Tracking $685,000 in Revenue 🔥

Going from 7% to 91% in Attributable Revenue

Author, Brie E Anderson | Published: 10/10/2024

In late July of 2024, I got an intro to a potential client from someone I really looked up to (and desperately wanted to impress).

I was traveling back stateside after teaching at Harbour.Space University for three weeks in Barcelona, so I couldn’t get on a call for about a week.

But once everything worked out and I met this client, I was stoked! She was so smart and was doing really big things.

She explained that, in April, she did a course launch that brought in $1,000,000!!! Cue the confetti, cue the congrats. I thought, “Well what the heck does she need with me?”

& that’s when she shared the problem…

The Problem with a Million-Dollar Launch

Out of the ONE MILLION DOLLARS generated, only $70,000 was tracked in Google Analytics 4 AND most of it was attributed to “self” because of the payment processor, Thrivecart 😭

I’m not sure if you’ve ever done a million-dollar launch, but if you have, or even if you can imagine doing so, you know that A LOT of time, money, and effort go into making it happen!

In this case, the client had her Founder Site, Facebook & Instagram ads, affiliates, and email campaigns all pushing folks to her Courses Site during this launch.

There was MAJOR investment in the launch and only a percentage of it was captured with none of it being attributable 😔

BUT! Lucky us, I was ready to take on the job!

Setting the Stage: Tight, Tight Deadlines 😳

To say the deadline was tight would be an understatement. From the time the SOW was signed, we were left with this schedule.

Just under two weeks until the ads started running for the Free Course waitlist
18 days before the alumni cart opened
3.5 weeks until the Free Course started
1 month before the cart opened for everyone

Part 1: The Fundamentals Are Fundamental

For the first 12 days, we worked to set the fundamentals for two sites and a payment processor. EVERYONE was involved.

The owner shared the correct level of GA4 access, her team had to get Google Tag Manager on the Founder’s Site, and I needed to get access to Thrivecart (more on this to come).

I did the GA4/GTM audit and pinpointed some changes that needed to be made STAT

Data retention was still set to 2 months (on both sites)
Cross-domain tracking needed to be set up for Thrivecart (for the Course site)
Form tracking through enhanced measurement was incorrect (on the Founder site)

Part 2: Creating the Tracking Plan

Part of my GA4 Audit + Playbook is recommending what should be tracked for the best insight into the customer journey.

We wanted as much visibility into the funnel as possible, and THIS ONE was quite a dozy 😅

So, we had the Founder Site and the Course site. Sometimes folks would land on the founder site because of like PR stuff or SEO then come to the Course Site - we wanted to know when that happened.

There were a ton of efforts to get folks to the Course Site - paid and organic Facebook / IG posts, email, and affiliate stuff. At first, the Course Site promoted a free “mini course” to get folks in the funnel. From there users got the course fed to them via email.

Eventually, the Course Site opened up the actual High Ticket Offer (HTO) cart. Then folks were driven from the Free Course (and emails) to the HTO page. Regular emails, affiliates, new paid FB/IG content, all of it now led to the HTO.

Once people clicked to begin checkout Thrivecart came into play with order bumps and purchasing capabilities - we had 0 visibility of this going into implementation.

There were also downsells offered. It was a whole thing. A whole thing we wanted to track the shit out of.

Within 12 Days I had:

✅ completed a fundamentals check

✅ mapped the customer journey

✅ created event and dimension plan

✅ tested a UTM plan

✅ delivered an audit

✅ debriefed the audit

✅ got sign off on the implementation budget

This is why I LOVE working with teams that have very little red tape, the turnaround was QUICK.

Part 3: Prioritized Implementation (with v1 needed in ONE DAY 😅)

If you’re not a numbers kinda person, this means we now had

ONE DAY until the ads started running for the Free Course waitlist
FIVE DAYS before the alumni cart opened
12 DAYS until the Free Course started
19 DAYS before the cart opened for everyone

Implementation had to start (realistically, like last month lol) THAT DAY.

The first order of action was setting up the waitlist signups on the Course Site with Tag Manager - check. Then we needed to double-check that the tracking plan worked and we could see where people were coming from - double check. We were off to a good start.

Now, to deal with the dreaded payment processor, Thrivecart.

Thrivecart is an awesome tool, but lordy me if the analytics integration isn’t a pain in the butt!!!

It turns out, you actually have to manually add GTM tracking to each “product” then set up the correct tags/triggers/parameters for GA4 e-commerce tracking. What a pain.

And I love this client, but there are order bumps and down sells and memberships galore, each needing to have the GTM ID added to their tracking one by one 😭

But I was still able to ship it in time to capture almost every purchase during the launch (it shipped the day of the alumni cart opening)!!!

Part 4: The Final Implementation (Creating a Future-Proof Solution)

I set up some other tracking along the way, things like FAQ accordion interactions so we could see which questions folks really needed to be answered.

I eventually set up a full funnel of cart events: view course > view pricing > begin checkout > (change payment option if applicable) > add contact info > add payment info > purchase.

The funnel wasn’t present for all of the launch, but ultimately, the most important numbers - purchases and revenue - were captured in time and remained durable throughout the launch. The other numbers trickled in throughout the process, but we are confident in tracking the next launch.

So now, the reveal!!!!

After the setup, I was able to help this client track $685,000 of her $750,000 in purchases during this launch.

She went from less than 10% of revenue tracked to 90%!!!

The Biggest Win: It’s Attributable

We know how many folks joined from the free course.

We know how many purchased using an affiliate link.

How many came from emails.

Which emails converted the best.

Which ads had the highest engagement.

It’s all there.

And they will be so much more prepared for the next launch.

They will be data-informed with every opportunity to become data-driven in their planning.

And that’s a fucking win if I’ve ever seen one.

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