Remove the headache from subscription analytics

Subscription ecommerce businesses undoubtedly have customers that have a bigger LTV (LifeTime Value) than traditional ecommerce buisness models. Monthly recurring revenue and quality products ensures a regular income for the store with or without new leads coming through. 

However, in a lot of subscription Shopify stores the ability to attribute sales to specific marketing channels can become complex. Tracking the original origin of a subscriber in a subscription business can be inaccurate or have missing data. This is, in part, due to the complexity of tracking a first time subscription vs a recurring payment and also part due to URLs of gateways. 

ReCharge is an extremely versatile subscription integration that works seamlessly with Shopify and Shopify Plus. We’ve seen lots of merchants build successful subscription Shopify stores with ReCharge. However, with the flexibility of the platform also comes an almost unlimited number of ways to configure it. 

In this article we’re going to look at the recommended method for integrating ReCharge and Google Analytics. We’ll also dig deeper into how LittleData can help improve your analytical reporting. 

ReCharge Google Analytics

ReCharge has its own handy analytics tool that gives a broad, top level overview of subscriber activity including churn rate and LTV. However, we’re going to focus on integrating ReCharge with Google Analytics. 

Basic Setup

Within the ReCharge dashboard, add the Google Analytics app under integrations and add your Google Analytics ID that is attributed to your Shopify store. (This should look like: UA-xxxxxx). 

Once this has been set up, you’ll need to create a Goal Funnel within Google Analytics. Head to the GA dashboard, under Admin choose Goals. 

ReCharge has its own gateway for checking out, which changes the domain the user is on. The idea of these goal funnels, is to combine the data sources and user journey together. 

The last URL before switching to ReCharge will be /cart and the first URL the user reaches when they go to ReCharge is /r/checkout. We also know that a successful subscription will leave the user at the URL /r/purchase/thanks/ . So this URL will be the “destination” in our goal funnel, and we’ll set it as a regular expression. 

From there we can fill in the rest of the funnel so we’re collecting information throughout various data points. In this case we’ll set an “add to cart”, “gave us address” and “gave us billing”. Any URL that begins with /r/ is part of the ReCharge domain. 

This basic set up will help you attribute some of the marketing efforts to conversions through Shopify and into the ReCharge domain. However, in order to get more in-depth and accurate analytics we’d recommend upgrading to using a LittleData integration. 

LittleData Integration

Littledata sits between Shopify, ReCharge and Google Analytics, validating the data in real time and attributing it to marketing channels. Because it sits server-side, it’s 100% accurate and helps you produce better reports. The LittleData integration allows you to report, in depth, on:

• Subscription lifecycle events
• Subscription updates
• Subscription cancellations
• Churn rate
• First time payments

Measuring these reports can be invaluable to a subscription business. Cross measuring against a marketing channel, will allow you to see which channel is performing best. In-depth reporting means you’ll be able to see which channel offers the best LTV and which channels have a higher churn rate. 

Being able to attribute consistent high churn rates to a single marketing channel can help an ecommerce business save on their marketing budget. These reports can also be used to point out obvious optimisation opportunities that otherwise would have been missed. 

Setting up LittleData couldn’t be easier. Simply sign up, they have a 14 day free trial available. Add the apps/integrations that you want to report on and their powerful data engine collates the data. 

LittleData also has an enterprise version which is favourite amongst most of our Shopify Plus clients. They will help build out custom reporting features for your store, allowing you to concentrate on optimising marketing channels that are under performing. 

Need help setting up a subscription model? Our team of marketing strategists help ecommerce businesses just like yours to improve LTV's and make a better user experience for your customers. Get in touch today.