Article

Introducing the Clarity Analytics Engine

Keith Perhac
Founder @ SegMetrics

We’re excited to announce the private release of SegMetrics’ new analytics engine, Clarity, based on Hammerstone’s Refine builder.

The SegMetrics Clarity engine introduces numerous improvements and changes to the way that we’re analyzing data. The Clarity engine improves query speed across the board by around 10x for standard queries, and creates a standardized analytical experience across all report types.

This paves the way for more flexible reporting APIs, improved funnel reporting, and more complicated attribution queries across all our data stacks.

Below we’ll detail the major changes in the Clarity engine. Any changes that may result in a change to previous metrics will be marked with an asterisk.


More powerful queries, at your fingertips

With an optimized backend engine, and new global query parameters, Clarity improves and standardizes your filters across all of your reports.

10x Speed Improvements

The new Clarity Engine is much, much faster than the previous version. Our internal tests show a 10x improvement in speed in most reporting cases. We’re still working to make it even faster, so please let us know if you have any slow queries or speed issues.

Revenue, Subscriptions and Deals are no longer limited by contacts*

One of the biggest requests for our reporting was to report on “un-connected” revenue, where an invoice might have been made by a person that is not in the main ESP.

While we still recommend making sure that all your contacts are in your ESP, SegMetrics will now report on revenue, subscriptions and deals that do not have a corresponding contact in your ESP. If you have a large number of “un-connected” revenue, this may affect your revenue numbers, as we’ll now be reporting on those orders.

Churn is Calculated on Rolling 30 days*

Previously SegMetrics calculated churn based on the timeframe of the report. If the report was a 90-day report, then it would calculate your 90-day churn rate. This was a useful calculation in a very small subset of reports, but added confusion as no other systems reported on variable length churn rate.

We’ve set the churn rate timeframe to be 30 days, to standardize across other systems that report on churn.

Multiple Purchases in Single Report

Another highly requested feature is the ability to filter by people who have purchased both A AND B. Previously this was handled through tags (people who have both tag A and tag B), but due to the way that revenue was calculated, was not available for purchases, subscriptions and other revenue-related filters.

With the new Clarity Engine, we’ve introduced the ability to query on multiple similar conditions, so that you can now look for people who have purchased two products, have two subscriptions, or any other combination of properties, while correctly calculating the combined revenue of those products.

Filter on anything. Anywhere.

Improving on our report filtering, now SegMetrics can filter on any property in any report. Previously filters were only available in reports that supported them (for example filtering on deals in a lead report).

Clarity has a completely re-worked filtering engine and is now able to filter on any property, in any report, no matter if that data model is part of the report or not.

Ad Report Timeframes

Previously it was not possible to move an Ad Report filter outside of the date range (even if you set “clicked an ad anytime” it would still limit by the date range. That limitation has been removed, and you are able to report on clicks outside the report timeframe.

HOWEVER ad spend, clicks and impressions are still limited by the date range of the report, so ROI may not reflect what you’re looking for in those cases.


Updates to managing your custom reports

In addition to the raw analytics improvements with the Clarity engine, we’ve taken the opportunity to improve a number of aspects of SegMetrics’ reporting features to make it easier to segment your customers, and uncover the hidden profits in your customer journey.

Visitor numbers are now part of the Web Views report*

For customers who are in our Visitor tracking beta program, the visitor metrics and reports have been moved from the Leads Report to the Web Views Report.

This is in order to make visitor tracking more consistent with the reporting types, as leads (by definition) are not anonymous.

If you have a large number of reports or widgets using visitors, please get in touch with support, and we can assist in a migration.

Better Reporting for Misconfigured Widgets

Sometimes a widget has their settings get into a state where they can’t be parsed correctly and the report fails. This is usually caused by choosing a metric that is not valid for the report type, or filters with no data values. This is most common in Widgets that were set to report on a Custom Field that did not exist.

Previously SegMetrics would return a generic “check your settings” error. Now, when an error occurs we’ll let you know what caused the error, and what can be done to fix it.

Saved Report Default Metrics

Saved reports on the home dashboard now show the data from the graph that the report was saved with, instead of only showing the default data. For example, if you set a subscription report to show “new trials,” that will be displayed on the dashboard instead of “MRR” which was the previous default.

Improved Timespan Calculations*

We’ve changed the way that we calculate timespans used in Average Days Until Purchase, Customer Age, Subscription Age, etc. When calculating an age metric, we now round to the nearest hour instead of day which improves accuracy between timezones.

Additional timespan metrics are no longer report in decimals, but are rounded to the nearest timeframe (day, week, month, etc) as set in the report. This was implemented to improve grouping and cohort reporting for the data.

Removed “All Tags” Table*

We’ve removed the “All Tags” table. Like other tables, the tags table will be limited to show tags that are contained in the filters of the report. This is the same functionality as the current “Tags In Filter” table.

Data Source icons everywhere!

All table data will now show the data source for the table entry. This was previously only available in the Ads reports, but has been added to all other reports as well.


Upcoming Changes

The new Refine Analytics Engine increases the flexibility of our reporting, and opens the doors for so many new features coming out in 2023.

We’re excited to start rolling out the new Refine builder this month, and are aiming for a full public release by the end of the month.

If you have any questions, please contact us at support@segmetrics.io.
We’re looking forward to hearing from you!


Keith Perhac

Founder @ SegMetrics

Keith is the Founder of SegMetrics, and has spent the last decade working on optimizing marketing funnels and nurture campaigns.

SegMetrics was born out of a frustration with how impossibly hard it is to pull trustworthy, complete and actionable data out of his client's marketing tools.


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