one place and having control of your data. Um, you don't need, uh, any super experts or agencies to help you if you just want to get your data in, consolidated into one place. We even offer like storage if needed to some, uh, customers, uh, in some cases.

Outi Karppanen: That allows it to be that, uh, you don't need to be any more super technical unless then you start doing these MMMs and more, uh, centralized solutions. And, uh, which is even above my pay grade on how those are done in like statistical analysis and all of that. That's the other experts in the field. So. You start little by little and, um, I think the best guidance I'd gotten and also given to a lot of my customers in HN side was you need to know where you're going, but being also realistic that you won't be able to do it within six months or even probably in a year if you're starting from zero, if you're starting from.

Outi Karppanen: We are gathering this data manually from each platform and we're sort of like just doing it. Even Google's the playbook gives a timeline of over a year to go from zero to utilizing all of these measurements. 

Claus Lauter: It just answered my question was like, is there any kind of homework that I need to do before I can get started?

Claus Lauter: And you said there is a timeline to it. It just takes some time. Which brings me to the question, who was your perfect customer? 

Outi Karppanen: I think anyone who is willing to learn and test out things because there unfortunately is no holy grail one answer to everyone. It's so dependent on what market you are in or what type of products, what your.

Outi Karppanen: market within that landscape of your competitors and everything. So anyone who's willing to test and learn and just willing to get that knowledge is an ideal customer. So it doesn't matter, are you in Coca Cola or BMW or a small agency? It's just willingness to learn. 

Claus Lauter: With the data, we're obviously chasing a moving target out there.

Claus Lauter: As you just said, Google, after denying us the third party cookie for the future now completely reversed the decision. What's your outlook? What's what's happening within the next 12 months? What do you think happening in the market is happening in the market right now? 

Outi Karppanen: I think the Google's, uh, Google's decision took out the urgency that was at the moment, because The reality was no one really had a clear answer.

Outi Karppanen: There wasn't a clear winner. What is the new cookies? So it's now taken out the urgency, but it isn't removing the fact that even Google is going to go into that the customers can opt out or opt in on using the cookies. So how they're going to do that. Are they going to push it to be a big pop up banner and everyone just opts out, or are they going to do it more secretly behind the scenes within 12 months, I would say.

Outi Karppanen: Agencies and media are going to continue developing. new solutions, uh, still gonna push on getting, gathering that first party data. Um, but I would say we're more of a, now we can take a breather and not being tumbled in the tidal wave of what is happening. 

Claus Lauter: So in a sense, it's good news, but on the long run, it will be first party.

Claus Lauter: It's 

Outi Karppanen: good news, but I wouldn't, uh, Um, as any commerce or any company rely on now that cookies are staying and everything's back to normal, it's, it's still the reality that, um, it's slowly by little by little gonna die down in a way that they say like TV is dying out. 

Claus Lauter: Tell me a little bit about the pricing structure of supermetrics.

Outi Karppanen: Yeah, so we have multiple different pricing strategies, but depending on what sources you want to move the data into, is it Looker, Studio, Google Sheets, Power BI or Excel. So that sort of defines it as well. And then at also how many different destinations you have, but then how many different sources you're using.

Outi Karppanen: We don't price it depending on how much data you have. Data volume you have. So there won't be any surprises if you start, uh, gathering much more data, for example, from Google analytics. So, um, we have starting prices. for smaller companies. And then the bigger it gets, then our salespeople are happy to help with that as well.

Outi Karppanen: But starting from 29 euros a month. 

Claus Lauter: Okay. And I saw on your website, there's an overview of all the tools that you support again, 150. It's a very long list. I went through it, but there's pretty much everything in there that I can think of. Um, before our coffee break comes to an end today, is there anything that you want to share with our listeners that we haven't covered yet?

Outi Karppanen: Yeah, I think where, especially if you're starting in e commerce or you're now starting to be like, okay, we have this up and running. What do we do next? I think it's just about planning ahead or in a way planning backwards. So start with what do you want to know? For example, what performance, what is my different channels, uh, giving me performance out of what channels are the best for this, and then figure out what measurement to use to.

Outi Karppanen: Get that. And what data do I need to get that? And then start collecting that data. Uh, of course you need a lot of historical data, so figure it out quite fast and start gathering that data. I think it's just figuring out, trusting your gut because the reality is everything is changing. Have a vision, what it is that you, what the brand wants is, and what the e commerce and what are you doing and start testing it out, that's, that's For that nowadays, it's, it's data is sort of the king of everything.

Claus Lauter: Yeah. But I think the approach of first knowing what you want, um, is good than just collecting and collecting and then trying to figure out what you want to do. So I think that's a much better path is to get your head around what your end goal is and what you want to do with this. Where can people find, go to find out more about you guys?

Outi Karppanen: Uh, you can easily find us at supermetrics. com and in most of our social media platforms as well. Although in, uh, in social media platforms like TikTok, we focus more on fun memes and some information. Uh, but we also have a new, uh, community. So, uh, We just launched it. We want to build it out and be that resource of if you have any questions or generally about data and measurement, we're sharing a lot of information there, and then you can join in and ask questions and some of us will then answer it or the other community members will answer it.

Claus Lauter: Okay. Sounds good. I will put the links in the show notes as always. Then you just one click away. Yeah. Okay. Thanks so much for your time today. I think that was a really good overview of what's happening right now in the landscape of data and how you can optimize that for your own business, for your own agency.

Claus Lauter: And I hope a lot of people will reach out to you and will become part of the community. Thanks so much for your time. Thanks. 

Outi Karppanen: Thank you. 

Claus Lauter: Hey, Klaus here. Thank you for joining me on another episode of the e commerce Coffee Break podcast. Before you go, I'd like to ask two things from you. First, please help me with the algorithm so I can bring more impactful guests on the show.

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Claus Lauter: We create content from more than 50 sources, saving you hours of research and helping you stay on top of your e commerce game with the latest news, insights, and trends. Every Thursday in your inbox, 100 percent free. Join now at newsletter. ecommercecoffeebreak. com. That is newsletter. ecommercecoffeebreak.

Claus Lauter: com. Thanks again, and I'll catch you in the next episode. Have a good one.