From Snowflake to Amplitude: How Blue Marble Built Product Analytics for a Desktop App With No SDK
Key Achievements
- First-Ever Product Analytics Foundation Delivered Across Two Products
Blue Marble had no structured product analytics in place for either Avenza Maps or Global Mapper. Adasight built a complete Amplitude foundation for both — from tracking plans and dashboards to cohorts and technical documentation.
- 73-Event Tracking Plan Built for Global Mapper
A full event taxonomy was built from scratch for Global Mapper, consolidating Blue Marble's original event list, removing redundancies, and adding new events for gaps identified during product analysis — covering all three core use cases.
- Non-Standard Desktop Architecture Solved
Global Mapper's behavioral data lives in Snowflake, not a standard SDK. Adasight designed and documented a custom Snowflake → HTTP Batch API → Amplitude pipeline, including JSON formatting, batch sync configuration, user identity resolution via hardware-based unique user IDs, and staging vs. production environment setup.
- 25 Cohorts Built Across Both Products
18 cohorts for Avenza Maps segmenting users by behavior and lifecycle stage, and 7 cohorts for Global Mapper — including Pro Feature User, Underutilizing Pro User, Pre 3D Workflow User, LiDAR Power User, and Export-Activated User.
- Braze Integration Enabled for Avenza Maps
Amplitude was integrated with Braze to enable cohort-based messaging and re-engagement flows — giving Blue Marble the infrastructure to act on behavioral data, not just observe it.
The Challenge
Blue Marble is a geospatial software company behind two professional applications: Avenza Maps, a mobile mapping tool, and Global Mapper, a desktop GIS platform. Before the engagement, neither product had structured analytics in place, making it effectively impossible to answer fundamental questions about how users were engaging with their software.
The challenges were distinct for each product. For Avenza Maps, there was no visibility into mobile user workflows, feature discovery, or which behaviors indicated deep engagement versus early drop-off. For Global Mapper, the same visibility gaps existed — but the technical architecture made them harder to solve. All behavioral data lived in Snowflake rather than being captured via a standard SDK, requiring a custom data pipeline to get it into Amplitude at all.
On top of the technical complexity, both products required separate Amplitude projects, tracking plans, and dashboards with entirely different use cases and user behaviors. The engagement had to deliver two complete analytics foundations, not one.
The root issue with Global Mapper was structural. Most product analytics tools — including Amplitude — are designed for web or mobile applications where an SDK can be embedded directly into the product. Desktop applications don't work that way. There's no browser, no mobile runtime, no standard integration point. Blue Marble's behavioral data was already flowing into Snowflake, but getting it from there into Amplitude in a clean, reliable, and scalable way required designing a custom pipeline from scratch — something most analytics implementations never have to deal with.
The Process
Avenza Maps — Mobile Analytics Foundation
For Avenza Maps, Adasight conducted a full Amplitude audit and defined baseline KPIs across acquisition, activation, engagement, monetization, and churn. A core dashboard was built covering key user journeys, and 18 custom cohorts were created to segment users by behavior and lifecycle stage. Amplitude was integrated with Braze to enable cohort-based messaging and re-engagement flows. A structured tracking plan and event audit were delivered to ensure data quality across iOS and Android.
Global Mapper — Desktop Analytics via Snowflake
Global Mapper required a more technically involved approach. Three core use cases were aligned on: trial-to-paid conversion tracking, Pro feature utilization and drop-off analysis, and user workflow mapping.
A 73-event tracking plan was built from scratch — consolidating Blue Marble's original event list, removing redundancies, and adding new events for gaps identified during product analysis. Full technical documentation was produced covering JSON data formatting, batch sync configuration, user identity resolution using Global Mapper's hardware-based unique user IDs, staging vs. production environment setup, and event routing.
The Global Mapper dashboard was built in Amplitude with seven custom event groups, funnels tracking the import → export and LiDAR workflow journeys, journey maps showing user navigation paths, segmentation charts comparing active vs. new user feature adoption, and a retention chart. Seven cohorts were created to surface the most analytically valuable user segments.
Throughout both engagements, an Implementation Q&A Log was maintained documenting every technical question raised and answered across weekly syncs — serving as a permanent reference for Blue Marble's team.
The Outcome
Blue Marble entered the engagement with no product analytics across either application. By close, both Avenza Maps and Global Mapper had a complete Amplitude foundation in place — built to their specific technical constraints and use cases.
For Avenza Maps, a core dashboard, 18 behavioral cohorts, and a Braze integration gave the team visibility into mobile user journeys and the infrastructure to act on that data through targeted messaging. For Global Mapper, a 73-event tracking plan, seven cohorts, and a full dashboard suite delivered the first structured view of how professional users move through the product — from trial to Pro feature adoption to complex workflows like LiDAR and import → export pipelines.
The custom Snowflake → HTTP Batch API → Amplitude pipeline, built and fully documented by Adasight, means Global Mapper's desktop behavioral data now flows reliably into Amplitude without any SDK dependency. Blue Marble's team left the engagement with a Self-Event Audit Guide, Implementation Q&A Log, tracking plans, and dashboards — everything needed to operate and extend both analytics setups independently.
Looking to build a product analytics foundation across complex or non-standard architectures? Book a call with Adasight and we'll figure out the right approach together.
Work with Adasight on Your Analytics Foundation
Whether you're starting from scratch, dealing with a non-standard architecture, or sitting on data you can't yet use — we've done it before.
- Data Mapping & Integration — connect your data sources to Amplitude, including custom pipelines like Snowflake → HTTP Batch API
- Data Stack Audit — diagnose what's broken, missing, or duplicated in your existing setup before you build on it
- Data Foundation — tracking plan, taxonomy, dashboards, and cohorts built around your actual use cases
Book a call with Adasight and we'll figure out the right starting point together.
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