{"id":29815,"date":"2017-07-05T18:06:13","date_gmt":"2017-07-05T18:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crazyeggblog.wpengine.com\/?p=29815"},"modified":"2026-01-06T15:14:51","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T23:14:51","slug":"google-analytics-cohort-analysis-and-ltv-reports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crazyegg.com\/blog\/google-analytics-cohort-analysis-and-ltv-reports\/","title":{"rendered":"Reinvent Your Marketing Funnels with Google Analytics Cohort Analysis and LTV Reports"},"content":{"rendered":"

There have been many published articles on marketing funnels\u00a0that emphasize the need to track the full customer lifecycle in order to determine the best return on campaign activity spend.<\/p>\n

Some provide tracking solutions through hacks (e.g., using customer variables). Other articles suggest using an enterprise level solution (e.g., Salesforce or Google Analytics Premium). And there\u2019s also a small number that argue the customer journey isn\u2019t linear, which means it can\u2019t be tracked.<\/p>\n

The main challenge is that multi-channel attribution was and is still (until the next update comes out<\/a>) measured on assumptions about what the individual credited their conversion to, in combination with the lack of audience data and framework present in analytics packages.<\/p>\n

With the gap narrowing, Google Analytics has taken the next step by publicly releasing their Lifetime Value and Cohort Analysis reports (data for webviews are available from March 1, 2017 onward) as an effective method to help determine how valuable users or channels are to a website or business.<\/p>\n

In this article, I\u2019m going to help you understand what the Cohort Analysis and Lifetime Value (LTV) reports are, the metrics involved, and the possible report applications so you can understand your business funnels more easily.<\/p>\n

What Is Lifetime Value and Cohort Analysis?<\/h2>\n

[fve]https:\/\/youtu.be\/FxpritNCYDA[\/fve]<\/p>\n

(Traffika video)<\/em><\/p>\n

Lifetime value (also known as customer lifetime value) tells you the monetary value of different users based on the lifetime of their interaction with your business.<\/p>\n

[fve]https:\/\/youtu.be\/CubGeDB62aY[\/fve]<\/p>\n

(Cohort Analysis video)<\/em><\/p>\n

A cohort analysis allows you to analyze groups of people based on a common characteristic. Google Analytics allows you to measure cohorts based on Goals and top level user interaction metrics, such as “goal completions per user.” The main difference between cohorts and segments is that cohorts is the classification of your traffic set based on a time interval, in comparison to segments which is a sessions subset of a dimension, for example, organic search visitors.<\/p>\n

Looking at things over a lifetime as opposed to just pre-conversion can allow you to more effectively plan, spend, and optimize your campaigns for the 90 days after a user is acquired.<\/p>\n

Let’s go over an example to simplify how a cohort analysis is beneficial.<\/p>\n

Imagine you’re reviewing the analytics of your ecommerce site and noticing an upward trend in sales, so you decide you want to try to multiply this. Looking at your cohort analysis for daily trends (and specifically at your transactions revenue per user metric) reveals that there are a few days within the month that experience significantly less revenue.<\/p>\n

The first thing that might come to mind could be incentives (end of week sales) or tailoring a specific message to users on those days that could result in an increase in transactional revenue.<\/p>\n

Then you cross over to the LTV report and start looking at the same timeline to see which channel\/source\/medium\/campaign is seeing the same dip and determine the next course of action. For example, do you spend more on better performing channels on lower performing days? Do you replicate previous campaigns on lower performing days? Or is there an opportunity to optimize the weaker performing channels?<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll go through other use cases and methods of dissecting these reports further along in this guide. For now, let\u2019s try and understand the cohort and LTV reports.<\/p>\n

How to Use the Google Analytics Cohort Analysis and Lifetime Value Reports<\/h2>\n

Pull up Google Analytics and take the following steps to access the respective reports:<\/p>\n

To open the Lifetime Value report:<\/p>\n

\"lifetime<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Sign in to Google Analytics.<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Navigate to your view<\/strong><\/a>.<\/li>\n
  3. Open Reports<\/strong><\/a>.<\/li>\n
  4. Select Audience > Lifetime Value<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    To open the Cohort Analysis report:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Sign in to Google Analytics.<\/a><\/li>\n
    2. Navigate to your view<\/strong><\/a>.<\/li>\n
    3. Open Reports<\/strong><\/a>.<\/li>\n
    4. Select Audience > Cohort Analysis<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      No coding or tracking changes are required.<\/p>\n

      LTV Reporting View<\/h3>\n

      There are 5 key areas that you should pay attention to when reading your Lifetime Value report:<\/p>\n

      \"lifetime<\/p>\n

      1. LTV metric<\/strong> – The primary metric of determining the value of each user based on your session, content, and ecommerce goals.<\/p>\n

      \"revenue<\/p>\n

      2. Acquisition date range<\/strong> – The date range during which the users were acquired.<\/p>\n

      \"acquisition<\/p>\n

      3. Compare metrics<\/strong> – Cross analyzing the metrics making the most impact in context of performance.\u00a0(Click on the \u201c+\u201d sign.)<\/span><\/p>\n

      \"metric<\/p>\n

      4. Graph<\/strong> – The visualization of the report 90 days post-acquisition, with the option to change it to day, week and month views.<\/p>\n

      \"lifetime<\/p>\n

      5. Data table<\/strong> – Look at the flatline numbers and period comparisons with the option of choosing acquisition channel, acquisition source, acquisition medium, and acquisition campaign dimension data views.<\/p>\n

      \"aquisition<\/p>\n

      Cohort Reporting View<\/h3>\n

      The following are the various menus of the Cohort report that you can select:<\/p>\n

      \"cohort<\/p>\n

      1. Cohort type<\/strong> – The dimension that characterizes the cohorts.<\/p>\n

      \"cohort<\/p>\n

      2. Cohort size<\/strong> – The proportional number of visitors shown based on a time period (day, week, month).<\/p>\n

      \"cohort<\/p>\n

      3. Metric<\/strong> – Dimensions based on user behavior and conversion metrics that you would like to analyze and group based on per user, retention and total counts.<\/p>\n

      \"user<\/p>\n

      Metrics by category<\/strong><\/p>\n

      Per user:<\/p>\n