Traditional marketing analytics tools, like Google Analytics, have a fundamental blind spot in Web3: they can't see what happens onchain. They might track a click from a Twitter ad to your dApp, but the trail goes cold right when it matters most. Did that user mint an NFT? Did they stake tokens or execute a swap? For most Web2 tools, these critical conversion events are a complete mystery. And you can't improve what you don't measure.
This attribution gap exists because legacy platforms were built for a world of cookies and centralized user accounts, not one of wallets and onchain apps (dApps.) As Tom Tunguz notes, "Web2 marketing employs the cookie as the primary identifier of a person, not a wallet. There’s no bridge between web2 & web3 data, yet."
The solution is a purpose-built Web3 marketing stack: a set of specialized tools designed to connect offchain marketing efforts with onchain user actions. This post will guide you through the essential tools needed to build a powerful Web3 marketing analytics stack, helping you measure what matters, optimize spend, and drive real growth for your onchain app.
Why Your Marketing Tools Don't Work for Web3
Web2 analytics tools fall short in the wallet-based, onchain environment of Web3. They depend on cookies, sessions, and centralized user IDs—methods that simply don’t translate when users are anonymous and interactions are driven by wallets and smart contracts.
As Tom Tunguz notes, Web3 analytics share some similarities with Web2—tracking metrics like daily active users and cohorts—but they also introduce new dimensions. In addition to dashboards of user activity, marketers must track Discord engagement, token trades, and wallet behavior. The key questions shift: Are the people in my community also tokenholders? Who are the whales? How does my user base overlap with other projects? Which wallets are actively trading my tokens, and on which platforms?
Web3 marketing analytics bridges that gap. It’s about tracking user behavior across offchain channels (Twitter, Discord, email) and onchain actions (mints, swaps, transactions) with the wallet as the unique identifier. This approach solves several key challenges:
Data fragmentation: It unifies user data from siloed platforms and multiple chains.
User anonymity: It shifts the focus from traditional user accounts to wallet addresses.
Full-funnel tracking: It maps the entire user journey—from click to onchain conversion—without relying on cookies or pixels.
The Layers of a Modern Web3 Marketing Stack
A robust Web3 marketing stack connects marketing spend to onchain results. Organizing it into distinct layers provides a clear framework for building a future-proof setup.
Tunguz describes how data flows through the web3 marketing stack: analytics systems feed into segmentation tools, which cluster users into distinct groups. From there, campaigns can be designed and delivered through various channels, including airdrops, ad networks, or direct messaging.
Attribution software plays a pivotal role in this ecosystem. By linking acquisition channels, marketing campaigns, and ad impressions to onchain conversions, attribution enables true end-to-end cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and cost-per-conversion (CPC) tracking. With blockchain data being public, marketers gain unprecedented transparency and accountability. Whether it is built in-house or offered by specialized vendors, web3 analytics and attribution will likely emerge as a core category within the Web3 marketing stack.
Layer 1: Web3 Analytics & Attribution
As we've learned, analytics & attribution tools are the pivotal foundation of your web3 marketing stack, unifying fragmented data and revealing which campaigns actually drive meaningful onchain activity.
Analytics in Web3 track familiar metrics like daily active users, but also extend to Discord engagement, token trades, and wallet activity. Marketers need to answer new questions: Are community members also tokenholders? Who are the whales? How does our user base overlap with other projects?
Attribution is the glue that holds the stack together. By connecting ad impressions to onchain actions, it enables true end-to-end cost-per-acquisition tracking. Public blockchain data makes this transparency possible, ensuring accountability and maximizing ROI.
What they do:
Unify fragmented offchain and onchain user data.
Show which campaigns drive onchain activity like mints, swaps, and community growth.
Deliver wallet-level attribution so you know what works.
Why it matters: As Tunguz notes, onchain attribution is foundational. Every marketing strategy—from acquisition and retention to incentive design—requires clear visibility into which activities convert.
Tools:
Formo: A complete analytics and attribution platform for web3. Comes with a realtime dashboard and activity feed for product, web, and onchain analytics. Supports funnels, retention analysis, chartbuilding, and over 40+ EVM chains.
Spindl: Connects off-chain ad spend to on-chain outcomes, tracking conversions from ad clicks through to token swaps and contract calls.
Cookie3: A Web3 analytics platform focused on community engagement and influencer marketing.
Safary: A no-code analytics tool that links Web2 social audiences (like Twitter/X followers) to on-chain behavior.
Layer 2: Wallet Intelligence & Web3 CRM
Wallet intelligence platforms analyze onchain behavior to help you understand, segment, and engage your users with precision.
Segmentation builds on analytics by clustering users into groups, enabling targeted campaigns. These campaigns can run through channels such as airdrops, ad networks, or direct messaging. Ad networks both educate users about new projects and generate revenue for publishers and developers.
What they do:
Reveal user profiles based on wallet activity, DeFi apps, token holdings, and other signals.
Build segments and helps with campaign targeting.
Why it matters: Wallet-level CRM is replacing traditional email-based systems. Tunguz emphasizes this shift as essential for audience building and retention in Web3, where ownership and segmentation are defined by onchain behaviors.
Tools:
Formo: A web3 CDP that enables user segmentation by wallet properties, demographics, and marketing data. Allows for highly targeted user acquisition and deep insights into key touchpoints across the user journey.
MetaCRM: An onchain CRM that helps teams consolidate user data from blockchain activity.
Nansen: Spots high-value users and money flows with advanced smart wallet analytics and labeling.
Layer 3: Quests
Use these tools to connect with your onchain community, guide new users, and reward participation through quests, loyalty campaigns, and incentive-based programs.
What they do:
Activate and reward your onchain community
Deploy quests, loyalty programs, and incentive-based engagement campaigns
Guide users through value-driven actions (staking, swapping, or holding)
Offer point or reward structures tied to core onchain activity
Why it matters:
Robust engagement and quest tools drive user loyalty, increase retention, and foster authentic growth across your Web3 community. Incentivized tasks turn onboarding and discovery into habit, while loyalty mechanisms keep your most valuable users active and aligned.
Tools:
Galxe: Launch comprehensive loyalty and quest campaigns with credentialing and rewards.
Zealy: Gamify repeated participation and offer multi-chain quest logic.
Layer3: Create educational, modular quests that spark both learning and ongoing engagement.
Layer 4: Social Campaigns
These platforms allow you to run coordinated marketing campaigns across major social channels to maximize reach and viral momentum.
What they do:
Run coordinated marketing campaigns across social channels.
Reward and track community activity with tokens, points, or onchain badges.
Tools:
Tunnl.io: Provides robust management for both offchain and onchain social campaigns.
Jokerace: Drives engagement through community contests and votin
Megaphone: Automates and rewards social participation while offering in-depth campaign analytics.Quest platforms deploy incentivized onboarding and loyalty tasks that boost user retention and encourage word-of-mouth growth.
Layer 5: Community Management
These tools automate member verification, onboarding, and engagement for onchain communities, often using token-gating to manage access.
What they do:
Automate member verification, onboarding, and engagement.
Gate access to channels, verify identities, and issue onchain credentials at scale.
Tools:
Guild.xyz: Offers multi-platform, automated token gating for Discord and Telegram.
Collab.Land: Provides flexible permissions and robust integrations for Discord and Telegram.
Layer 6: Incentives
Incentive platforms help structure and automate onchain reward programs to drive specific user behaviors, such as providing liquidity in DeFi.
What they do:
Structure and automate onchain incentive programs.
Optimize marketing spend by focusing rewards on verifiable user behaviors and onchain metrics such as TVL.
Tool Examples:
Merkl: Automates and optimizes liquidity incentive programs with advanced tooling.
Boost: Enables launching targeted, trackable campaigns to drive measurable growth.
Divvi: Provides a plug-and-play engine for quickly creating and managing growth incentives.
Web3 Marketing Stack Best Practices
As you build your Web3 marketing stack, choose and layer the tools that align with your project's goals, stage, and user needs.
Define Clear Goals: Start by defining your core business objectives to prioritize which layers of the stack you need most.
Act on What Matters: Move beyond vanity metrics. Focus on data like Cost Per Wallet (CPW), Revenue Per Wallet (RPW), user retention, and Lifetime Value (LTV).
Select the Right Tools: Choose tools that offer support for onchain data, marketing attribution, and is easy to setup.
Unify Your Data: Integrate your onchain and offchain data sources to create a complete, unified view of your users.
User Journey Tracking: Understand the full user journey across both offchain and onchain touchpoints.
Track the Full Funnel: Use UTMs, referral links, and onchain analytics to map the entire journey from click to conversion.
Own Your Data: Prioritize tools that give you first-party data control, ensuring your stack is both future-proof and composable.
Automate Tasks: Consider tools with third-partty integrations, automation, and self-serve analytics to support growth at scale.
Stay Composable: Build your stack with flexibility in mind. The ability to swap or layer new tools as the Web3 ecosystem evolves will keep you nimble.
Measure What Matters
Building a successful onchain application requires a purpose-built Web3 marketing stack. You can't grow what you can't measure. By leveraging the right Web3 analytics tools, your team can finally move from guesswork to data-driven decision-making, unlocking new opportunities for growth and optimization.
Ready to get a complete picture of your users and measure what truly matters? Get started with Formo to level up your web3 marketing today.
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