Bret Lawson
Senior Analytics Leader with 20 years across the full data stack, spanning Analyst, Data Scientist, Data Engineer, and Data Architect. Brings the software acumen to work alongside engineers as an equal and the business fluency to translate complex data into decisions that move revenue.
Brings four disciplines to organizations that are building or maturing their data practice, able to architect the foundation, engineer the pipelines, run the analysis, and deliver the insight without needing a full team in place first. Leverages modern AI tools to move faster and documents everything so the organization keeps the knowledge long-term.
Technologies
Analytics Platforms
Adobe Analytics (CJA), Google Analytics, ContentSquare, DataDog
BI & Reporting
Tableau, Looker Studio, R Shiny, Streamlit
Programming & Data
Python (LangChain, OpenAI API), R / R Studio, SQL, HTML/CSS, BigQuery, GCP, dbt, VS Code, Git / GitHub
Marketing & Attribution
Google Ads, Adobe Advertising, Google Campaign Manager
Research & Optimization
SimilarWeb, Foursquare, FullStory, eSpatial, Optimizely, Adobe Target
AI & LLM Tools
ChatGPT, Claude, LangChain, OpenAI API
Professional Expertise
Customer Journey Analytics | Business Intelligence | Marketing Attribution Modeling | Ecommerce Analytics | Revenue Forecasting | KPI Development | Site Performance Analytics | Online-to-Offline Attribution | Cross-Channel Data Integration | Competitive Intelligence | Predictive Analytics | A/B Testing & Experimentation | Data Modeling | Data Architecture | Data Engineering | Cloud Data Infrastructure | ETL/ELT Pipelines | dbt | Geospatial Analytics | Media Mix Modeling
Impactful Projects
Interactive deep-dives showcasing analytical methodology, system design, and business impact
Online-to-Offline Attribution
Scenario: Built an end-to-end attribution system connecting digital marketing interactions to physical store transactions at the individual customer level.
Key Finding: Enabled transaction-level marketing measurement, replacing platform-reported metrics with actual revenue contribution for budget allocation.
Payment Method Launch Impact
Scenario: Analyzed the impact of launching a new payment option to determine incremental transaction growth vs. cannibalization across existing payment methods.
Key Finding: 99% cannibalization with minimal incrementality (-0.07%), revealing market share redistribution rather than genuine growth.
LLM-Assisted SQL Query Optimization
Scenario: Quantified development efficiency gains from integrating LLM tools (ChatGPT/Claude) into BigQuery SQL workflows for marketing attribution and analytics queries.
Key Finding: 68% average time savings across 12 query types, with complex multi-source joins showing highest benefit (78%), enabling attribution analysis cycles to compress from weeks to days.
Paid Search Campaign Analysis
Scenario: Comprehensive year-over-year Google Ads performance analysis revealing systematic conversion rate declines across all campaign types despite maintained impression shares.
Key Finding: 39-59% conversion rate drops across Brand, Non-Brand, LIA, and PLA campaigns, indicating critical ad positioning and post-click optimization issues requiring immediate intervention.
Site Friction Impact Assessment
Scenario: Comprehensive analysis of user experience friction points across the platform to quantify conversion barriers and prioritize optimization efforts.
Key Finding: $2.1M annual revenue loss from 6 critical friction points affecting 285K users, with product filtering representing the highest impact area.
Page Speed Performance Impact
Scenario: Comprehensive analysis of Core Web Vitals (TTFB, LCP) impact on conversion rates across device types to identify performance optimization opportunities.
Key Finding: $18.2M annual revenue opportunity from page speed optimization, with mobile PDP performance representing the highest priority at $7.3M impact.
Professional Experience
- Architected and engineered enterprise ecommerce KPI system from scratch, integrating ERP sales data, product data, and web traffic into a unified dbt data lake, delivering interactive real-time dashboards in Streamlit, R Shiny, and HTML that did not previously exist
- Developed ecommerce revenue and KPI forecasting models at monthly, quarterly, and annual horizons, achieving +/- 5% accuracy and providing executives with a data-driven foundation for budget allocation, spend reallocation, and justified investment decisions
- Established A/B testing and marketing holdout experimentation as organizational decision-making standards, replacing opinion-driven changes with statistically validated tests that directly informed conversion rate and revenue optimization priorities
- Delivered analyses quantifying $18.2M in page speed opportunity, $2.1M in site friction loss, and 68% SQL development time savings through LLM integration, all built on the underlying data infrastructure
- Partnered with tagging and data engineering teams to architect online-to-offline attribution, stitching store transaction data to digital marketing channels, delivering direct channel-level attribution to complement existing Media Mix Modeling with transaction-level precision
Digital Analytics Manager (May 2016 – April 2019)
- Deployed enterprise DSP analytics framework using Adobe Advertising with advanced audience targeting and geospatial optimization, achieving 30%+ improvement in campaign efficiency through location-based performance analysis
- Architected comprehensive cross-channel attribution models integrating online and offline customer touchpoints, enabling data-driven budget allocation that improved marketing effectiveness and reduced customer acquisition costs
- Leveraged market penetration analytics and share-of-wallet modeling to identify high-value customer segments, maximizing reach efficiency across diverse regional markets
- Established KPI frameworks connecting website analytics with location-based foot traffic data, providing executive leadership with comprehensive omnichannel performance insights
- Delivered 400,000+ SKU ecommerce platform within a 14-month timeline, hitting industry-leading benchmarks for conversion rates and user adoption
- Managed complex systems integration across product catalog, inventory, and payment processing platforms
- Drove data-informed optimization strategies that produced measurable revenue and efficiency gains post-launch
- Grew online revenue to $2M+ within three years through data-driven marketing and operational decisions
- Designed and built end-to-end ecommerce infrastructure with 100% automated order processing and fulfillment
- Applied early analytics practices to drive customer acquisition, pricing strategy, and inventory management