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Chloë Thomas is the Author of Amazon Bestseller “eCommerce Marketing”, and host of the award- winning eCommerce MasterPlan Podcast.
We have an ongoing argument in our market ing team. Some argue that a customer recruited online is 4 times less likely to buy again than a customer recruited from print catalogue mailings. This is not necessarily a bad thing as it can cost a lot less to recruit a one-t ime customer online but against that, we are seeing some hugely inf lated digital advert ising/PPC/search costs of late and if people only buy once – especially from a marketplace with its fees deducted - it is harder to achieve a profit from them and we are ef fectively barred from re- market ing to them in most cases.
W
e’ve had a very long question about attribution (more
of an essay really) so the following is my attempt to answer the various points raised, plus a couple I regularly come across.
What is attribution? Attribution is getting a better understanding of what drives your sales so you can improve your marketing strategy to get more customers at a better return on investment.
Orders are often inf luenced by multiple channels, so attribution is the process of ‘attributing’ each sale back to the marketing methods that made it happen. This often involves giving different marketing channels different timespans and weighting.
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How can we measure the lifet ime value of a customer recruited online ? What t imespan and expectation is realist ic ? Is it the same formula as for catalogues/print advert ising ? The ‘old school’ members also bang on about how you attribute someone who buys online after receiving a catalogue or seeing (keying in the code) for a print advert ised product – saying that print generated the sale, online simply replaced the contact centre for order placement.
What is standard in your experience?
The perfect attribution system Does not exist. Sorry.
If your aim is to understand everything that led each customer to make their purchase, and how much impact each element has on the final decision to buy. You’re going to be disappointed.
It’s just not possible without interviewing each customer and the cost certainly isn’t worth the data you’ll get back.
That means you have to find a system that’s easier to compile and use and that fits your marketing mix and objectives.
The right attribution system for your business How you track attribution will differ based on your
marketing sophistication level (is the best thing you could do to improve performance?), profitability (how much you can afford to spend on tracking attribution) and the complexity of your marketing (how many questions do you need an attribution solution to answer?).
Any decision to invest in understanding attribution more clearly should start with WHY you need to understand it – what decisions will it improve? How do you think it will help you increase sales, and lower cost of acquisition? Which channels do you want to include? (eg organic social media is difficult and arguably shouldn’t be evaluated purely in terms of sales). What questions can’t you answer with the data you already have?
Direct Commerce |
homeofdirectcommerce.com
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