An outlook beyond final conversions: A smarter approach to multi-step user journeys

Reading Time: 4 minutes

By Kartik Sharma | Lead, Business Strategy & Analytics | ETML

Have you ever felt like you’re optimizing your marketing campaigns in the dark? You track events, but your KPIs seem lightyears away. This is a common struggle, especially for businesses with multi-step user journeys and high order value products. Focusing solely on the final conversion can lead to slow learning and frustration. Therefore, to address and overcome these challenges, we are sharing below a groundbreaking strategy.

Objective :

To share a two-tiered event optimization strategy to optimize marketing campaigns for multi-step user journeys, resulting in faster goal achievement and improved efficiency.

The Challenge:

 Events are crucial for understanding the user journey. They tell us where people interact with one’s platform. But what if that journey involves several steps before reaching your desired outcome, like a purchase or application submission?

Here’s the dilemma:

• Optimizing for final conversions (like purchase) takes a long time for the platform to “learn” due to fewer data points.
• Focusing on early events might not directly translate to achieving your goals.

The optimal selection of mid-funnel events for optimization varies brand to brand and is heavily influenced by their average order value (AOV). We observed that for businesses with lower AOV products, focusing solely on final conversions is sufficient. However, for brands with higher AOV offerings, the conversion window lengthens considerably as users conduct extensive research before the final purchase. In such cases, optimizing for events like add-to-cart and/or final purchases becomes counterproductive.  The first approach attracts low-quality  users, while the second extends the learning phase due to the extended conversion window.

Imagine a high AOV  e-commerce store where users have the option to customize jewelry. There are 17 steps before a purchase! Optimizing for the final step would mean waiting ages for the platform to learn.

Funnel	Number of Events per day	Time (days) for complete learning
ATC	30	1-2 days
Checkout	15	3-4 days
Add Payment Info	7	7-9 days
Purchase	1	50-60 days

The Solution: A Two-Tiered Approach for Event Optimization

To overcome this challenge, we developed a two-tiered event optimization strategy:

• Continuous Scaling with Mid-Funnel Events: We created events for each step, allowing us to analyze drop-off rates and identify bottlenecks. This helped us continuously improve the user experience and scale working campaigns.

Definition	Meta	GG	GA4	Trigger (datalayer event & event label combination condition)
Apply Now Button Click	apply_now_btn_click	ET-All Apply Now Button Click	et-apply_now_btn_click	Apply Now
Sign up success	Complete Registration	ET-Successful Sign up	et-signup_success	Create Account
Email verification	email_verified	ET-Successful_Mail_Verify	et-email_verified	Continue
Check Eligibility – Initiate	eligibility_initiate	ET-Eligibility_initiate	et-eligibility_initiate	Click Get Started
Eligibility Complete	Lead	ET-Eligibility_Complete	et-eligibility_complete	Click Continue
Personal Details Complete	Contact	ET-Personal_Details_Complete	et-personal_details_complete	Click Next
Finance Details Complete	Add Payment Info	ET-Personal_Finance_Complete	et-finance_details_complete	Click Next
Previous Education Complete	Start trial	ET-Prev_Edu_Complete	et-previous_edu_complete	Click Next
Employment Complete	Schedule	ET-Employement_Complete	et-employment_complete	Click Next
Ineligible Error	ineligible _pageview	ET-Ineligible_Error	et-ineligible_error	/ineligible-error
Application Submit	Application Submit	ET-Submit_Application	et-application_submit	Click Next
Provisional Offer Accepted	Subscribe	ET-Provisional_Offer_Accepted	et-provisional_offer_accepted	Click Accept

• A/B Testing Top & Mid-Funnel Events: We created separate adsets, one optimizing for a strategically chosen mid-funnel event and another for the final KPI. A/B testing revealed which event drove the most conversions.

Selecting the optimal event for optimization isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, it’s a strategic decision influenced by several key factors like : 

1. Average order value (AOV) of the  products
2. The typical user journey within the  industry, and/or
3. Seasonal fluctuations in customer behavior.

The Results: Increased Sales and Reduced Costs

This approach has yielded impressive results for our clients:

• For a Fintech client: By optimizing for a mid-funnel event and the final application submission (KPI), we significantly reduced CAC by 45% while increasing loan approvals. We could also scale the account by 4x times within a span of 3 months.

Metric	Feb	Mar	Apr	May
Spend	$10,000	$22,000	$35,000	$49,000
Traffic	14,000	27,000	41,000	56,000
App Starts	400	1,100	1,800	2,500
App Submits	130	380	630	880
PO	70	280	490	700
Verification	50	230	410	590
Loan Approved	20	80	140	200
Sign Loan Agreement	10	60	110	160
Disbursed	5	50	95	140
Cost per App Submitted	$77	$58	$47	$45
Cost per Loan Disbursed	$780	$590	$470	$440

• For an ecommerce client: Optimizing for checkouts (a mid-funnel event) allowed us to build a retargeting funnel through push notifications, ultimately leading to a substantial increase in purchases by 3.4X. We could scale the campaign by 2.1xby this strategic call by keeping a desirable ROI for the client.

Month	Custom Jewellery Initiate	Custom Jewellery Complete	Custom Jewellery Setting Complete	Std ATC	Custom Jewellery ATC	ATC	Checkout	S2S Purchase
September 2023	3,000	900	1,000	200	400	600	200	40
October 2023	4,500	1,350	1,750	300	500	800	300	60
November 2023	5,000	1,500	1,750	500	700	1,200	500	120
December 2023	4,500	1,300	1,400	400	700	1,100	400	100
January 2024	5,000	1,600	1,750	350	600	1,100	400	80
February 2024	8,000	2,500	3,000	700	1,200	1,800	600	110
March 2024	11,000	3,000	3,500	500	1,300	1,800	600	120
April 2024	9,500	2,500	3,000	500	1,100	1,600	700	130
May 2024	9,000	2,500	3,000	500	700	1,200	400	130

(Disclaimer : All numbers in the above tables have been masked for brand’s data privacy)

Conclusion:

By choosing the right events to optimize for, one can break free from the multi-step user journey maze. By combining mid-funnel event optimization with A/B testing, marketers can achieve their goals faster and with greater efficiency.  So, partner with ETML to start using data to illuminate your user journey and unlock hidden opportunities for growth.