So you spend tons of time and effort producing scroll-stopping and persuasive ads that capture clicks.
Then you blast your ads across all the paid media platforms you can find.
What’s next?
Most probably you’re waiting to see the rise in revenue and might be wondering,
- What happens after the click?
- What do people do after you’ve caught their attention with your ad?
And most importantly,
- Does your ad even work?
Now if you don’t have the right analytics tracking set up then it’s most probably very hard for you to answer those questions.
Many ecommerce brands are losing money for that exact reason. Throwing money into the wind with a prayer and a hope.
Worry not, you can go a long way to overcoming this problem with the help of attribution software.
In addition to tracking the performance of your ads, the right attribution software can also help you
- Properly attribute every ad dollar spent and show the ROI on your marketing efforts
- Identify which ad platform is working well for your business
- Use real data to make bottom-line impacting decisions and scale your brand
That’s why in this post, we’ll review our “best-kept secret” Triplewhale which has helped us to bridge the gap in attribution and make decisions that benefit our clients’ bottom line.
The need for a tool like Triplewhale
If you’re a direct to consumer brand or an ecommerce agency, a profitable ad campaign would be your lifeline.
Likewise, the ability to attribute every ad dollar spent is not only crucial for showing the ROI on the marketing efforts but to understand which ad platform works best to attract customers, analyzing what worked or not with the ads, and which products performed well – and the list goes on.
Simply put, getting the right insights matters for businesses to understand their target market and scale their business faster and profitably.
But if you expect the process to be simple then you’re in for a rude awakening.
Here’s why:
- Most of the time you need to switch to multiple platforms to get all the important data.
Due to the nature of complex funnels and unpredictable human behavior one must use multiple UTMs, Google analytics, and specific platforms to track sales across channels efficiently. And even then you’ll see lots of conflicting data.
- The data seems to be Latin to you.
As someone who needs to make reliable decisions based on data for the business to grow, the last thing you want to do is to struggle to sort out and make sense of the jumble of data that is available to you. Google Analytics isn’t the most friendly, especially when it conflicts with what ad platforms say.
- iOS update and its impact on attribution
Let’s be honest here.
Even before the dreaded iOS 14 updates to help users control their privacy, attribution was pretty broken.
As a reminder, this update prompts and allows users to opt-out of ad tracking.
With more than 50% of smartphone dominance in the US alone and 27.6% of global market share; it’s no big surprise that the updates led to major changes in ecommerce and the decline in accuracy of tracking in key paid media platforms, most importantly Facebook.
Here’s what changed when it comes to Facebook in short.
| Features | Pre iOS14 updates | Post iOS14 updates |
| Data | Facebook is allowed and able to connect users’ in-app ad views to off-app activity such as visits to site. | Users are automatically opted-out from this. |
| Attribution window | 28 days post click where the purchases were recorded and attributed to the ad at the original interaction date. | Just 7 days post click where purchases are attributed. And only on the day of conversion itself, at best, but often delayed even more. |
| Tracking | Lots of events that can be customized to track according to your preference. | Only 8 manually selected events can be tracked whereas users who choose to opt-out of ATT are limited to just the top-prioritized event. |
Now with the current iOS 15.4.1 update, you can be dead sure that relying purely on media platforms such as Facebook and Google Analytics for reporting attribution is a fool’s game.
Keeping these issues in mind, it’s clear that an attribution software like Triplewhale is definitely needed for digital marketers to stay ahead of the curve.
Quick Overview Of Triplewhale
Triplewhale is the brainchild of its founders from their frustration with the need to login into and alternate between multiple platforms such as Shopify, Facebook and Klaviyo to get key data such as:
- Their Store ROAS (Ad spend/Sales)
- Facebook ROAS
- Number of new subscribers for the day
Located in Israel this small but mighty startup founded by AJ Orbach, Ivan Chernykh and Maxx Blank has come a long way and already managed to close their Series A round. According to Crunchbase the amount raised was $27.7 million to date from investors such as Elephant and NFX.
Not only that, according to a recent article from Bizjournal Co-founder and COO Maxx Blank said that:
“Triple Whale Inc. has more than 2,500 Shopify merchants as clients and is growing by about 30% every month in just one year in business.”
It definitely shows that this company is here to stay and is just getting started.
So now comes the big question,
How Does TripleWhale Work?
Triple Whale collects and centralizes the metrics from all the tools you use in a single place.
It uses a first-party pixel on your site, in conjunction with UTM tags applied at the ad level, to create it’s own picture of how users are behaving.
Unlike others, it simplifies complex data, keeps you informed with easy-to-digest reports, and saves your time by eliminating the need to log into multiple platforms.
To give you more context, let’s have a look at some of the prominant features of TripleWhale.
TripleWhale Features Review
Triplewhale pixel
What makes the Triplewhale pixel so special is its transparent and accurate reporting regarding your ad performance.
Unlike other attribution tools in the market, it won’t under-report nor over-report the metrics.
Additionally, the Triplewhale pixel does not have Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework limitation since it partners directly with the brand when it was installed on the brand’s site.
Now you can attribute with increased accuracy since you’re using first-party data to monitor shop visitors and their activities in the shop via the UTMs needed and tie up the events to the ads that they have clicked to arrive on your shop.
This way you’re not violating any privacy laws either – just communicate clearly in your privacy policy.
In fact, its attribution capabilities do not stop there.
Here are some of the awesome things you can see with the Triplewhale pixel.
- Your ROAS data
You can access your ROAS by clicking on the ad platform you want to track. Once you can see the campaigns related to that platform you can identify the platform reported ROAS, Google Analytics ROAS, and Triplewhale ROAS tied to it:
You can even compare different attribution models like First Click vs Last Click, and including or excluding view by clicking on the pixel’s icon:
For more detailed information, you can drill down into any given campaign, ad set, or ad and you can see the list of orders and customers that can be traced back to that particular ad.
To get more information regarding any particular customer’s journey, all you have to do is to click on their name and their entire journey will be displayed in a pop up, such as what ads they clicked on, what pages they visited, and what they bought.
- Channel overlap
As mentioned earlier, the buyers’ journey will not always be linear. Sometimes customers would have engaged with different ad channels before purchasing at a store.
This is where Triplewhale’s Channel Overlap helps out by providing a visual display of the number of customers in multiple touch-point journeys with the ability to toggle between overlapping different ad channels to guide in decision-making for the business.
- Live order attribution
Nothing excites like seeing the sales made live.
The Live Orders section keeps you informed by updating every time a new order is placed in your store where the customer has clicked through an ad at any time before making the purchase.
- Other metrics
Additionally, you can track tons of other data from the Triplewhale pixel (indicated by the pixel-y floppy disk) by organizing them into the columns according to your preferences.
Some of the other data that can be unearthed include but are not limited to the following.
See, we’re not kidding when we say that there is tons of data available thanks to the Triplewhale pixel.
Triplewhale summary
According to Triplewhale, its summary page is where all the magic happens and we can’t agree more!
Acting as your shop dashboard, this is where you can view all the metrics that your business runs on.
Apart from that, you can always pin the metric that matters the most by hovering over the metric title and clicking on the pin icon in its’ upper-left corner.
If you look closely, each section of the summary page displays metrics from your various data sources such as Shopify, Analytics, Klaviyo, and many more. This way you can analyze the health of your business and its profitability in a single place and make data-driven decisions for your growth in a single place.
How cool is that?
By the way, these sections are totally customizable so feel free to play around or use existing templates to create something that works for you.
If you’re working with different currencies use its currency conversion tool to set a standard across all your dashboards.
Lastly, if you need metrics that are not available in the dashboard, create a custom metric right in the dashboard to help you out.
Triplewhale activity feed
Having trouble tracking all the past marketing efforts and any changes made to current initiatives?
Don’t fret.
You can track all of them with Triplewhale’s activity feed since all major events that occurred in your marketing ecosystem will be chronologically organized here.
Triplewhale creative dashboard
This creative dashboard is one of the many reasons why many rate Triplewhale so highly.
With all the KPIs available for all of your ads visually now you can make data-driven decisions easily, especially when it comes to identifying which images, videos and copy of yours are performing well.
The potential of this dashboard doesn’t stop here as you could easily sort them by the metrics you need and filter them out accordingly for greater clarity.
Triplewhale customer insights
LTV Cohorts
LTV used to be calculated with the help of a financial model or complex exports from Shopify.
But now with the help of Triplewhale, all you have to do is to navigate to the LTV section within the customer insights to get all the LTV data you need,
There you can see the AOV (Average Order Value) and the LTV (Lifetime Value) over 60-days and 90-days.
If you like you can toggle between the last 3, 6 or 12 months to track historical trends and averages over a larger period of time.
Furthermore, you can dive deeper with a visually stunning distribution chart (LTV Cohorts) to track the top products and discount codes that helped produce the most valuable customers.
Partnering with influencers?
Get the value return from your influencer partnership by tracking LTVs on their discount codes.
Time Between Orders
Another thing that Triplewhale does well is its ability to track the time between orders.
Seriously it’s genius!
Here is how it works.
Triplewhale will aggregate your sales data and displays a histogram over the distribution of days exactly when your customers returned back for their consecutive orders from your store.
It doesn’t even stop here as you can unearth more valuable time frames by searching for a specific product.
This way you could use the time that they’re more likely to convert to do your upsells or re-engage with your past customers.
The Product Journey
Another cool feature of Triplewhale is that it helps in identifying the interests of your customers so that you can make data-driven decisions.
Simply put, the visualization provided in this section shows the flow of products and how your customers are interacting with your products in the store.
Now, you can see the journey of a customer from their first purchase to the last purchase they have made and make more informed decisions by playing around with various controls.
That being said you need two focus on the two most important metrics.
- Golden path – the path that occurs from the first to the second sale which indicates the higher chance of more return customers in the same trend.
- Golden product path – this is where you can see that the initial purchase is repeated into the 2nd and 3rd sale, which indicates that the product is a top performer.
Bundling
If you’re constantly looking to do upsells and cross-sales,bundling should interset you as this section shows the top 3 bundles of your store in an easy-to-digest visualization that helps you to see which products that your customers are buying together.
Triplewhale Customer Journey
As part of the advanced capability of the Triplewhale pixel now you can get an overall idea of the marketing flows customers have moved through on their way to making a purchase.
You can consider each stage as a touchpoint customers had gone through in your ads. With such detailed and easy-to-digest visualizations now you can understand how many customers converted, how many steps it took them, and which marketing channels worked well at each stage.
Triplewhale tools
Forecasting Calculator
Gone are the times when you try to calculate how your conversion rate can affect your profits in Google Sheet.
With Triplewhales’s forecasting calculator you can easily predict that just by inputting the conversion rate you’re targeting at.
Reports
We can’t stress how much the ability to get accurate reporting from Triplewhale is a lifesaver for us, especially when dealing with high-spend clients.
The plus?
We can generate a custom report in a matter of minutes with all the details and metrics that we need.
Of course, Triplewhale outdid themselves here as well by offering automated reporting as well.
TripleWhale Integrations
Triplewhale seems to be very generous when it comes to the integrations offered.
Regardless of the plan chosen, easy access to connect with the following 13 apps is provided by Triplewhale (and more are always being added).
- Shopify
- Google Analytics
- Google Ads
- TikTok
- Snapchat
- Klaviyo
- Attentive
- Enquire Labs
- Ship Station
- Gorgias
- Slack
This ensures that you don’t miss any valuable insights needed to keep your business profitable. Just connect the marketing channel and ecommerce platform that you will be using once onboarded.
All of this can be done in the Integrations tab within Settings. When connecting don’t forget to allow any permissions requested. Once completed, you can see your data being imported to the system via the progress bar.
TripleWhale Mobile Application
If you’re someone who’s constantly on the go but needs a powerful solution to keep track of all your metrics then Triplewhale’s mobile app is a match made in heaven for you.
Triplewhale’s mobile app is a fully functional app on its own so you will be having no problem tracking profits, blended ROAS, and LTV without the need to sacrifice your time and peace of mind as you will be receiving real-time notifications.
TripleWhale Chrome Extension
Take your productivity to the next level with Triplewhale’s chrome extension as you can get all your stats in real-time through Shopify’s native dashboard without needing to go into Triplewhale.
How Much Does TripleWhale Cost?
Triplewhale follows a rather transparent pricing model which differs based on your revenue and the plan you have chosen.
Triplewhale offers two types of plans and the price will be incrementally increased based on the Shopify revenue.
The main difference between those two plans offered is one comes with the benefit of having access to Triple pixel while the other doesn’t.
So if your last 12 months of gross revenue falls under the bracket of less than $1 Million then you can start off with $100 per month to start enjoying the benefit of having an integrated dashboard that visualizes your data for you and generates reports that are easy to understand.
Likewise, if you’re in need of more clarity and advanced business insights you can opt-in for the second plan which starts at $300 per month to gain access to the Triple pixel.
TripleWhale Discount
If you’re looking to sign up to TripleWhale but want to save a bit on the monthly fees you can use the code “UPCOUNTING” when signing up with them here to save 15% on the monthly fee! 🙌
Who Is Using TripleWhale & Who Should Be Using It?
As of now, Triplewhale has a large base of stores doing more than $20m a year.
On the other end of the spectrum, many early-stage D2C startups also use Triplewhale since the barrier to entry is low, and it’s very hard to resist the large string of benefits obtained when using Triplewhale.
So, we suggest that more ecommerce businesses regardless of size try out Triplewhale as it will make a significant amount of difference in your ad visibility and profit tracking.
If you’re part of an ecommerce agency like us, then Triplewhale can be used to add extra value to your customers and position your agency as an expert in the industry.
The Pros and Cons of Using Triplewhale
Pros Of Using Triplewhale
You could tell from our stance throughout the blog that we’re a big fan of Triplewhale.
Here’s why.
The benefits are plenty and definitely bottom-line impacting. Now we have higher clarity on the ads that we run for our clients and can clearly attribute the ads that we have run to the profit that they get. Furthermore, we no longer have to waste time simply trying to get custom metrics. In a matter of a couple of clicks, we can pull out the custom metric we want and optimize further based on the reports and dashboard that analyzes every piece of data gathered in a very understandable format.
Not only that, with the help of the creative dashboard we could easily identify the highest performance ad creative.
Now there is no more lost attribution due to delayed attribution since Triplewhale’s pixel can attribute even after the customer buys in a longer time frame post interacting with the ads we run. This in turn increases our understanding of multiple touchpoints that are neded to convert them and use them to optimize the funnel for bigger profits.
Cons Of Using Triplewhale
Personally, we found Triplewhale to be a fantastic tool that has little to gripe about. In fact, we use it for our ecommerce clients as well and found tremendous value and ROI from doing so.
The only con really is that it costs money. So if you’re store is brand new, you might not want to absorb the additional cost until you start scaling and investing a ton in ads.
Another downside is that it only works with Shopify for now, so if you’re using other platforms you can’t enjoy it’s benefits.
FAQs About TripleWhale
- Is Triplewhale legal?
The iOS14 and Facebook attribution updates are meant to protect users’ privacy.
So how does Triplewhale even bypass it without breaking multiple laws?
As mentioned earlier, instead of tracking users directly from Facebook, it tracks visitors of the shop and tie the events to the relevant ads and properly attributes them with the data available.
It’s safe to say that Triplewhale takes data compliance very seriously and it’s one of the most compliance-friendly solutions available in the market.
Just be clear about how you’re using the data in your privacy policy.
- Will it slow down my site?
Triplewhale’s script is very lightweight and has almost no impact on site speed. And the tiny impact is generally worth it.
- How quickly does it pull in data.
It can take about 24 hours before data is pulled in to Triplewhale depending on how much data there is. Keep in mind that for attribution and pixel based data, historical data cannot be pulled in.
Final Thoughts – Is TripleWhale Worth It?
Definitely. We can assure you that it’s worth every penny if you’re aiming to attribute your marketing efforts to revenue with as much accuracy as possible and make data-driven decisions.
If you’re an ecommerce brand that needs help to track, analyze and optimize your ad performance then look no further than Triplewhale.