E-commerce & DTC

E-commerce Attribution Pipeline

How we helped a growing DTC brand gain real-time visibility into marketing performance and reduce reporting time by 80%.

80%

Reporting time reduced

3 weeks

Project timeline

Real-time

Attribution tracking

1The Challenge

A rapidly growing direct-to-consumer brand was investing heavily in digital marketing across multiple channels: Facebook Ads, Google Ads, TikTok, influencer partnerships, and email campaigns. Despite spending $50K+ monthly on ads, they had no clear picture of which channels were actually driving sales.

Their attribution process was manual, inconsistent, and always 2-3 weeks behind. The marketing team was pulling data from 7 different platforms into spreadsheets, trying to piece together customer journeys by hand. By the time they had insights, campaigns had already run their course.

Key Pain Points:

✕No visibility into which ads drove actual sales
✕Manual data pulls taking 10+ hours per week
✕Inconsistent attribution methodology across channels
✕2-3 week lag between campaign run and performance data
✕Unable to calculate true cost per acquisition by channel

2The Solution

We built an automated attribution pipeline that connected all marketing platforms and the Shopify store into a unified data warehouse. The system tracked customer journeys from first touch to purchase, applying consistent multi-touch attribution logic across all channels.

What We Built:

1. Data Integration Layer

Used Airbyte to automatically sync data from Facebook Ads, Google Ads, TikTok, Klaviyo (email), and Shopify every hour. All raw data landed in Snowflake for processing.

2. Attribution Logic with dbt

Built dbt models to clean, transform, and join data across platforms. Implemented multi-touch attribution rules (first touch, last touch, and linear) to credit touchpoints accurately.

3. Real-Time Dashboards

Created Looker dashboards showing: daily ROAS by channel, cost per acquisition trends, customer journey visualization, and campaign performance rankings.

4. Automated Reporting

Set up daily Slack notifications with key metrics and weekly email reports with detailed breakdowns for the marketing team.

Tech Stack

AirbytedbtSnowflakeLookerPythonShopify API

3The Results

Within 3 weeks, the brand went from flying blind to having complete visibility into their marketing performance. They could now see which channels and campaigns were actually profitable, and make real-time decisions about where to allocate budget.

80% time savings

Reporting went from 10+ hours/week to 2 hours

Real-time attribution

Updated hourly instead of 2-3 week lag

25% ROAS improvement

Better budget allocation to high-performing channels

Full customer journey

Track every touchpoint from first ad to purchase

Key Outcomes:

Real-time attribution dashboard showing ROAS by channel and campaign
Automated daily reporting delivered to marketing team via Slack and email
Cost per acquisition tracking with historical trends for budget planning
Customer journey visualization showing all touchpoints before purchase
Campaign performance rankings to quickly identify winners and losers

“

Before working with Savage Data, we were basically guessing which ads worked. Now we know exactly where every dollar goes and what it returns. We've reallocated 40% of our budget based on the insights, and our overall ROAS is up 25%. This system paid for itself in the first month.

— Marketing Director, DTC Beauty Brand

Project Details

Timeline

Week 1:Data source integration

Week 2:Attribution logic & modeling

Week 3:Dashboards & automation

Investment

$8,500

Included full pipeline setup, 3 dashboard variants, documentation, and 1 month of support.

ROI achieved in first month

Ready to gain clarity on your marketing performance?

Let's build an attribution system that shows you exactly what's working and what's not.