multi-channel attribution - where do leads come from?

AIM 2010

Where to Leads Come FromMulti-Channel Attribution

Gary Angel

What is Attribution

• Attribution is a process for assigning/crediting a lead or a conversion to a specific set of marketing activities and touchpoints.

Easy or Hard?

• Sometimes it’s easy:

• Sometimes it’s not:

We got 1,500 calls.

Saw TV Visited Web Searched Visited Web Called

It’s Getting Harder

• The number and diversity of marketing channels is growing making attribution even harder.

Why it Matters

• Fights over attribution are sometimes perceived as being largely political:

My TV ads drove 5 million in business

How come we only had 6 million in sales?

My PPC campaign drove 2.5 million in business

My Display Campaign drove 1 million in business

Why it Matters

• But you can’t optimize your overall Media Mix or your individual channel strategy unless you understand how each marketing channel works and how the overall program works together.

Why it Matters

• For Instance:– If Natural Search attracts early-stage buyers, it

may seem to perform worse than Paid Search even though it drives more new customers.

– If Paid Search is heavily dependent on branded traffic, it may only perform well in conjunction with Mass Media buys.

– If Display creates awareness but doesn’t drive direct traffic it may only work in conjunction with heavy search buys.

Common Methods of Attribution

• Last (Most Recent): The last known campaign touchpoint gets the credit for a conversion.

• First (Original): The earliest known campaign touchpoint gets the credit.

• Equal: Credit is divided equally between all known touchpoints.

• All: Full credit is given to every touchpoint.• Spoken: Credit is given to the touchpoint

identified by the customer.

Last (Most Recent)

• The more your lead/sales environment is multi-touch – the less well this method works.

Over-Counts operational mechanisms like Google

Search

Easy to Implement

In this example, 35% of the visitors who clicked on a paid brand term

had already clicked on another paid term in the SAME session!

First (Original)

• Especially problematic with longer sales-cycles.

Cookie Issues make

accuracy questionable

Emphasizes “true”

acquisition

For this logged-in site, 33% of the people who registered used a different cookie IN THE SAME

MONTH. More than 50% used a different cookie within 3 months.

Jun-09 Jul-09 Aug-09 Sep-09 Oct-09Visitors 33% 45% 53% 59% 64%

Logged In With Different CookieVisitors Who Registered in June, 2009

Equal (Shares Credit)

• Doesn’t really help with Marketing Mix calculations.

Punts on media mix

issues

Doesn’t overstate total and

shares credit

All (Every Touchpoint full Credit)

• Doesn’t really help with Marketing Mix calculations.

Overstates marketing

efficiency and punts on

media mix

?

• If you’ve siloed reporting, there’s a good chance this is your de facto strategy!

Spoken (Customer id’s Touchpoint)

• Customer testimony is heavily influenced by collection point and method and, even at best, can be quite unreliable.

Understates some channels –

overstates last or easiest

Does Media Mix and doesn’t

overstate results. Politically

reasonable.

Survey Respondents Rating ToolRating % Visitors % Who Actually Used Tool1 (Very Dissatisifed) 14 64%2 11 67%3 6 69%4 10 73%5 15 58%6 13 75%7 15 78%8 8 79%9 5 74%10 (Very Satisfied) 3 71%

Only 64% of the most dissatisfied visitors in an online survey had

actually used the tool they were rating.

Proper Attribution

Aggressive Collection

Careful Analysis

Necessary Research

Aggressive CollectionUse of Multiple 800#

Services

Use of Online Promo-Coding

Careful tracking across online

Reward the Ask

• Numbers by Source and Channel

• Provide incentives to identify

• Universal Campaign Coding• Campaign Stacking• Universal Sourcing (Treating social as campaigns)• Time-Coding• Global Roll-ups• Shared Cookies

• Sweeps for completed forms• Separate Sourcing Questions• Off-Premise (online) fulfillment

Web Analytics Techniques

• Universal Campaign Coding• Code all URLs with Params• Don’t neglect URL Shorteners• Standardize campaign coding and enforce.

Web Analytics Techniques

• Separation of types of campaigns:• Internal• External

• This method will allow separate attribution studies to be made of internal vs. external without one type screening off the others.

Web Analytics Techniques

• Campaign-Stacking• Use a cookie to store all campaign values

recorded for a visitor• Pass to a variable in your web analytics

solution• Omniture has a plug-in for this

Web Analytics Techniques

• Use multiple variables to track different attribution periods at least until confident of your sales-cycle.

• We suggest the following attribution strategies:• Campaign = 45 days• Internal Campaign = visit• Redundant Campaign 1= Visit• Redundant Campaign 2= 7 Days

Web Analytics Techniques

• Capture of Visit Number• Use a cookie to track the visit number of

each visitor to your web properties• Record the Visit Number in a web analytics

variable• Omniture has a plug-in for this

Web Analytics Techniques

• Key Event Time-stamping• Time-stamp key events in custom variables• The timestamp should include at least the

full date (YYYYMMDD form)• Key events to timestamp include external

campaign arrival, lead and conversion• Timestamps are used in segmentation to

study attribution and before/after key event behavior.

Web Analytics Techniques

• Transaction Ids• Record the Lead Id in your web analytics

solution • Where possible (Omniture, Unica, Core),

update this value with actual lead-status• This allows you to track actual lead

effectiveness by campaign / behavior

Careful Analysis

Always track over-time and across web session

Always segment by sales-stage and known attributes

Use type of search and arrival method to help identify acquisition method

Necessary Research

Identify what you don’t know

Use traditional research methods (especially survey) to answer

Use Dark-Period Testing to answer questions about media mix

Recommended Conceptual Model

• Display Ad to Site to Lead

• TV to Call but identified Web Site

• PPC on Brand Name to Site to Lead

• SEO to Site no Lead in that Visit

• Site Visit no Lead

• TV to Call• SEO long-tail to

Site to Lead

True Acquisition

Contributor

Acquisition Trigger

Operational Trigger

Recommended Attribution Model

Operational Trigger

Any Previous Touchpoint and Conversion method is user-push (PPC Branded Term to Site to Lead)

Acquisition Trigger

Any Previous Touchpoint and Conversion but method of Conversion isn’t user-push (Display or TV Call-in)

Contributor – Sourced by didn’t convert

Any Previous Touchpoint within a defined Sales Cycle and no Conversion

True Acquisition – new customer

Single Known Touchpoint (e.g. 1 web visit or direct to call)

It’s not just campaigns

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

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AT-ON-BRIEFING-KJXAT-ON-CBSMW-KKH

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AT-ON-INVESTOPEDI-KHLAT-ON-INVESTORSCO-KHY

AT-ON-MSN-NFQAT-ON-Quote-NJA

AT-ON-SCHAEFFERS-NHNAT-ON-THESTREET-KHH

AT-ON-TRADINGMRKTS-KKEAT-ON-WSJ-KHX

AT-ON-YAHOO-KJKAT-SC-Public_Site-MNV

AT-SeekAlpha-NQEAT-WS-CYBER-BDI-NHB

% Decline in Response

• This analysis looked at attribution based on previous visits without campaign sourcing.

For two campaigns to this site, almost 50% of their click-

throughs had already used the site!

Showing Multi-Attribution

• This Report shows how often each campaign interacts with others and what the total conversion rate is.

Showing Multi-Attribution

• Here’s the same report with the biggest incremental lifts highlighted.

Dark-Period Testing

• Testing media mix by going dark and tracking to baseline is a consistently useful method.

In this case, going dark

showed that the client had to purchase 6 clicks from these

terms to get a single incremental visit.

Correlation Analysis

• Using correlation models, you can match marketing efforts to outcomes (if you have enough clean data):

For this home products company we correlated weekly TV, Radio and Print TRPs, Banner Impressions, Search plus

econometric data on housing starts and prices by region with web site activity.

Media effects only correlated with a 1-2 month lag – TV was by far the most

impactful.

Comprehensive Reporting

• This client chose to compare campaigns by pipeline stage:

Comprehensive Reporting

• Here’s an example using our 4 Stage terminology:

Comparison by Type Best Companion Best Overall & Trend

Key Take-Aways

• Aggressively Code Sourcing– Multiple #800s and Campaign-Specific #800s– Multiple Asks– Reward Asks– Code Campaigns Everywhere

Key Take-Aways

• Over-Time Tracking– Campaign Stacking– Universal Sourcing– Time Encoding– Global Rollups– Shared Cookies

Key Take-Aways

• Analyze Carefully– Segment by Attribution and Life-stage type– Look at attribution beyond just marketing

campaigns (existing customers/visitors)– Use Dark-Periods to Baseline and Tune Media Mix– Use Correlation Models to track marketing

impacts vs. econometric variables

I’m Out!

• Gary Angel• President, Semphonic• 415 884-2511• gangel@semphonic.com• http://semphonic.blogs.com/semangel/• http://www.semphonic.com• @garyangel on Twitter