Today, we’re launching the world’s first cross-platform, cross-channel cohort analysis tool. Using data from our unique attribution engine, marketers finally have a way to build cohort reports that show performance from all of their marketing campaigns.
Branch’s solution is a night-and-day improvement from the limited single-channel, single-platform cohort reports available through legacy mobile attribution tools. It unlocks the true potential of cohort analysis as a way not only to report on campaign results, but also to help improve performance over time.
Branch dashboard showing how a customer would use a re-engagement cohort report to visualize revenue per user for re-engaged users, broken down by channel and platform — table view mode.
Why Cohort Analysis Is So Important
Cohort analysis is an incredibly powerful concept. When done correctly, it allows you to find insights in your data that would otherwise be impossible to see.
For example, let’s say you want to investigate the annual income of college students after graduation. With a basic linear analysis, you can see income clearly increases over time.
Linear analysis of average income for college students who graduated in 2008 and 2009
By grouping the students into cohorts based on graduation year, we can see something much more interesting: income for the 2009 graduates rose much more quickly than their colleagues from a year earlier.
Cohort analysis of average income for college students who graduated in 2008 and 2009
Said another way, cohort analysis is a method for making apples-to-apples comparisons. This is extremely valuable for marketers, because it helps them move beyond vanity metrics and gather more actionable insights from their data.
Why Is Cross-Platform, Cross-Channel So Critical for Cohort Analysis?
Of course, cohort analysis is only as good as the underlying data. Taking the previous example of college graduate income, let’s say you wanted to compare high school graduates who never went to college. If high schools are not tracking graduation date, that would be impossible to do.
Up until now, marketers have been similarly limited by the basic cohort analysis offered by legacy providers: they can perform analysis on the data from a single channel or platform (e.g., paid app install ads on mobile), but this is like trying to drive with half of your windshield covered. You can do it, but it’s risky because you’re not getting the full picture.
This means if you wanted to move past basic analysis based on campaign dates, and instead perform an apples-to-apples comparison of the revenue you drove from app users re-engaged via paid ads with desktop website visitors re-engaged via email (a perfectly logical question, if you’re trying to allocate a limited marketing budget), you were out of luck. That data existed in two completely disconnected silos.
Branch’s Cross-Everything Cohort Solution
Branch’s unique attribution engine reconnects these silos. We stitch together the touch-points of each user across platforms and channels, leading to a single deduplicated link graph.
This kind of consolidated link graph is exactly what’s needed to build powerful cross-platform, cross-channel cohort reports.
With Branch’s new Cohort Analysis functionality, marketers can finally apply the power of cohort analysis to data from all of their marketing campaigns, no matter the channel where they are run, or the platform where the user eventually converts. This means you’re able to ask meaningful questions, such as:
Are retention rates higher for my paid users or my organic users?
For users I re-engage in an email campaign, how much revenue do I drive on web vs. app?
Of course, our solution also covers everything you’ve come to expect from legacy attribution systems. Important basics like:
Which ad campaign drives the most revenue from acquired users?
Am I retaining users that I acquire from ads over time?
Branch’s cohort analysis is a major step forward for the digital marketing industry, and will help marketers everywhere drive better performance from their campaigns.
Cohort Analysis is available today for all Universal Ads, Journeys, and Universal Email subscribers. We can’t wait for you to give it a try! Feel free to contact our sales team to find out more.