SOLVING THE MARKETING ATTRIBUTION RIDDLE Four essentials of decoding the multitouch attribution, beyond the last click.

Transcription

1 SOLVING THE MARKETING ATTRIBUTION RIDDLE Four essentials of decoding the multitouch attribution, beyond the last click. 2018

2 Executive Summary "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it." ~ Peter Drucker1 In this exploding digital era, the customer journey is never linear and is only partially predictable. While 90% of people use multiple screens in no specific order to accomplish a task2, 60% engage over multiple channels through their customer journey. According to a Forrester survey,3 The average marketer uses 13 channels to drive his or her marketing and media objectives. This reflects marketers increasingly omnichannel approach to win, serve and retain their customer base. But these multiple customer touchpoints, availability of various paid and unpaid channels, and the limited or adoption of inappropriate attribution methods, which invariably offer misleading insights, cripple your ability to make informed marketing decisions. In addition, Marketing is often challenged to consistently deliver high quantity and quality of leads to meet the Sales goals. But when you are unable to understand which marketing activities lead to revenue, you won t be able to optimize your efforts based on business objectives either. By adopting the right marketing attribution strategy, tools and resources, you can become a great attribution strategist always confident about which levers to pull to measure the true impact of your marketing campaigns and channels on customer acquisition. Equipped with this insight, you ll know better where to invest resources and when to change course. 02 May 2018 Solving the marketing attribution riddle Marketing attribution = Analyzing customer experiences across every channel to optimize the customer journey and improve marketing effectiveness.

3 Measure Marketing, up and close. The process of multitouch marketing attribution or marketing performance measurement starts with combining data from every channel for a single customer profile. To effectively do this, you must first collect all of customers behavioral information not only from online interactions, but also from inbound, offline channels like point-of-sale retail systems and call centers, which are typically fragmented and stored in many different silos. Next comes consolidation of all this data into a single analysis infrastructure to obtain a 360º view of the customer. Then using the right customer analytics and segmentation solution4, you can attribute online activities to offline conversion (and vice versa), establishing an accurate picture of visitor conversion and the effects of campaign investment. This enables true customer segmentation, based on holistic data attributes and activities, which empowers the leap to customer-centric marketing. Organizations that leverage customer behavioral insights [for attribution] outperform peers by 85% in sales growth, and more than 25% in gross margin5. An effective marketing attribution program enables marketers to: COMBINE online and offline data in a single customer profile. CREATE personalized content and offers with rich data. AUTOMATE MEASURE OPTIMIZE ATTRIBUTE results and gain insights for the next campaign. 03 May 2018 Solving the marketing attribution riddle your marketing-mix through continuous testing. content delivery across any marketing channel. the value of each marketing touchpoint.

4 Get to a singular view of marketing. According to a Digital Roadblock report6, while nearly 80% of marketers agreed that they needed to be more data-focused to succeed, under 50% reported trusting my gut as the primary resource for making decisions about marketing budgets. Undeniably, enhanced data can help you determine if your attribution platform is effectively and accurately informing your budget allocations. However, the truth of the matter is, while all attribution results are meant to inform budget allocations, anyone using a last click attribution model, for example, knows how ineffective and misleading that can be. The problem here is not with the data, but with the attribution strategy and the platform. Of course, you wouldn t put a Formula One mixture of fuel into your old 1990 s model vehicle. The high-performance fuel would be wasted in a vehicle that couldn t use the fuel to perform at a higher level. Likewise, enhanced data needs to be fed into a high-performance attribution platform to take analytical advantage of the potential that the enhanced data contains. So, without having an attribution platform allowing you to benefit from your enhanced data, there s no benefit to enhance your data in the first place7. 04 May 2018 Solving the marketing attribution riddle

5 Doing it right. Here are the essentials of building a successful attribution program for your organization a framework of people, process and technology that enables you to enhance the value of your data and view the performance of all marketing channels and tactics side-by-side in a single place. When you know how each marketing channel impacts your customer s path to conversion and retention, you can proactively optimize your marketing programs and customer experiences. Four essentials of a highly impactful attribution framework. ATTRIBUTION STRATEGY ARCHITECTURAL FOUNDATION ENABLEMENT AND LEARNING Define the strategic and technical vision. Implement attribution data and tools using best practices. Review models, build skills, drive adoption. 05 May 2018 Solving the marketing attribution riddle GOVERNANCE Ensure value realization.

6 1 Always keep your attribution strategy in your line of sight. For any organization, marketing goals are never static paper targets. They are hide-and-seek, swinging targets, making it hard for marketers to achieve precision in successfully focusing and executing on their objectives. Reason is, several market drivers constantly put pressure on how enterprises create and optimize their customer experiences. An effective marketing attribution program that clearly defines the strategy and business vision, can help you attribute precise events within a single view of each customer and understand how each display ad, send, and video view basically every addressable marketing touchpoint influences a customer success event. At this stage, it s good to take help of an expert to establish a set of enterprise goals that better reflect your multichannel behavior. Also, determine what you expect the program to do that will improve results and how you will measure whether it s doing that. This ensures you are not only armed with the right data points, but are also able to hit the bull s eye by translating those data points into ROI. 06 May 2018 Solving the marketing attribution riddle Challenges that make attribution a tough target to nail. Explosion of touchpoints: Consumers are interacting with a variety of online and offline channels. Incomplete view of data and the customer: Organizations don't have the tools to tie all their offline and online data sources together, making it tough for them to see all touchpoints in a single solution. Only 13% of companies feel strongly they have identified their customers journey and where to focus marketing8. Single-channel attribution models: Organizations are struggling to deploy multi-channel and cross-device attribution, leaving gaps in customer insights and channel effectiveness. Difficulty getting past last click: According to Forrester, only one in nine marketers use advanced attribution methods. And among those using attribution, 28% still use single click methods9.

7 2 Build a firm architectural foundation. Then call the shots with confidence. Attribution models are important to a business. Every business leader wants to know why sales are happening or how their marketing efforts are driving critical business value. With the influx of customer data, marketing organizations are suddenly realizing the need to adopt advanced analytical tools that have historically only been in the hands of data scientists. Currently, for them, a significant effort goes in trying to understand how to optimize their marketing mix and their experiences to increase ROI. But many enterprises have become disenchanted with the attribution category as a whole because most attribution models currently being offered by vendors focus exclusively on measuring the impact of top-of-funnel paid media on a conversion. While paid media is a crucial part of the customer journey, it s only part of it. What marketers are looking for is a solution that provides a holistic, objective approach to attribution. Advanced data science tools such as Adobe Analytics Attribution10 and Adobe s Data Workbench provide a range of multitouch attribution models, designed to help marketers compare how their marketing is doing holistically across channels by drilling down into each channel to evaluate campaign effectiveness. Companies that embrace data-driven attribution gain a significant advantage over competitors that rely on last-click or simple rules-based attribution approaches11. However, simply purchasing an attribution performance management platform does not automatically and immediately deliver results. It is only one piece of an effective attribution management program. The implementation of the technology itself requires coordination and cooperation across organizational silos. It s also important at this stage to get recommendations and advice from a domain expert to ensure usable data is being captured and the results from the platform lead to appropriate action. 07 May 2018 Solving the marketing attribution riddle Undo the marketing complexity with advanced attribution. Adobe Analytics supports a variety of out-of-the-box attribution models12, including both algorithmic and rules-based options. Through machine learning via Adobe Sensei, Adobe Analytics Attribution assigns attribution values across the different channels of the customer journey leading up to a success event. Adobe Analytics Data Workbench13 enables organizations to quickly analyze large volumes of rapidly evolving big data from multiple channels and data sources in real-time. Powerful visualizations make it easy for you to immediately infer meaning to make timely, customer-focused business decisions that improve overall business performance.

8 3 Build a strong, skillful team to easily navigate through the marketing maze. Advanced attribution shifts the way an organization perceives and understands its marketing mix. The process can be unsettling. Involving internal teams and stakeholders throughout the implementation, encouraging questions, asking for input on implementation decisions, and regularly assessing the skepticism level of each of these stakeholders can help proactively engage them and address their concerns. During this phase, it s important to educate every stakeholder as many times as is needed so they recognize that the power of attribution management comes from a complex but comprehensible approach. That goes a long way toward turning passive and skeptical stakeholders into vocal advocates. The involvement of your IT organization in the implementation of the program needs to be significant as they can bring valuable knowledge about aspects such as where your data lives, and how it can most effectively be integrated into the program. Enable and encourage your team to become one that has the experience, skills, technical knowledge, and enthusiasm to build a successful marketing attribution program. It can be a challenge, but it is a challenge worth taking14. Adobe offers role-based and solution capability based training programs15 to help brands build the skills needed to effectively roll out their attribution programs. There are variety of training options available: instructor-led training delivered virtually, on-site, or at Adobe regional training centers; self-paced online and on-demand content when it's convenient for you and your teams. Adobe offers role-based and solution capability based training programs to help brands build the skills needed to effectively roll out their attribution programs. 08 May 2018 Solving the marketing attribution riddle

9 4 Target superior value realization. Get guided by experts. After you have rolled out your marketing attribution program, the real measure of success comes when you are able to use it to convert insights into action and also effectively expand and adapt the modeling as your business changes. Managing and maintaining the ongoing hygiene and efficacy of your attribution framework can be a challenging task. The good part is, your attribution solution providers can help you navigate the operational, technical or even people-related complexity and changes needed to operationalize and sustain the effectiveness and accuracy of your attribution program. Engaging these experts can help you formalize the process and best practices for governance and optimization of your attribution strategy. For example, formalizing the governance of the data where it lives, how it is integrated, what will trigger changes, and how those changes will be communicated early on minimizes the chance that the data will suddenly break at some point down the road. At this stage, get expert advice on navigating the operational, technical or even people-related complexity so you can identify changes needed to operationalize and sustain the effectiveness and accuracy of your attribution program. 09 May 2018 Solving the marketing attribution riddle

10 We can help. Adobe Customer Solutions We can help you build the skills and infrastructure your business needs to manage, measure and boost your marketing effectiveness. To learn more, contact us. Consulting Services Digital Learning Services We offer the expertise you need to improve your digital experiences and make your Experience Cloud investments work faster. Our business and technology consulting capabilities around advanced marketing attribution modelling ensure superior value realization, helping you accelerate your digital transformation. Transform the way you work and build the skills you need to deliver the ideal experience to every customer, every time. Learn with us and you ll get deep insights into building personalized campaigns and really understanding your customers through data and insights. Adobe offers free skills assessments, self-paced on-demand learning, instructor-led training, custom engagements, and more giving you the tools you need to develop your expertise and drive your success. To learn more, contact us. ADOBE SOLUTIONS Adobe Analytics Adobe Audience Manager Adobe Target Gives you all the data and helps you make sense of it, delivering the foundation for actionable customer intelligence. Build unique audience profiles so you can identify your most valuable segments and use them across any digital channel. Measure and optimize content to deliver the right personalized experience to the right person at the right time. REFERENCES The Two Most Important Quotes in Business Navigating the new multi-screen world: Insights show how consumers use different devices together Cross-Channel Attribution Must Convert Insight into Action - Forrester Consulting Real intelligence, when you really need it. Behavioral Economics, Gallup, gallup.com It is time to reinvent the digital marketer Is Your Attribution Platform Properly Informing Your Media Budget? Capturing value from your customer data Copyright 2018 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adobe and the Adobe logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. 9. Cross-Channel Attribution Must Convert Insight Into Action Tactics for Building an Effective Attribution Management Program 12. Features of marketing attribution. 13. Adobe Analytics Data Workbench Tactics for Building an Effective Attribution Management Program 15. Adobe Analytics: Data Workbench Advanced Analyst Course