Importance of Multi-Channel Attribution to Run and Manage Effective Cross-Channel Marketing Campaigns

The coronavirus pandemic has changed many trends for people and has motivated a shift towards more ecommerce and digital shopping techniques. Let's rewind a little. Research by Marketing Week suggested that “15 years ago, the average consumer typically used two touch points when buying an item, and only 7% regularly used more than four. Today consumers use an average of almost six touchpoints, with nearly 50% regularly using more than four.”

What does this mean for businesses? This essentially means that both B2B and B2C businesses today have to up their game and address the customer demands and concerns across multiple touchpoints. As 90% of customers today expect companies to give them consistent interactions across multiple channels, delivering optimal CX across all channels is necessary for businesses.

While you are generating ROI from various marketing channels in use, it is essential to point out the ones with the highest success rates to help you build better marketing strategies. This is where multi-channel attribution comes in.

What is Multi Channel Attribution and How Can It Benefit Your Business?

is the process of effectively tracking multiple marketing channels that lead to conversions and revenue generation. This helps companies prioritize the right channels and allot the necessary resources for better lead conversion.

While multi-channel attribution is considered a must-have solution for B2B marketers, few completely understand how it works. In fact, in a recent study, 59% of marketers admit to having not implemented an attribution model due to a lack of knowledge.

Multi-channel attribution essentially focuses on the idea of dividing the credit of conversion or purchase to multiple touchpoints instead of just one. It primarily understands that a customer interacts with your product or brand over multiple platforms before actually making the purchase. This process helps you effectively understand how different marketing channels might impact conversions across the customer journey.

For instance, let's take SMS Marketing as an example. Which messages result in conversions or help create leads for the future? Which sends do not contribute to eventual conversions? Both these questions are answered with a multi-channel lead attribution approach.

Common Multi-Channel Attribution Models

• Linear Attribution Model: This multi-channel attribution process assigns revenue credit equally to all the touchpoints in the customer's interaction with your brand. While this might be the easiest and most basic approach to incorporating a multi-channel attribution model into your business, this might not give you enough clarity on which marketing channel is generating higher ROI.
• Time Decay Model: This model is largely used by B2B companies where the sales cycles are much longer. The difference in this model is that companies assign a higher weightage to touchpoints closer to the purchase instead of focusing on the larger picture.
• Position-Based Model: If you have a good marketing team that has an in-depth understanding of the customer's buying journey, this is the right model to opt to pump up your marketing ROI. This model involves a marketer assigning different weights to different touchpoints. It's helpful for a team with marketing campaign focusing on one marketing stage, such as lead generation or opportunity creation.

Challenges in Cross Channel Attribution

Multi-channel attribution is a significant challenge for many non-ecommerce and B2B companies. It can be difficult to assign weights on the right marketing channels if the right tools to gauge this importance are missing.

In fact, research suggests that only 17% of marketers look at the performance of all their digital channels together. This means that the rest do not have the right tools or strategies to adopt these models. Let's find out what are some common roadblocks that companies might face while opting for this model -

Fig. Challenges in Adopting Multi Channel Attribution

How Do You Get Started with Multi Channel Attribution?

Research by Google suggested that "90% of multiple device owners switch between screens to complete a task." This means that companies must rapidly start providing a smooth omnichannel experience to their customers across all touchpoints to increase their marketing ROI.

As companies with extremely strong omnichannel customer engagement retain on average 89% of their customers, delivering excellent CX across all channels is rapidly becoming the need of the hour. Here are a few steps you can take to start this transition -

• Look closely: Most companies categorize customers that might visit their website or digital commerce platforms into smaller groups to build targeted marketing strategies. While this can be effective, the customer data that each visitor might generate isn't fully being used. Tracking customer behavior on an individual level gives you the leverage to understand each customer better, in turn enhancing customer experience and company revenue.
• Store Data Effectively: While working with multiple channels and enhancing customer experience across all touchpoints, you must ensure that the data collected right from the intent level to the post-purchase level must be effectively stored in a single space. You can use multiple tools like CDPs and CRMs like Sitecore, Drupal or even Salesforce to collate all this multi-channel data into one single view of the customer.
• Create an Impact: To gauge the right channels for multi-channel attribution, you must ensure you have all the data from different channels to help you make an informed decision. To do this, a single full view of customer data and behavior is vital. As important as it is to accumulate this data, it is equally important to feed it into the tools your sales/marketing representatives might use to interact with the customer. Make sure you have this data visible to them, as this would help them understand the customer better and resolve their queries sooner, improving customer support and product recommendations.

Bottom Line

A Martech Today report suggested that companies are rapidly investing in multi-channel attribution, and this trend is here to stay. With customer retention rates 90% higher for omnichannel than for single-channel, companies are making the switch soon.

Businesses must adopt the multi-channel attribution model to completely understand their customers and derive maximum marketing strategies results. This can help them understand which marketing channels work out for them and which aren't. Furthermore, this can even help them allot their resources to gain the maximum output from it. As a result, turning to marketing automation has essentially become the key to staying at par with the dynamic market demands.

To better understand how you can maximize ROI from your customer data by developing the right marketing strategies, get in touch with us at marketing@altudo.co. Our technology experts will help you chart the right digital strategy roadmap to take your business to the next level.