1. Attribution across all channels
Neolane Breakfast Seminar
David Sealey
27th November 2013

2. Agenda
1.
The challenges
• Increasing channel choice
• Dimensions and metrics
• Attribution models
• Technology
2.
Example in practice
3.
Why it matters
David Sealey
• More than digital
dsealey@caci.co.uk
• Budget allocation
4.
@sealeyd
How CACI are solving the issues
2

3. Typical CACI Clients
Customer and
Capability Strategy
Digital Design
& Build
Location
Optimisation
Analysis, Insight
& Knowledge
Multi-Channel
Campaigns
3
Technology Integration
and Managed Services
Data

4. Why care about attribution?
“I know half the money I spend on advertising is wasted,
but I can never find out which half.”
Budget Allocation
ROI Efficiency
How do we slice marketing budgets
across channels?
Time to hold our marketing to account
• Are affiliates cannibalising profit
• Should be a push decision rather than pull?
• Is paid search costing more than it should
• Where should you increase budgets?
• Is remarketing truly getting repeat visits?
• Which methods will add incremental sales?
• If you had another pound to spend where would
you spend it?
Attribution will improve the overall efficiency of marketing spend
4

5. The Challenges
5

6. Channel growth
Inbound
Outbound
 Call Centre
 Branch
 PoS



Customer




SEO
Web
Social service
Mobile app
TV
Call Centre
Direct Mail
SMS





Email
PPC
Affiliates
Social
Mobile SMS/Push
messages
Advertising

Radio
Print advertising
6
PR

7. Each channel’s reports will contain multiple
dimensions & metrics
Dimensions
Metrics
 Time (year, month, day, time of day)
 Revenue
 Agent (call centre) or Marketer
 Profit (Gross / Net)
 Channel
 Count
 Campaign
 Received / Opened / Clicked / Bounced
 Programme (e.g. welcome, churn)
 Influence / Retweets
 Customer Segment or Customer Life Stage
 Unique Visitors
 Offer
 Net Present Value
 Language
 Customer Lifetime Value
 Product Category & Product
 Customer satisfaction
 Territory
 Cost to serve
 Keyword
 Creative
7

8. Disparate and varied technology capabilities involved
8

9. Not to mention the actual tools themselves…
9

10. Illustration of the attribution models
First Click
Time Delay
•
The first channel gets all of the
credit
•
Channels are given an increasing
share in run up to conversion
•
Not a true reflection of each
channel’s role in converting the
sale
•
Does not recognise the channel
that may have acquired the
customer
Last Click
Linear
•
The last click or channel gets all the
credit for the sale
•
All channels given an equal split of
the revenue
•
Reflects the channel that converted
but doesn’t recognise each
channels contribution
•
Doesn’t recognise channel costs or
likely engagement in acquiring or
converting customers
First and Last Click
•
Algorithmic/Custom
•
Each channel recognised on their
own merits
•
10
Based on bespoke business rules
•
Recognition split between the
acquiring channel and the
converting channel
Difficult to setup

11. The attribution challenges combined
Channel Choice
Dimensions and Metrics
Technology
 Value
 Double-counting
 Hard v inferred response
 Organisation and politics
 Balance control group/hold-out versus
selling
Attribution Models
 Identifying the customer
 Anonymous v known
 Brand awareness v direct response
 Multiple ids
 Not enough time / skilled resource
 So many campaigns, no response to
measure result
 So many technologies
 Technology – immature, channel specific
 Data Capture quality
11

12. A real life example
12

13. Illustration of the complexity of a customer journey
Phase
Awareness
Purchase
Post-Purchase
Retention
Affiliate blog
PPC (Search)
First Purchase
Website
£100
Store
Twitter
Phone
Email
Second Purchase
£100
Direct mail
Mobile
13

14. Attribution models applied
First Click
Last Click
Linear
£50
£100
First & Last
Time Decay
£25
Custom
£25
£25
£35
£35
£50
£25
£50
£30
£50
£17
£20
£17
£5
£17
£100
£10
£25
£100
£15
£25
£17
14
£35
£10
£17
£50
£20
£17
£100
£15
£50
£20

15. Why integrating off-line and on-line really
matters
15

16. Why integrating offline and online really matters
Are you chasing the hype of marketing fashion or
do you have the data to make smart marketing investments?
TV advertising is
dead. You should
be doing social…
Snail mail?
Seriously? The
future is in mobile
apps
Email marketing
to segments is so
2000
 Customers view all communications as
part of the relationship with the
organisation
 Whilst offline channels are typically more
expensive they can be more effective per
contact
 Advanced attribution tracking allows you
to see the affect of marketing on your
ultimate aims
16

17. How CACI solves it
17

18. CACI’s answer: There’s no silver bullet – think holistically
 There is no simple answer
 No one technology is going to
solve this
 Our advice is:
 Don’t aim too high
 “Big Picture done OK” is more
important than “One Channel
done well”
18

19. Finding an attribution model that works
A
Understand the
business requirements
Map out the current media-mix
and planning process.
Questions to ask:



What type of buyer
behaviour do you value?
What are you currently
spending on channel
marketing efforts?
What is the length of the
conversion window?
B
Start with a standard
attribution model
Time decay is often a good
starting point. Compare it against
last click attribution to identify the
scale of the differences.
Tweak the model to
your requirements
Alter the dimensions that may
affect the outcome:
What are the problems with
the model?
19

Downgrade brand based
traffic

Alter the attribution time
window

It may also be worth trialling a
position based model (first and
last) as a further comparison.

C
Magnify the cost of channels
that delivered poor traffic

Apply weightings to expensive
or highly engaging channels

20. CACI’s answer: Design & build a reporting sub-system
 Gather data from all channels:
1.
Use channel-specific technology (e.g. Adobe Campaign, Adobe Site
Catalyst) to identify respondents, and indication of value
2.
Capture this into sub-system, with all relevant dimensions
3.
Apply SCV where necessary
4.
Apply chosen attribution model (bespoke)
5.
Reporting presentation layer
 Let’s see an example…
20

21. How CACI solves it
New
Campaigns
1. Neolane / Adobe Campaign:
a) Defines campaign details
b) Executes campaigns to customer
c) Has additional flowcharts to identify
and record responses
2. Data holds communication data, response
data and “campaign meta data” i.e. data
about the campaign
3. Data flows in from other sources and is
combined in a marketing Data Warehouse
4. Dedicated new process consolidates all this
data into data ready for reporting
5. Report-writer provides presentation layer
for attribution reporting and modelling
Campaign
History
Response Data
EPOS Data
Mobile App
Web Analytics
Marketing Data
Warehouse
Social Listening
Single
Customer VIew
Report
Processing
Attribution
Model
Report Data
Reports

22. Conclusion
22

23. Conclusion: Start small and think big
1.
Focus on capturing everything rather than
doing one channel with precision
• Broadly understanding attribution across all of your channels will
do more for you than understanding one digital channels with
precision
2.
Make attribution insights part of your budget
planning activities
• Marketing budgets should be set by how well channels are
serving your business objectives. It should be possibly to model
changes in the marketing budget and their affect on the customer.
3.
Don’t expect the answer from one technology
• To get the best out of attribution you will need to gather all of
your channel data and combine with customer data to produce
insights that will improve budget allocation
23

24. Questions?
David Sealey
dsealey@caci.co.uk
@sealeyd
24