The Maven Field Guide
Marketing data,
made trustworthy
Practical writing on attribution, reporting, and the data plumbing behind it — for the people who have to defend the numbers.
Why your numbers never match between platforms
Google says 412 conversions. Meta claims 380. Your CRM logged 291. Nobody’s lying — they’re answering slightly different questions. Here’s how to reconcile them before the client does it for you.
Jamie Isabel · Founder9 min readLatest
Marketing report templates: what clients actually read (and what to cut)
Most templates are a metric dump with a logo on top. The ones clients actually read answer three questions and stop. Here’s the structure — and the half of it you should delete.
Jamie Isabel8 min readMarketing attribution models, explained — and when to actually use each
First-touch, last-touch, linear, time-decay, data-driven. Every model is a different opinion about who gets the credit. Here’s what each one rewards, where it lies to you, and the honest limits after iOS.
Jamie Isabel8 min readUTM parameters: the complete guide to tags that don’t break your reporting
UTMs are simple until three people tag links three different ways and your channel report turns to soup. Here’s the full spec — the five parameters, a naming convention, and the audit that keeps it clean.
Jamie Isabel7 min readGA4 for marketers: what changed, what to track, and the reports that matter
GA4 didn’t rename Universal Analytics — it changed what a “session” even means. Here’s the marketer’s translation: the metrics that moved, the ones that vanished, and the five reports worth building.
Jamie Isabel9 min readHow to calculate ROAS (and why yours is probably overstated)
ROAS is one division problem with a dozen ways to get it wrong. Here’s the formula, the costs everyone quietly omits, and the gap between the number your ad platform reports and the one your finance team believes.
Jamie Isabel7 min readMarketing KPIs: the metrics that drive decisions, by channel
A KPI you never act on is a vanity metric with a job title. Here’s a by-channel shortlist of the metrics that actually change what you do next — and the ones to stop reporting entirely.
Jamie Isabel6 min readThe modern marketing data stack: a practical guide for 2026
You don’t need every box on the “modern data stack” diagram. Here’s what each layer actually does, when you genuinely need it, and how to tell build-it-now from fine-for-now.
Jamie Isabel9 min readClient reporting for agencies: a system that scales (not just a template)
A template gets you one good report. A system gets you a hundred without burning a junior’s week. Here’s the cadence, the automation order, and how to price reporting so it stops eating your margin.
Jamie Isabel8 min readGoogle Ads reporting: the metrics that survive an audit
Half the numbers in a default Google Ads report won’t survive a skeptical client asking “where did this come from?” Here’s what to report, what to ignore, and how to reconcile it with reality.
Jamie Isabel8 min readAI marketing analytics: what’s real, what’s hype, and how to use it
“AI-powered analytics” is on every dashboard’s homepage and means almost nothing. Here’s the honest split — what genuinely changes how you work, what’s a chatbot in a trench coat, and how to trust the output.
Jamie Isabel7 min readReady to take data ops off your plate? Let's talk.
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