How it works: Bold Subscriptions to Google Analytics

This is a guide to how Littledata's Bold Subscriptions connection works with your Google Analytics (GA) setup. After you add Littledata's Shopify to Google Analytics connection, you can add the Bold Subscriptions connection to capture Bold subscriptions and unify that data with additional sales and marketing data from Shopify and other sources.

In this article we look at what you can track with Littledata, how to use Littledata's views and filters in your GA account, and how the Bold Subscriptions connection works behind the scenes.

tip:

This article focus on sending Bold Subscriptions data to Google Analytics. For information on sending Bold Subscriptions data to your Segment workspace, see the Shopify to Segment guide.

Bold Subscriptions v1 and v2

Littledata's connection works for both both Bold v1 (using Bold's checkout) and Bold v2 (subscriptions in Shopify's checkout). Both integrations let you track subscriptions in GA and make it easy to differentiate between one-off purchases, first-time subscriptions and recurring orders / ongoing subscriptions, but with v2 tracking we are able to track checkout steps with more granular detail:

	Bold Checkout Subscriptions (v1)	Bold Subscriptions in the Shopify Checkout (v2)
Checkout step events	-	YES
First-time subscription orders differentiated from one-time orders	YES	YES
Recurring orders filtered by transaction Affiliation	YES	YES

Please contact our analytics team if you have questions about exactly what we track for Bold Subscriptions.

New views and filters added by Littledata

Littledata makes it easy and convenient to do Bold Subscription analysis in Google Analytics by setting up dedicated views for subscription orders placed via Bold checkout. Let's take a deep dive into the views that are created once you successfully install Littledata's Bold to GA connection.

1. One-time orders and first-time subscriptions (Littledata) 
   This view contains one-time orders and first-time subscription orders placed.
   Filters applied:
   a) Exclude recurring orders (Littledata)
   b) Exclude duplicate orders (Littledata)
2. All orders (Littledata) 
   This view contains all orders placed on your store including one-time orders placed, first-time subscriptions, recurring orders, and prepaid orders.
   Filters applied:
   a) Exclude duplicate orders (Littledata)
3. Raw backup DO NOT EDIT (Littledata)
   As the name suggests, this view is added to maintain a raw backup for your data from the time Littledata's Bold connection was installed. No filters are applied to this view.

*One-time order refers to one-off orders that are non-recurring and placed via Shopify checkout (affiliate code: Shopify). While first-time subscription refers to the first time a subscription was placed via Bold checkout (affiliate code: first_recurring_order, recurring order). All subsequent orders in that subscription are referred to as recurring orders (affiliate code: recurring_order).

'One-time orders and first-time subscriptions (Littledata)' view

For subscription analysis, it is helpful to distinguish one-time orders and first-time subscription orders from recurring orders. As the name suggests, this view contains the following orders:

1. One-time orders (affiliate code: Shopify)
2. First-time subscriptions (affiliate code: first_recurring_order, recurring order)

This separation enables stores to easily calculate Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) on one-time orders and first-time subscriptions. Further, for all the subscriptions that started after you installed Littledata's Bold connection, you can group them by the subscriber (Shopify customer ID) or by marketing channel or campaign for insightful Return on Investment (ROI) calculations.

note:

ROI calculations on this view will not take into account the recurring orders. For a longer-term ROI calculation, you can use the 'All orders (Littledata)' view.

'All orders (Littledata)' view

There are times when you want to look at just the revenue from new subscriptions and times when you want to look at the full history of payments from subscribers.

When you activate the Bold to Google Analytics connection, Littledata creates a new view in your connected Google Analytics property to track all orders including:

1. One-time orders (affiliate code: Shopify)
2. First-time subscriptions (affiliate code: first_recurring_order, recurring order)
3. Recurring orders (affiliate code: recurring_order)

You can group those payments by subscriber (Shopify customer ID) and, for all subscriptions that started after you installed the Littledata app, by the marketing channel or campaign which caused them to start subscribing.