A presentation I gave at Measurecamp in September 2016 - looking back at how Snowplow has evolved and the digital analytics industry with it

1. SNOWPLOW ANALYTICS
THE FOUNDERS’ STORY
➙ HOW WE’RE TRYING TO CHANGE THE WAY THAT DIGITAL ANALYTICS IS DONE
➙ WHAT HAS HAPPENED SO FAR

2. Analytics was part of what
we did
▸ Product analytics
▸ Marketing analytics
MEASURECAMP LONDON ‘16
FIVE YEARS AGO WE WERE FREELANCE ‘DIGITAL CONSULTANTS’
We helped companies
▸ Build digital products
▸ Grow digital businesses

3. MEASURECAMP LONDON ‘16
SNOWPLOW WAS BORN OUT OUT OF A NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE REASON
Web analytics tools are limited
▸ Silo’d: no direct access to your own
data. Hard to join with other data sets
▸ One size fits all: event dictionary
(page views, transactions, add to
baskets)
▸ One size fits all data processing
(sessionization, funnels)
Data processing frameworks & services
▸ Open source data processing
frameworks
▸ Cloud-based web services built on
top of them
🙂🙁

4. MEASURECAMP LONDON ‘16
V1 WAS A CLICKSTREAM DATA WAREHOUSE
Cheap & cheerful MVP
‣ Built in a day
▸ Pixel on Amazon CloudFront
with logging switched on
▸ Forked Piwik Javascript tracker
▸ Hive deserialiser to run SQL on
the CloudFront logs with EMR
▸ Open sourced on GitHub
Open sourced on GitHub User community grew
around it quickly

5. MEASURECAMP LONDON ‘16
OUR PITCH WAS
Data warehouse Data pipeline
WAREHOUSE YOUR
CLICKSTREAM DATA
JOIN THAT DATA WITH
ANY OTHER DATA SET
CRUNCH WITH ANY
ANALYTICS TOOL
Set your data free ➙ set your analyst free

6. MEASURECAMP LONDON ‘16
THE QUESTIONS WE WERE ASKED…
WHAT CAN I DO WITH
SNOWPLOW THAT I CAN’T DO
WITH GOOGLE ANALYTICS? WHAT IS THE POINT OF
WAREHOUSING MY DIGITAL EVENT
DATA?

7. A LOT HAPPENED OVER
THE NEXT 4 YEARS

8. MEASURECAMP LONDON ‘16
DIGITAL IS AT THE CENTRE OF ALL OUR LIVES…
… AND DIGITAL DATA HAS BECOME MUCH MORE INTERESTING

9. MEASURECAMP LONDON ‘16
DIGITAL ANALYTICS HAS EVOLVED ENORMOUSLY
Tools are more
sophisticated
More sophisticated
analytics
More and more
companies are building
their own analytics stacks

10. MEASURECAMP LONDON ‘16
THE SNOWPLOW PLATFORM HAS EVOLVED ENORMOUSLY
▸ Web analytics ➙ event analytics platform
▸ Insight ➙ action (real-time platform)

11. MEASURECAMP LONDON ‘16
WE HAVE A COMMERCIAL MODEL
MANAGED SERVICE ANALYTICS SERVICES

12. MEASURECAMP LONDON ‘16
OUR PITCH HAS EVOLVED
Track users across all channels
Single customer view
Answer any questionAct on your data in real-time
Own your data

13. MEASURECAMP LONDON ‘16
WE ARE NOW ASKED DIFFERENT QUESTIONS
WHY SHOULD I USE
SNOWPLOW RATHER THAN
BUILD MY OWN STACK? WHY SHOULD I USE SNOWPLOW
RATHER THAN GOOGLE ANALYTICS
PREMIUM?

14. MEASURECAMP LONDON ‘16
CURRENT FOCUS - MAKE IT EASIER TO DO STUFF WITH SNOWPLOW DATA
EASIER TO BUILD INSIGHT
‣ ➙ OUT-OF-THE-BOX DATA MODELS
‣ AND INTEGRATIONS
‣ ➙ BETTER TOOLKIT FOR MODELING
‣ ING EVENT DATA
EASIER TO ACTION INSIGHT
‣ ➙ SAUNA
‣ ➙ MAKE IT EASIER TO BUILD,
PUBLISH AND MANAGE REAL-TIME
DATA PROCESSING APPLICATIONS

15. QUESTIONS?
WE’RE RECRUITING
JUNIOR DATA ANALYSTS!