Customer journey attribution adoption – what’s the current state? What do you need to make advanced attribution work? What are the 5 best practices for ensuring greater success? What do you do next?

1. Customer Journey
Attribution
a Question of Science & Art

2. Agenda
•Customer journey attribution
adoption – what’s the current state?
•What do you need to make advanced
attribution work?
•What are the 5 best practices for
ensuring greater success?
•What do you do next?

3. Customer journey
attribution adoption –
what’s the current state?

4. For today’s
marketer,
figuring out
budgeting and
the right
channel mix are
no longer
simple
mathematical
exercises.

5. This even goes for those of you with
current attribution practices.
“Mature marketers who are doing
[attribution] at the channel level recognise
that’s got to change. They know consumers
are interacting with their brand on a bunch
of different channels, and if they’re only
looking at one channel at a time, at some
point it loses its effectiveness.”
—Wayne Townsend, President, Technology, Epsilon

6. It’s no surprise
then that it’s a
major concern
for you!

7. The vast majority of marketers are yet to
transition to a customer journey view.
Source: CMO Council, “Empowering the Data-Driven Customer Strategy: Addressing Customer
Engagement from the Foundation Up”; in partnership with RedPoint Global, March 2017
of marketers worldwide say
they have a complete view of
their customers across every
touchpoint, including those
owned by third-party
partners or vendors.
6%

8. Most of you are
only at the
beginning of
the journey…

9. ..and only just
over half of US
companies
currently apply
multichannel
attribution.

10. What do you need to
make advanced
attribution work?

11. As more of you
want to talk to
audiences rather
than channels,
the customer
journey view is
paramount.

12. Data plays a
massive part in
the creation of
this holistic
audience view.
You’ll need to ask:
What constitutes a complete customer picture?
What messages have they been sent?
What did they do?

13. If you can’t track cross-
device you’re not able
to effectively track an
individual or audience.
Identity is more
complex than just an
email address or cookie.

14. The problem is a
combination of
Tech, Data and
Strategy – and is
very common!

15. Marketers need their own
database to get a single
customer view of profile,
engagement and attribution.
Linked with the required
capability to orchestrate and
automate customer
journeys…

16. …which empowers them
to create the correct
context for the
marketing mix.
Knowing what levers
can be pulled is critical
in achieving the desired
business objectives.

17. This database is
called the
Customer Data
Platform (CDP)
and is the fastest
growing sector of
the martech chart.

18. What are the 5 best
practices for ensuring
greater success?

19. A perfect solution
doesn’t exist.
1

20. Existing models only tell some of the
story.
The marketing mix model is top
down/first event attribution:
•Aggregate view
•Budgeting, media planning
•Channel specific

21. Existing models only tell some of the
story.
The digital attribution model is
bottom up/last event attribution:
•Impression-level view
•Optimisation
•Event specific

22. Ideal solution wishlist:
Inclusion of all digital, traditional
and physical touchpoints.
Audience-level view of those
touchpoints.
Insights for budget allocation.
Real-time optimisation capabilities.
Actionable outputs for all levels of
the organisation.

23. The actual solution is probably a hybrid.
“The limitation of models we’ve seen is that
we have yet to find [a holistic] one that we
really feel comfortable with. When I say,
‘holistic,’ I mean digital and traditional
together so that we can really see what is
truly driving conversions. We have really
good tools to measure single channels, but
it’s hard to see that unified picture.”
— Bruce Millard, Vice President, Digital and Customer Innovation,
Safelite AutoGlass

24. You have to get the whole
organisation on board.
2

25. Getting top-level
buy-in is critical to
the success of your
goals for customer
journey attribution
as the main
challenges are
organisational.

26. Sometimes attribution is a political
rather than a technical issue.
“In the ideal scenario, everything is
collaborative. If I lose a dollar from my budget
and you gain a dollar for your budget and we
end up with $10 more in revenue, then we all
win. In a not-so-well-functioning scenario, you
have people questioning that model and not
believing it. And you can have fights about the
magnitude of any shifts in budget.”
— Ben Bloom, Senior Digital Strategist, Mapp Digital

27. Know what needs to be
done in-house and what
you can outsource.
3

28. No surprise then that
customer knowledge
and martech
capability are the core
areas for building
internal capability –
who is my customer
and how do I speak
with them?

29. Customer-centricity is the
key to success.
4

30. Employing customer-centricity may
benefit the whole company.
“The biggest thing you’d expect to see in a
company that’s having success with attribution
is they’re likely identifying high-performing
customer segments that are addressable, and
they’re now reorganising their company, their
budget and in some cases, maybe even their
merchandising.”
— Tony Zito, CEO, Rakuten Marketing

31. An audience-led approach should reap
the following benefits:
• Real-time audience
insights and optimisation
• Audience intel for
future campaign
planning
• Insight into the value of
all customer-facing
touchpoints on audiences

32. Success should be aligned
with business objectives.
5

33. Alignment of KPI’s
to business
objectives is critical
– you can’t work
out ROI without
being able to link
your marketing
activity to revenue.

34. Campaign understanding and optimisation
becomes very hard without this
alignment.
“When you look at a customer journey, what
you realise is that if you look at anything
through the lens of one channel, or if you try
and optimise for that channel, you can actually
block progress down that customer journey
path.”
—Wayne Townsend, President, Technology, Epsilon

35. • Customer journey attribution practice is hard but a
necessary evil for contemporary marketers.
• There’s no perfect tool, but marketers can still achieve
good results with what’s out there.
• A siloed approach won’t work, the whole organisation has
to be bought-in.
• Customer-centricity can yield invaluable budgeting and
optimisation information.
• Ultimately, customer journey attribution success must be
linked to the success of the company as a whole.
Summary

36. What do you do now?

37. So what now?
Do not despair, you’re all in
the same boat!
The first step is easily
attainable, identify and
track your core customer
metrics:
• Cost per acquisition
• Lifetime
• Lifetime value

38. It’s a still a question of science and art.
Test and control will be
your mantra going
forward.
Remember, customer
journeys are holistic so be
careful not to optimise one
channel at the detriment of
another.

39. Here’s the science bit…
Customer
Data
Platform
Analytics
&
Insights
Customer
Journey
Automation
Multi-
Channel
Messaging
Use train of thought
technology to segment
and analyse your data
and truly understand
your audience
Bring all your messaging
channels together and
coordinate seamless
communication
Send audiences on
an automated
journey specifically
designed for them,
one person at a
time
Connect all your data
systems to create a
single customer view,
purposed for marketing
1 2
3 4
Customer Journey Capability Model

40. You paint the picture in
the context of the 4P’s.
Good attribution will
not be a Band-Aid for
deficiencies in the
marketing mix.
…and you are the Artist!

41. CONTACT US IF YOU’D LIKE TO KNOW HOW THE
CDP AND JOURNEY AUTOMATION CAN HELP
YOUR MARKETING OPERATIONS AND
ATTRIBUTION
David Judd
Commercial Director