Revamping Business Strategy with Web3 Analytics: The Cookie3 Experience with Filip Wielanier | S3 E37

Filip: 1:10

To provide this whole customer journey and the marketing funnel in Web3, you need to take off-chain data and on-chain data together.

Joeri: 1:19

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast. My name is Joeri Billast and I'm your podcast host Today. I'm so excited to be joined by Philippe Filaniere. Hi, Filip, how are you? Hi Joeri, thanks for having me. Hi everyone. Yeah, guys, if you don't know, Filip is the co-founder and the CEO of Cookie3 and that is the first choice Google Analytics alternative for Web3. So I already know you are Filip. It's really impressive. But for people that don't know, you feel free during the podcast to give more details. But to kick it off, Filip, I would like to. Yeah, if you could share a bit about the story behind Cookie3 and what specific gap you noticed in the Web3 marketing space and that you are addressing.

Filip: 2:12

Sure, it was a pleasure.

Filip: 2:13

It all started almost two years ago when I met my co-founder who is now CTO of the project, Wojtek Piociński, and we were actually thinking about new solutions for the Web3 marketing tag and we were actually pretty surprised that there is no user analytics solution that would provide comprehensive knowledge and insights about the users of the Web3 projects, DABs, dexs, gaming projects and so on, because so far and back that time all of the analytics companies were focusing mainly on the investors, on the financial side of data types, so like money flows between the chains, tvls volumes and so on.

Filip: 3:01

But together with adoption of NFTs, actually everything changed because much more real use cases, more entertainment related, came to the space and actually, while there was no entity or solution providing this kind of insights about the user itself, about their preferences, about their activities, frequency of those average volumes they are spending on something, what kind of purchases they do on chain, then, along those journey, this journey actually turned out. After the consultations with many companies in Web3, it turned out that actually they are also struggling with merging those data and matching off-chain attribution and on-chain conversions. So, like for the most of the DABs, attribution happens always off-chain, so on some social media, through some advertisements, through some PR campaigns, but the conversion in Web3 happens on chain and there was a huge gap and wall between those two words and that's why we came up with the whole idea of merging those two words and providing the full customer journey for the businesses.

Joeri: 4:12

Yeah, obviously this is something that was a gap for this solution. In Web2, there is a standard way that most of us know how to analyze the data. You explained already a bit about how you do it with Cookie3. But maybe you can talk about an example from the analysis that you did with your tool or that your client did with your tool.

Filip: 4:34

Totally so. The simplest thing to explain that what is really game changing here is that if you have a marketing funnel and it always starts from the awareness building, attribution, and then you are going to some conversions, registrants and purchases at the end and the realization of those customers Actually, to provide this whole customer journey and the marketing funnel in Web3, you need to take off-chain data and on-chain data together. This is exactly what we are providing. So, just to simply explain it on an example, if you integrate with our analytics plugin, which can be compared to some Google Analytics alternative for Web3, you can easily check not only how many visitors came to your website and from where and from what sources, but you can also check how many of those folks are having some Web3 extensions, whether it's like Metamask, crosswallet, phantom Kepler or any other. Also, what's more, how many of those folks actually connected their wallet or, again, per segment of some attribution source, you can segment them and check what was the real outcome and the real performance of the campaign you just run with some KIO wells or with some advertisements, because finally you can check how many wallet logins there were actually coming from those.

Filip: 5:59

Afterwards, there is the big opening of the whole blockchain data, because once someone will log into your website, you can actually easily track not only what he or she this user is doing within your platform, but also what those folks are doing outside of it. Because of the beauty of transparency of blockchain, we can do it, and the really cool thing about this is that actually, it's all anonymized, so we still don't want to know actually who it is, but we just know that this wallet logged in within your website and you can easily check what those users were doing before and after that, thanks to which we have much, much more comprehensive insights and business intelligence, for example, compared to Web2, where everything is siloed and everything is separated between each other and you cannot actually check if your customers are also using your competitors platform, for example. But in Web3, you can, because most of the interactions are coming through the smart contracts, which are visible from outside.

Joeri: 7:06

That's really interesting that you have now the whole picture. Actually, I have a background in business analytics. I had a business analytics company before I went into marketing, so, yeah, I really understand what you're talking about. So I'm also curious because, of course, we can measure stuff, we can have analytics and so on, but you need to do something with this analytics. So, as you mentioned, you have now an overview. Can you give an example of a changing strategy or the impact that these analytics can have on strategies that companies would use to go to market?

Filip: 7:40

Totally so. One of the biggest value propositions we have for every customer, like business client, is that if you spend any like even cent or dollar on marketing, we can provide you the huge value in terms of optimizing those spending, because, of course, if you are not a big player, you won't spend millions of dollars, but if you are spending even few thousand monthly, it can be optimized. Because right now, if you are spending few thousand bucks on some KIOL and you are cooperating with 10 of them and actually you have no clue about what is the performance of each, you are still like blind and you cannot actually measure it and lower down the customer acquisition because you don't have any knowledge about what kind of channels in terms of kaiowales or any advertisements are working the best for you, which is really crucial. So those are like fundamental.

Filip: 8:36

I would say things in Web 2 that any platform is already using using google analytics, google tag manager, like mix panel up, splire and so on, but it's not known in Web 3 because we don't have this pretty comprehensive bridge between those two words. You have hands of different blockchains, EVMs, non-EVM's, you have this whole off-chain tracking solution and 99% of the companies in Web3 are not capable of creating the whole infrastructure and customized solution to track and to merge those data. And this is exactly why we came up with Cookie 3 to provide it like automatically. We are doing it like with no code. So onboarding process, for example, takes literally one minute to integrate with us and everything is just set it up for the user and is starting being provided automatically. So this is the immediate value we are providing once we onboard a new customer.

Joeri: 9:35

Yeah, I like also looking at the solution and, as you mentioned in the no code aspect, how important is, do you think, the accessibility of your platform? Yeah, for your users in the Web 3 space.

Filip: 9:51

Yeah, this is a really good question, because there are plenty of web 3 analytics platforms, so why do like actually provide another one?

Filip: 9:59

Someone can ask but this is exactly what those marketers we talk with and we work with and we provide solutions to are struggling with.

Filip: 10:09

So they can use dune analytics, but, like 90% of the marketers don't know SQL and actually, well, dune analytics is not so convenient even for the data scientists, so why marketers would use it?

Filip: 10:22

So this is exactly how we approach that to provide really simple and convenient predefined dashboards. After like literally one day of after being integrated with us, you can easily start understanding what's going on within your community, both on the off-chain attribution side within your platform and on-chain as well, because this is the beauty of like blockchain, where you can actually, once you get those wallets, you can also upload them through the CSV file, for example, if you already collected them before and then you can actually check what those folks were doing in the last two or three months, or even like 12 months, what they are doing like separately from your platform. On-chain, you can check what kind of dubs they are using, what kind of tokens they are holding, how active they are is it like rising or decreasing and so on and so forth, so you can spot pretty, really insightful things just after providing the simple list of wallets to the platform.

Joeri: 11:26

Well, a lot of, I would say, analytics, a lot of information you get from the data. And, to make it a bit more concrete, is there a kind of success story, of case that you can mention? If you cannot talk about the client, just don't tell us the client's name, but is there a kind of concrete example that you can give, maybe a success story?

Filip: 11:46

Yeah, yeah, of course. So we are constantly creating new case studies. Right now, I guess we published two of them, but you can expect much more in the coming weeks and months, which we are still preparing with our closest and biggest clients. One of the first ones that we created together with one of our clients was utilizing our campaign manager. The campaign manager in Cookie3 provides you a possibility of tracking different UTM links and also the conversion of those UTM links.

Filip: 12:18

On the on-chain side. There was some DeFi platform that they were launching and they run some really broad range of different marketing activities like advertisement, messaging protocols, emails, kaio Wells, organic, targeted Twitter ads, and they chosen Cookie3 to actually track all those activities and thanks to that, just after one week of tracking it, they were fully aware of what's working and what's not working, so they could move the funds and the budget to the top 30% of the best performing channels, and they did it, thanks to which they lowered down the customer acquisition cost by over 60%, as I remember, which was immediate value. Just by stupid analytics, someone can say. But those are the things that without which you cannot actually manage your spendings, because you don't know what is the rate of converting customer to the on-chain purchase coming from the specific source through those cost per conversion in Web 2. And in Web 2, you might have like cost per swap or cost per NFT mint, and this is exactly what we are providing.

Joeri: 13:31

But all of the data is of the analytics I would say is integrated, is no aggregated analytics, so it's not on an individual level. You explained because, of course, everywhere we are measuring, there are some ethical considerations or some privacy worries that people have. Are you thinking about that too, these ethical considerations? Do you see a difference with Web 2? What you're doing now with Web 3?

Filip: 13:58

Yeah, this is really important. So I have two points to raise here. So, first of all, we are in a base in European Union, so we are really compliant with GDPR, which is a unique thing in the space If you take a look on different approaches of different companies. So this is really what we are caring about and, as you said, everything is aggregated in our solution, so you cannot actually check who was actually coming from the specific source per individual record, but you can just analyze the group of people, which gives you the full anonymity as well, as we don't track any personal data. So this is another thing. So everything is anonymized, hashed and also, whenever there is a match between option and on-chain, there's only like public key, which is the identifier, nothing more In terms of other things. I would say that this is really crucial to provide such privacy compliance solutions, because once the different regulations will into existence and will be implemented, it will be really crucial to actually be compliant, and this is the thing that our majority of the web-based companies will struggle with.

Filip: 15:13

Right now, there's a kind of a white-white waste in that terms. We did some internal research in that terms and it turned out that literally over 95% of different web-tree dubs protocols are using Google Analytics right now and most of them are not having any constants for that. So they are tracking people, they are using cookies, they are providing those data for free to Google, which is like the biggest enemy, I would say, for their privacy and zero-nomelage proof ethos right now in web-tree and they are just like using it. So this is exactly why we are assured that our solution is really needed, because we know that those folks are just using Google Analytics because there was no alternative at all. So whenever we approach them and we show them how it's working, that it's much more private, it's like cookie less. Also, this is like the story behind the naming, like we are cookie free because we are cookie less. We are really loving the solution as well, as it gives them a much more insightful look at their community on the both side of often and on-chain data.

Joeri: 16:23

I like it that you explained the name by Cookie3. I didn't know. That's something that people will remember. Now, looking a bit into the future already today we have AI. That is there suddenly. How do you see actually Web3 analytics evolve in the near future, and do you see the role for AI in there too?

Filip: 16:47

Yeah, totally Like AI is like whenever you have a data, you can do really magic with AI because you can literally provide and we will be doing so provide like different machine learning models to our customers, like separately, so they could actually train them on their collect data, so they have like full ownership of that, so they will be able to literally make some automated conclusions, suggestions, recommendations, also segmentation, lookalike, profiles, benchmarking, so all again like the stuff that we know from Web 2, but it's not provided by anyone in the Web 3 yet. And this is exactly what we are building right now. We have the whole data scientist team that consists of really really strong folks in the data science space.

Joeri: 17:43

You guys are building amazing stuff and when you are running a company undefined, there is project management involved, practical stuff, there is innovation involved. So I am always curious how to balance this innovation creativity with the project management. Yeah, curious to hear your thoughts on that.

Filip: 18:02

Yeah, it's tough sometimes. Frankly speaking, I know the approach that I really like that in the really good performing teams you need to have different types of people involved, so there has to be a visioner, executor, executor and also critic. So if you have those three faults, you can really deliver exciting things. But not like rocket science that is not needed for anyone, but the things that are really having product market fit. And this is the thing that I would say is really critical here. And this is exactly why we released Private Beta around early June this year and we were like passing it out with like over 150 different business customers right now. We were improving it.

Filip: 18:53

We are right now after four major updates and we are preparing to the public launch in early December. So we have a sheet of Excel sheet with I don't know maybe 200 rows with the features that were requested by some of the customers and obviously we won't deliver 100% of them, because some of them are really out of the scope and require the pivot of the whole company. But some of them are really valuable for us as a feedback because we didn't even think about them. But if 10 different customers requested that, it seems that there is a big demand on that and we are fully aware of that right now. So I would say this hands-on approach with a really quick feedback loop is crucial here, and also having right people and types of the people within the team.

Joeri: 19:44

Great, yeah. By the way, when this podcast episode comes out, it will be just before your release. The timing will be really good, I would say. My last question would be like for the audience marketers, entrepreneurs, people in Web 2 looking at Web 3 or already in the Web 3 space, yeah what advice would you give them to stay ahead, Because there are so many changes going on? Maybe something that you do yourself? Any tips?

Filip: 20:15

I would say that we have this sentence that we really like that you cannot manage what you don't measure, and this is my hint here. So if you'd like to be just more aware of what's going on, what are your customers, what are their preferences, what they like, what they don't like, what's working for them, what's engaging them, you just need to start understanding them. And to start understanding them, you need to start to measure as many data points as possible and fortunately, with solutions like Cookie 3, it is finally possible to do it in a really smooth way, because you don't have to hire three different data scientists and DevOps developers to actually build it by yourself, but you just can integrate with us and start using it from day one. So I would say like analytics are really crucial to be like to stay ahead of the competitors, because not 100% of the companies will use analytics. This is one of those really special verticals that you can focus on to get this advantage.

Joeri: 21:18

Yeah, that is also the case in Web 2, and not every company is measuring or taking action on analytics, and it is surely important in Web 3 if you want to make the difference and stay ahead, as we said. So, Filip, people that are now listening and that they are interested in checking out Cookie 3 or they want to connect with you, where would you like to send them?

Filip: 21:39

Sure, feel free all of you guys to reach out to me either on Twitter or LinkedIn. My Telegram handle is the same as Twitter, so you can also reach out to me to the Telegram, happily, to invite you to test out our public beta for free, just to get the feeling how it's working if it's for you. If it's not, we are totally okay with not onboarding 100% of the folks that would reach out, so don't worry about that. But if you are just curious how it's working and what are our capabilities, feel free to reach out to me.

Joeri: 22:10

Yeah, and be sure to mention that you heard Filip on the Web 3 CMO Stories podcast, of course, so then he knows where you are coming from and, Filip, all those links, we will put them in the show notes. There will always be. There is always an article on show notes related to every podcast episode. So thank you so much for all your insights.

Filip: 22:32

Likewise thanks Irie for having me and have a good week ahead.

Joeri: 22:36

Yeah, Filip Guys, if you're now listening to the show and you're interested, as I mentioned, you'll find all the links in the show notes. But if you think that this episode can be useful for people around you that you think they need to measure, send them the link to this episode. If you are not yet subscribed, it is a good moment to do so and, of course, I would like to see you back, yeah, as a listener for the next podcast episode. Take care, Web 3 can take your miss to you heights and you're ready to harness its power, but feeling lost and overwhelmed. Therefore, join my W3X Web 3 Mastermind. Send me a personal message for more info. You can find me everywhere on social media. There's only one person with my name, yuri Bilast. Talk soon.