Elastic hits budgets with Funnel

Executive summary:

By integrating Funnel into their data management processes, Elastic successfully transitioned from time-consuming manual data collection to efficient, real-time reporting. The shift resulted in enhanced global campaign management, precise budget tracking, and a notable year-over-year decrease in CPA on LinkedIn.

Key results:

• Shifted from monthly to daily reporting, significantly improving data timeliness and decision-making.
• Implemented a real-time "budget pacer" for precise budget management.
• Reduced LinkedIn's cost-per-acquisition (CPA) year-over-year.
• Automated specific campaign tracking, such as spending on webinars and ebooks.

Company profile:

Elastic is a search company focusing on enterprise search, observability, and security. Built on an open heritage, Elastic's technology stack is deployed across multiple markets globally, designed for real-time and scalable data usage.

The challenge: Overcoming manual data collection and budget limitations

Before employing Funnel, Brittany Joiner, the Demand Generation Associate for Elastic, described the laborious manual process that comprised their previous approach: "Before Funnel, I was spending a lot of my time inside all of my ad platforms pulling specific data, putting it in a spreadsheet, and then summing it all up. It was a lot of work; I was spending hours if not days doing my monthly reporting."

With Elastic operating hundreds of campaigns across different markets, this time-consuming method seriously hindered their ability to make real-time decisions and maximize budgets.

The solution: Enabling automation and precision with Funnel

In their search for efficiency, Elastic turned to Funnel. Brittany outlines the transformation: "Now that we have Funnel, I'm able to automate pretty much all of that. I’m able to create dimensions that specify campaign types, like webinars, and have real-time access to this data across multiple platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn."

By leveraging Funnel’s features, Brittany can now export clean, segmented data into a Google Sheet for tailored reporting and can easily track specific spending categories like webinars and ebooks. "Rather than me having to manually go into the platforms, pull that data, sum it up. Funnel saves me all of that time and lets me view it in a nice chart or export it to a spreadsheet," she explains.

The results: Real-time reporting and hitting budgets

The benefits of implementing Funnel were immediately clear. Elastic transitioned from monthly to daily reporting, allowing Brittany to focus on optimizing campaigns instead of collecting data. She sums it up: "I’ve gone from spending hours and days on my monthly reporting to having real-time data. So I can adjust my campaigns and make sure that I'm actually taking action on all of my data, rather than mindlessly pulling numbers."

Additionally, Brittany developed a live "budget pacer," a real-time tool that helped Elastic maintain precise budget utilization—hitting the target of exactly 100% budget usage. The actionable insights also contributed to a significant year-over-year decrease in their LinkedIn CPA. Reflecting on the impact Funnel has on her work, Brittany says: “I always tell people the first thing you need is to get Funnel. Paid media is expensive, so you need to use a tool like Funnel that helps you aggregate all that data so you can make more informed decisions.” 

If you're grappling with similar challenges in data reporting and budget optimization, contact us to discover how Funnel can simplify and enhance your operations.