Northbeam Best Practices

We’ve compiled a list of 4 best practices from our in-house media buyers to help you identify the media buying strategies necessary to acquire high-value customers at the lowest possible cost.

At Northbeam, we believe your data is the most powerful tool in your toolkit to scale your business profitably. In this module we’ve outlined 4 best practices recommended by our in-house media buyers and leveraged by our biggest power users:

  1. Organizing your data with Custom Labels
  2. Measuring conversion lift and conversion lag
  3. Monitoring CAC using the Northbeam Overview, Sales, and LTV Pages
  4. Optimizing retention efforts using the Northbeam Overview, Sales, and LTV Pages

Tip 1: Organize your data using Custom Labels

Northbeam consists of two layers: a metadata layer and an analytics layer that includes data cleansing and machine learning to continuously improve our attribution modeling. The more proactive you are with structuring your data, the better your analytics efforts will be. 

Using consistent naming conventions for all ads and UTM parameters makes it easy to break out your data into specific buckets for comprehensive analysis. On your Northbeam dashboard use Custom Labels to tag campaigns by funnel stage and compare top-of-the-funnel vs retargeting performance with Attributed Revenue, ROAS, CTR, and any other relevant metrics. The more specific you are in your labeling, the more variables you can analyze and optimize for. 

Custom Labels helps you understand where your traffic comes from, allowing you to: 

  • Track campaigns by attributes such as funnel stages, influencers, partnerships, etc.
  • Compare any variables within your marketing campaigns such as product lines, geographies, creative format, etc. 
  • Consolidate and aggregate relevant data to compare performance by creative type and format. 

How to create Custom Labels using the Breakdown Manager


    1. On the top right of your Northbeam Dashboard, click the Sales Tab.
    2. Navigate to and click the Breakdown by dropdown. Select Edit Breakdowns.
    3. You’ll be navigated to the Breakdown Manager.
    4. Use the Breakdown Setup to create your Custom Labels.
    • Breakdown Name will be what you see and will be able to select under the Breakdown by dropdown 
      • Under Campaign, Ad Set, Ad Segment you add the name of your ad
      • Click Simulate and make sure your Campaign, Ad Set, Ad Segment is pulled into the associated Label
      • Click Save if you’re done adding Segments 
      • Navigate to the Sales and Marketing Page and under Breakdown By > Add Breakdown you will find your Custom Labels

    💡TIP: Find additional Campaigns that may not be properly categorized by selecting Platform (Northbeam) under Breakdown by > Scroll down to the Breakdown Table > Select “Other” and see if there is anything miscategorized.

    The Breakdown Manager allows you to create labels for existing campaigns, ad sets, or ads. Northbeam also offers Automatic Label Rules and will continue to re-label campaigns, ad sets, or ads as new ones are launched.

    How to create Custom Labels using Automatic Label Rules

    1. On the top right of your Northbeam Dashboard, click the three-bars icon to select “Automatic Label Rules”. 
    2. This is your Rules Page and the table underneath is where all your Customer Labels will be organized. Select Create One or Create Another Rule to set up a Custom Label. 
    3. A Properties menu will appear. Type the desired label name (whatever you want to categorize a campaign by) into the Label Key section and then click Create Rule
    4. Using the Matcher tool, define the criteria to trigger your Custom Label (what conditions needs to be true to be assigned this tag?):
    5. In the first menu, select the source that you’re categorizing by. The second menu is an operator for what you type into the third menu. Most of the time you’ll be using “matches regex” in the second menu. Click the tips to see how you can match in various ways, but you’ll use (?i) for a case insensitive match for the most part. 
    6. Enter the category label you want in the Output Value field. You can click simulate to see how many instances would be affected. 
    7. To save the rule, click save at the bottom, and then click save at the top left once you return to the Rules page. 
    8. Click save at the bottom, and then click save at the top left once you return to the Rules page. If you don’t do the second save, your rule will be lost.
    9. To check to see if your Custom Label was saved, refresh the page and then go to the sales tab. Go to Group by Traffic Source and see if your Custom Label has been added to the Breakdown Table. You can add additional breakdowns on top of this to further segment your data.  

    ✏️ NOTE: By default the Custom Label will be applied at the campaign level but you can also choose the ad or ad set level. 

    Tip 2: Measure Conversion Lag & Conversion Lift

    Next, we’ll cover two of the most important metrics that you’ll want to consistently monitor: Conversion Lag and Conversion Lift to help you better plan for and allocate marketing spend to capture more value from eventual conversions. 

    • Conversion Lag is the time it takes for an interested prospect to go from an initial marketing touchpoint during their customer journey to actual conversion
    • Conversion Lift is the incremental revenue accumulated over time from original marketing touchpoints

    Tracking Conversion Lag

    To view Conversion Lag, go to the Overview Page. In the Cash Snapshot Revenue chart, the colored bars represent Conversion Lag over time visually. The bars are historic-looking over multiple time periods: 1d, 3d, 7d, 14d, 30d, 60d, 90d, and LTV, and represent customers who immediately convert (1d) and the corresponding conversion lag from 3 to 90+ days. 

    By checking this regularly, you’ll get a sense of how long your conversion lag is across campaigns, product lines, and other categories. 

    Calculating Conversion Lift

    For a look at Conversion Lift, go to the Overview Page and look at the Cash Snapshot Revenue chart. The blue portion represents 1-day attributed revenue, with the colored bars on top representing Conversion Lift after that day. The delta between LTV attributed revenue and 1d (default) attributed revenue is the Conversion Lift. 

    To calculate the exact Conversion Lift

    1. Go to your Sales & Marketing Page
    2. The difference between your 1d ROAS and LTV ROAS is the estimated Conversion Lift.
    3. Divide that delta by your 1d ROAS and multiply by 100 to get the Conversion Lift percent change. 

    ✏️ NOTE: Forecasting: After you have 60 days of data, Northbeam will start forecasting your future ROAS for the next 30, 60, and 90 days. 

    Tip 3: Monitor your CAC using the Overview, Sales, and LTV Pages

    Next you need to use Northbeam to monitor your CAC. Northbeam is designed to help you scale profitably. If you’re losing money on every new customer you acquire, your business will eventually die even as revenue grows. 

    Overview Page

    The Overview Tab offers quick summary stats across your entire business and includes all of your marketing campaigns, but you can find key customer acquisition information here as well. 

    Under the Cash and Accrual Snapshot, click the ROI dropdown menu (top right bar chart). Here you can view Cost per New Customer (Cash) and True Cost per New Customer (Accrual) within the selected time frame. Note that the colored bars represent change in Cost per New Customer over time. 

    In the Breakdown Table below the bar charts, you can view TrueCAC by platform. Northbeam also offers an Effective Cost per New Visit metric to estimate how much you’re paying for every new visit to your site. Both of these metrics are tracked from a cash and accrual basis, so make sure to keep an eye on how your CAC evolves. 

    Sales & Marketing Page

    The Sales Page offers more detailed customer acquisition info, including the ability to filter and group the data however you want. There are a few key metrics to track: 

    • CAC and LTV CAC: Measures customer acquisition cost for a specified time period; track the ratio between your CAC and LTV CAC because ideally a returning customer can be acquired for less than a new customer. Note that you can look at CAC by whatever filter or custom label you want in the Breakdown table below the charts. 

    • Site Visits and New Visits: The percentage of your visits from new visitors give you a rough idea of the split between new and recurring customers that are driving your revenue. 
    • Cost per Email Signup: Email signups tell you that something is resonating and that people are interested in your brand/product. But make sure to monitor Cost per Email Signup to understand what it costs to acquire those emails. 

    Tip 4: Optimize retention efforts using the Overview, Sales, and LTV Pages

    The final best practice in this module is how to optimize your retention efforts.

    Overview Page

    On the Overview Page, you can break down revenue and transactions by New vs Returning Customers

    1. Scroll down to the Accrual Performance bar charts and click on the Attributed Revenue dropdown menu. 

    2. Select Transactions (New vs Returning) and/or Revenue (New vs Returning)

    Sales & Marketing Page

    Email Signups and Signup Rate are good proxies to see if customers will purchase from your business at a future time, potentially driving up their lifetime value and increasing customer retention. 

    Lifetime Value Page (LTV)

    LTV reporting can help you understand customer quality to set more informed CAC targets. It can be useful for analyzing Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) by time periods, product lines, discount codes, and more.

    In the Customize bar, you can choose whatever time period you’d like, and then select from select breakdowns including: 

    • Acquisition Timeline (Week or Month)
    • Geography (Country, Region)
    • First Order (Product)

    Select the option you want and click “Update report” to populate the results. Note that you can modify the filters at the top: Metric, Rollup Mode, and Average vs Total

    • The Metric dropdown menu gives you a few more retention metric options although Customer Value is the default selection. 
    • Rollup mode refers to how you’d like the entire customer value broken out, either cumulatively or just the marginal gains and incrementality. Note that you can also see cumulative without the first day to also approximate incrementality. 
    • Average vs Total refers to whether you’d like to see the average customer value, or the total dollars generated. Average is the default selection.