Migration to Google Analytics 4 • Leveraging Predictive Audiences To Anticipate Outcome

With the Covid-19 pandemic affecting foot traffic to quick service restaurants, McDonald’s Hong Kong sought to redesign its customer journey for the new normal. The brand identified new opportunities in mobile order in-store pick up, particularly through its McDonald’s app, and was eager to embrace the potential of its first-party data to grow app engagement and optimize the path to conversion. The brand partnered with our Data.Monks, who recommended turnkey machine learning solutions with GA4 to quickly gather customer insights, use them in predictive audience analytics, and target the audience segment with the highest impact.

Using GA4’s machine learning capabilities, we analyzed a variety of behavioral insights: product impressions and clicks, cart activities and detailed views of engagement. With this data in hand, we created predictive audience segments and were even able to predict revenue from them. Linking the data to Google Ads allowed for deeper integration into the customer journey and enabled audience segments to further power app and web campaigns, helping the brand reach customers more effectively and drive in-app orders.

Through our guidance in implementing machine learning into the mix, not only did we help the client shorten months of data analysis work into a couple of weeks; the campaign also garnered very nice results in just two months. McDonald’s Hong Kong increased conversions by 550% and increased revenue by 560% for likely 7-day purchasers, as well as 230% stronger ROI overall. Using predictive segments, the learning phase of app campaigns became shorter, which helped reduce cost-per-acquisition by 63%. Finally, our team wrapped up the project with a workshop to enable the brand team to continue driving business results with GA4 capabilities.