Mixpanel is a Business Analytics Service application that tracks user interactions on the Internet. It allows you to analyze how users interact with your Internet-connected product on the web or iOS and Android mobile applications. On the other hand, Snowflake is a Cloud Data Warehouse that has paved the way for modern Data Analytics. Therefore, moving data from Mixpanel to Snowflake becomes a significant step in building truly valuable analytics for your business. This article is all about Mixpanel Snowflake integration.
Mixpanel helps businesses understand user behavior by collecting a lot of data on how customers use their products. Combining this data with other vital data within Snowflake allows everyone to analyze customer data in real-time to identify trends and make smarter product decisions.
This article provides you with a step-by-step guide on how to establish a Mixpanel Snowflake integration.
Methods to Establish Mixpanel Snowflake Integration
Integrating Mixpanel data into Snowflake can be a game-changer for businesses in terms of modern Data Analytics. This article delves into 2 of the best methods to establish a integration.
Method 1: Using Hevo Data for Mixpanel Snowflake Integration
Hevo helps you directly transfer data from 150+ sources to Snowflake and other Data Warehouses, Databases, or a destination of your choice in a completely hassle-free & automated manner.
Hevo is fully managed and completely automates not only loading data from Mixpanel (Free Source) to Snowflake but also enriching the data and transforming it into an analysis-ready form without having to write a single line of code.
Its fault-tolerant architecture ensures that the data is handled securely and consistently with zero data loss.
The following steps can be implemented to set up the Mixpanel Snowflake integration with 100% accuracy using Hevo.
- Configure Source: Connect Hevo Data with Mixpanel by entering a unique name for your Pipeline, along with other details about your Data Source such as API Secret and Events.
Image Source: www.docs.hevodata.com
- Integrate Data: Establish a connection to Snowflake by providing information about your Snowflake Account such as Database Name, Username, and Password.
Here are more reasons to try Hevo:
Method 2: Loading Data from Mixpanel to Snowflake via Export API
This method uses Mixpanel Export Data API to export your raw data manually from Mixpanel to Snowflake. You can access the web API using tools like CURL or Postman or an HTTP client for the language or a framework of your choice. Here are a few options:
- Apache HttpClient for Java
- Spray-client for Scala
- Hyper for Rust
- Ruby rest-client
- Python http-client
What follows is a summary of the main steps needed to export Mixpanel data with the Export API.
Extract Mixpanel Data
You’ll be using the Export API to extract data about Mixpanel people and events. To do so, you’ll need to execute requests to the export endpoint. Here’s an example of a request that would fetch raw events from Mixpanel:
https://data.mixpanel.com/api/2.0/export/?from_date=2012-02-14&expire=1329760783&sig=bbe4be1e144d6d6376ef5484745aac45 &to_date=2012-02-14&api_key=f0aa346688cee071cd85d857285a3464& where=properties%5B%22%24os%22%5D+%3D%3D+%22Linux%22&event=%5B%22Viewed+report%22%5D
Note: You can check out Mixpanel’s API Reference for the script guidelines.
The API will return JSON formatted data with one event per line sorted by increasing timestamp. Here’s a sample JSON result for better understanding:
{"event":"Viewed report", "properties":{"distinct_id":"foo","time":1329263748,"origin":"invite", "origin_referrer":"https://mixpanel.com/projects/","$initial_referring_domain":"mixpanel.com", "$referrer":"https://mixpanel.com/report/3/stream/","$initial_referrer":"https://mixpanel.com/", "$referring_domain":"mixpanel.com","$os":"Linux","origin_domain":"mixpanel.com","tab":"stream", "$browser":"Chrome","Project ID":"3","mp_country_code":"US"}}
Prepare Mixpanel Data for Snowflake
Now, you need to have a well-defined schema of your data before ingesting it into a Snowflake Data Warehouse instance. Snowflake organizes data in tables with a well-defined set of columns.
Hence, you need to create a schema for your Snowflake instance where each API endpoint will be mapped to a table. You will also have to ensure each key inside the API JSON response is mapped to a data type supported by Snowflake.
Load Data from Mixpanel to Snowflake
The next step requires you to load your data from Mixpanel to Snowflake. It is recommended that the JSON files are stored in an intermediary such as Amazon S3 Buckets. Then, the data can be loaded directly into Snowflake in a bulk way by using the COPY INTO command.
You can use the PUT command to push the files into a staging environment before invoking the COPY command.
Alternatively, you can also upload the data into a service like Amazon S3. Snowflake can then directly access the data from S3.
Update Mixpanel Data on Snowflake
Here comes the final step of integration, updating your old data on Snowflake. You can use the UPDATE statements to update an already existing row in a Snowflake table.
However, Mixpanel does not have a mechanism to identify new and updated records which may lead to Data Duplication. In general, ensuring the data quality of the imported sets is a big challenge here. You’re bound to face a slew of Data Integrity issues while manually loading data from Mixpanel to Snowflake via the APIs.
Use Cases of Mixpanel Snowflake Integration
- Querying Data: Importing your Mixpanel data into Snowflake helps you run new types of SQL queries easily into a data environment.
- Integrating Data: If you want integrate new data from Mixpanel into the existing data in Snowflake environment, it can be easily integrated with existing data. It could be further used for analysis.
- Cross-platform Data: You can store your Mixpanel data in Snowflake along with data from various applications such as Salesforce. It will help you in tracking and analyzing user behviour with your product or service better.
- Custom Analysis: Custom Analysis can be done with the help of in-house options provided by Snowflake or integrate a Third-party business intelligence tool.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Is Mixpanel a Database?
Mixpanel is an event-based tracking tool. It gives you comprehensive information about how users interact with your online product and service. To fetch and access data Mixpanel uses its own database known as Mixpanel Data Store. It is very simple to use and supports quick analysis of billions of events.
What is Mixpanel API?
Mixpanel offers it’s own managed and updated API. Querying, importing, and exporting data can be done easily with the help of Mixpanel API endpoints.
What is integration in Snowflake?
Integration is a Snowflake object that provides an interface between Snowflake and third-party services. CREATE INTEGRATION creates a new integration in the system or replaces an existing integration.
Which tools can be integrated with Snowflake?
A wide range of tools can be integrated with Snowflake. For example, marketing tools like Marketo, customer relationship management tools like Salesforce, business intelligence tools like Tableau, and e-commerce tools like Shopify, etc. can be integrated with Snowflake.
What can you achieve by Integrating Mixpanel Snowflake?
By migrating your data from Mixpanel to Snowflake, you can help your business stakeholders find the answers to these questions:
- What percentage of customers from a region have the most engagement with the product?
- Which features of the product are most popular in a country?
- Your power users are majorly from which location?
- How does Agent performance vary by Product Issue Severity?
- How to make your users happier and win them over?
- What are the custom retention trends over a period of time?
- What is the trend of a particular feature adoption with time?
Conclusion
Mixpanel is a Business Analytics platform that helps you to monitor the digital footprint of your customers/users on your site through the web or mobile devices.
On the other hand, Snowflake is a major player in the Cloud Data Warehousing industry, and integrating Mixpanel and Snowflake for further analysis is important.
This blog introduced you to 2 easy methods for establishing a Mixpanel Snowflake integration along with some use cases of the same.
Please share your experience of establishing a connection in the comments section below.
Raj, a data analyst with a knack for storytelling, empowers businesses with actionable insights. His experience, from Research Analyst at Hevo to Senior Executive at Disney+ Hotstar, translates complex marketing data into strategies that drive growth. Raj's Master's degree in Design Engineering fuels his problem-solving approach to data analysis.
