Facebook Analytics: Tracking Customers Through Their Entire Journey

More than 40% of adults online start an activity on one device but finish it on another. They’re switching between devices to discover a product, to research it, and then to actually make the purchase. The customer is also interacting with different touch points of the business through a variety of avenues—the mobile app, the desktop site, and even through Facebook Messenger. Under these circumstances, how can marketers track interactions that people are having with their business? Or determine customer journeys if they’re using multiple devices or touch points? Enter: Facebook Analytics.

What is it?
Facebook Analytics is a cross-platform, omni-channel analytics feature that can help understand the customer journey. This path could be from discovering the business through the Facebook Page, to visiting the desktop site, to eventually downloading the mobile app and making a purchase.
 
Facebook Analytics does not use cookies or sessions to track users. Instead, it focuses on the people. Because of this, user IDs don’t have to be assigned to manually monitor customer’s paths. Instead, it will unify actions from the same person across all channels using aggregated, anonymous data collected from the pixel. With Facebook Analytics, it’s easy to become more knowledgeable of exactly where and how people interact with businesses across their websites, mobile apps, or Facebook pages.
 
So, what makes it different from other analytics platforms? This is the only analytics tool built to use insights from Facebook’s community of two billion people. This allows Facebook to harness all their data—from the customer’s age and language to behaviors and demographics—to help businesses create a solid marketing strategy.
 
How Does It Work?
All it takes is a Facebook pixel. Once implemented into the code of the business’s webpages, the pixel and Facebook Analytics will use machine learning to measure website performance based on the actions it’s set to monitor. The data then populates, becoming available for analysis in a matter of minutes.
 
In order to do this, it will need to be configured to measure across channels. By utilizing omni-channel analytics, marketers can see a more realistic picture of how online interactions with the business are happening. For example, if a user opens the mobile app and then later makes a purchase on their laptop, that action should be set up to count as one user, not two.
 
What Can Marketers Measure?
Facebook Analytics can be used to measure many things across a business. This includes the engagement across the site and platforms, retention of users, point of drop-off, revenue, and identification of site visitors. Let’s dive into these a little further:

1. Engagement: This is a great measure of how often people are taking certain actions, how long they are spending on the page, or how often they view that page. Understanding the engagement across the site and platforms will help to understand customers and optimize to convert them into a loyal one.

2. Retention: Just like understanding those who engage, retention is also extremely important. A Bain & Company study found that increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25%. Knowing and understanding the retention of customers through the site is vital for the continuing health of the business.

3. Revenue: Through its pixel, Facebook Analytics can be used to identify which customers are the most valuable and to what extent. Additionally, this data can be broken out even further based on initial referral source or demographics to better understand the audience.

4. Targeting: Tracking customers through their engagement and retention is a great way to discover your target demographic, identify top customers, see what behaviors lead to highest retention, and learn how behavior differs between mobile and web. Facebook will break down the demographics by age range, geography, language, and more to ensure the most relevant information is given to target the best potential customers.

Through Facebook Analytics, data can also be used to find:

• Overlap - Identify how many people visiting the website also interact with the business Facebook page.
• Breakdowns - Pair down any data into useful information. Look at pageviews by referral source or UTMs and dissect purchases by item or SKU.
• Percentiles - See how often a customer segment takes a particular action. For example, how many monthly purchases do my top 25% of customers make?
• Segments - Organize customers based on demographic or behavior to understand how these different groups interact with the business

There are many helpful features of Facebook Analytics. The below is a list of other ways marketers can utilize the power of this tool:

• Facebook Analytics will generate automated insights. The system uses machine learning to gather and analyze the data, saving time by collecting the insights for you.
• Custom Dashboards can be used so all the most important reports can be pinned for quick performance updates at a glance.
• You can add a goal line to charts in the dashboard to ensure targets are being hit.
• Trends can be seen by multiple time intervals. See data monthly or track it by the hour. This is helpful to identify when trends might fluctuate, whether it be by time of day, day of week, or month of the year.
• The mobile app allows you to track insights on the go! You can see key metrics through the app in your overview tab and custom dashboard.
• Auto-detected funnels are also available in Facebook Analytics and will detect recurring paths through the site. This can help you find bottlenecks or pinpoint the most effective part of the journey.
• Custom Insights allow marketers to find sections of the site that customers have visited that correspond with those who have made purchases. This data can show results from a certain demographic or see how a coupon code spiked sales.

How Marketers Can Use This Information
Digital marketers can use Facebook Analytics to help track the customer journey, see where conversions are happening, and determine where targeting might be lacking. In addition to seeing where conversions are happening, it’s important to see where conversions aren’t happening and what might be holding customers up. Marketers can view the journey to target customers at just the right part of their journey with exactly what they need and want to see. And the best part? Facebook Analytics is free and can be set up in less than 5 minutes.

For help implementing an omni-channel analytics strategy, reach out to Rise.