How Onward Turns Fragmented Metrics Into <blue>Decisions</blue>

Turn Fragmented Metrics Into Decisions

Onward fixes a common marketing gap fast: we connect your ad spend and conversions to real backend outcomes in one source of truth so you can see what actually drives profit. This matters because most teams optimize to platform metrics, not CM, which wastes budget. The caveat is that clean integration requires disciplined data plumbing and change management on your side.

Key facts

• Onward unifies ad platforms, analytics, CRM, and revenue data so spend maps to profit, not just to revenue or clicks.
• Clients can report on daily, self-serve visibility and a single source of truth across5 or more systems.

The problem: your marketing data stops where your business starts

Most teams cannot answer three simple questions with confidence.

1. Which channels actually produced profitable customers last week?
2. Which creatives drove the highest contribution margin?
3. Which campaigns should scale today and which should pause?
   ‍

The root issue is not creativity or strategy. It is data infrastructure. Platform dashboards show partial truths. Analytics is siloed.Backend events like orders, refunds, margin, and LTV are off in Stripe, theERP, etc. Leaders end up with lagging slides or stitched spreadsheets. They do not have daily, trustworthy visibility.

Danny Freed put it plainly: “Previous partners showed weekly slides with their favorite metrics, while the company juggled HubSpot,Stripe, ChartMogul, and ad platforms. Onward built a single source of truth so the team could look at cost per conversion, revenue from that conversion, and cohort views in one place.”

Bad plumbing creates bad reporting. Bad reporting creates bad decisions. That shows up as spend that looks efficient on ROAS but loses money after cost of goods and variable fees.
‍

The solution: Onward’s unified growth data layer

Onward integrates and models all your marketing, backend, and analytics data into one reliable warehouse and one set of business-ready tables. We build the pipelines, normalize schemas, and align definitions so every stakeholder looks at the same numbers.

Onward is different because we connect the dots and acton them. Traditional aggregators collect data. We design end-to-end pipelines, model the marketing tables you actually use, and activate that data through alerts and media decisions.

{{video}}

How it works: the operating system for profitable growth

1) Map your journey and define truth

We begin with a short audit to map sources, entities, and events. Think users, accounts, orders, subscriptions, refunds, and margins. We standardize definitions for conversion, qualified lead, net revenue, contribution margin, and payback.
‍
Data ownership stays with you. Security and encryption standards are respected.
‍

2) Build the pipelines and the model

We connect ad platforms, analytics, CRM, payment processors, and any custom backend via secure connectors or APIs. Our team handles ingestion, transformation, and unification, including custom logic to tie spend to transactions and cohorts.
‍
If you already run a warehouse, we plug in and extend. If you use tools like Amplitude, we integrate its behavioral events into the broader model.
‍

3) Publish business-ready tables and dashboards

We deliver canonical tables for channel, campaign, ad, creative, cohort, and product views. Dashboards sit on your BI. You get real-time or near real-time monitoring and alerting on anomalies, goal tracking, and efficiency thresholds.
‍
One client described moving from five systems to a single source of truth they could trust daily, not monthly. That shift unlocked faster experiments and cleaner decisions.
‍

4) Connect marketing to money, not just to clicks

Attribution is supported, but our focus is measurement that the CFO believes. We link spend to orders, to margin, and to LTV. If you bring your own attribution, we integrate it and add custom views that match your funnel and payback windows.
‍
Another client called out the difference between ROAS and profit. ROAS is revenue based and often vague. Profit requires cost of goods,shipping, and variable fees in the math. When you operationalize profit-based buying, scaling becomes systematic.
‍

5) Operate a fast testing loop

We prioritize tests that have measurable, material impact. Teams often start with Google Ads, then expand to Meta once the loop is working. Our incentives are aligned to outcomes, so we do what is scrappy and smart to validate quickly, then invest in creative at scale once the signal isclear.
‍

6) Report simply and decide daily

Executives ask whether marketing is working. The answer should be to open the dashboard. When spend is tied to backend revenue and margin in a single source of truth, decisions become clear day over day, month over month, and year over year.
‍

Why it works: principles that drive clarity and ROI

• Single source of truth. If finance and growth leaders cannot point to the same number, the number is not useful. Onward’s core value is one clean record of performance that all parties trust.
  ‍
• Measure to profit and payback. Revenue without margin is vanity. Our operating targets shift from ROAS to contribution margin,CAC to LTV, and payback windows that reflect cash reality. A veteran CMO explained why that shift changes decisions across search and social.
  ‍
• Time to value. First value comes quickly. Most clients see initial dashboards within weeks and ramp their testing cadence right away.
  ‍
• Proof in outcomes. One founder moved to a self-serve growth motion where roughly 90 percent of revenue came from self-serve, and spend grew 20 to 30 percent month over month with efficiency in view.
  ‍
• Creative informed by data. Data does not replace creative. It focuses it. Once we see lift, we invest in higher quality variations and keep shipping.
  ‍
• Risks and caveats: where this can fail and how we avoid it
  ‍
• Messy schemas and undefined events. If your backend events are ambiguous, attribution and margin math will be too. We start by defining entities, events, and business logic clearly, then enforce them in the model.
  ‍
• Platform-only thinking. Optimizing inside a single ad platform without backend feedback is flying blind. Our practice is to model across platforms and stages so tests evaluate full funnel impact, from click to paid conversion to LTV.
  ‍
• Too many tools, no prioritization. Teams often have several connectors and dashboards, yet no reliable view. We rationalize the stack, keep your warehouse, and remove duplicative pieces.
  ‍
• Speed without truth. Moving fast helps only if the numbers are right. Clients choose us for the ability to iterate quickly while holding the data to a high bar every day, not just at month end

‍