How to Tell If Your Tracking Setup Is Holding You Back

Your team is shipping campaigns. You’re seeing conversions. But somewhere between the numbers and the narrative, something’s not adding up.

Performance feels stalled, even though the budget and targeting haven’t changed. And when someone asks, “What’s actually working?” the answer is…complicated.

These aren’t always strategy problems. If you’re using Standard Events, it may be a data signal problem, rooted in a tracking setup that was not built to reflect the complexity of business today.

This article will help you recognize the signs that your tracking may be limiting your growth, and show you how high-performance brands are solving it by taking control of their events.

Not All Events Are Created Equal

Most eCommerce teams start with the standard playbook: implement base pixels, send purchase events, track key funnels. Out of the box, this works well enough to get directional insight.

But as your business evolves: new products, new channels, new goals…tracking often doesn’t keep up.

Let’s say you launch a subscription line alongside your one-time products. Every purchase still fires the same event, regardless of customer intent or product type.

Meta doesn’t know the difference, GA4 can’t segment reports cleanly, and Email/SMS flows treat both groups the same. What began as “working” tracking quickly becomes a source of noise.

Or maybe you run high-AOV campaigns during a peak season.

Orders roll in but so do test transactions, partner redemptions, or $5 upsell purchases.

Your ads are optimized toward purchase, which doesn’t align with your business goals. Reporting gets inflated. Your CPA looks better than it should, until it doesn’t.

These are the quiet costs of one-size-fits-all tracking.

Why Platform Behavior Depends on the Signals You Send

Every tool in your stack is designed to respond to events. But what each platform does with those events is very different.

Meta uses conversion data to optimize ad delivery. The richer and more relevant the signal, the better its model performs. If you send it all purchases, including internal orders or low-margin SKUs, it doesn’t know what to prioritize.

GA4 organizes your revenue around categories and product types. If those aren’t passed clearly, or reflect a naming system your team doesn’t use, you’ll spend more time cleaning reports than learning from them.

And Email/SMS depends on product-level data to power flows and segments. Without context like collection or customer type, you’re limited to generic automation that leaves performance on the table.

Your platforms can only act on the signals they receive. When those signals are vague, misaligned, or incomplete, they struggle to deliver.

What High-Performance Tracking Looks Like in Practice

Let’s look at how brands are adapting their event strategy to match their business model.

A health & wellness subscription brand, doesn’t send the same “Purchase” event for every order. Instead, they identify which SKUs represent long-term customer value. Passing only high LTV through to Meta as conversion events. This focuses platform optimization on what truly drives retention and LTV.

A home decorating platform working with a diverse product catalog, rewrote how categories are sent to GA4. Instead of relying on Shopify defaults, they use Elevar to override category fields server-side. Now, their analytics reflect internal merchandising logic—making reports more useful across marketing, operations, and finance.

A men’s fashion brand sends Collection data with every Email/SMS event. This means post-purchase flows can be personalized to product category, not just generic order confirmation. A customer gets different content than someone who just purchased accessories.

What connects these brands isn’t just clean data. It’s intentionality.

They’re not tracking every possible event. They’re choosing to track events that reflect their goals—revenue they want to grow, SKUs they want to prioritize, and behaviors they want to personalize.

This approach flips the script: Instead of asking “What data can we collect?” the question becomes “What signals do our platforms need to perform better?”

How Elevar Helps Growth Teams Own Their Signals

With Custom Events, Elevar gives eCommerce teams control over what gets tracked, how it’s enriched, and where it goes without relying on sprint cycles.

You can:

• Apply UTM-based rules to exclude test campaigns

• Define revenue logic per platform (e.g., exclude shipping in Meta but not Email/SMS)

• Trigger different events for high-priority SKUs

Everything happens server-side, so your tracking is more consistent, more accurate, and more aligned with privacy standards. And because each platform gets only what it needs, performance improves across the board.

Final Thoughts

You’re already investing in content, creative, and strategy. But if the signals behind those efforts are off, even the best campaigns won’t reach their full potential.

With Elevar Custom Events, you’re not just fixing data issues – you’re aligning your tracking with how your business actually grows. That means fewer wasted impressions, cleaner reports, smarter automation, and faster decision-making.

Explore what Custom Events can unlock for your team.