The Truth About Cross-Channel Attribution... and Why it Does Not Have to be So Painful

Editor's Notes

• #7: At Birst, we have some fantastic customers using our platform in many different ways. These are just some of the examples from customers across different industry categories that use Birst of a variety of line of business process challenges.
• #10: The world has changed around us…. Customer are connected…they have wearable devices that track health movements, Cars are now connected to monitor speedmusic/audio playing, smartphone apps, navigation, roadside assistance, voice commands, contextual help/offers, parking apps, engine controls and car diagnosis. And even connected…doughnuts. That’s right, Krispy Cream and other places like Starbucks allows you to located the nearest KK to get a hot and tasty doughnut. At this point in time, our lives have become digital, and customers are generating more and more data for marketers and CI pros to analyze. For CI pros that need to measure and analyze behavior, this task can be overwhelming…(CLICK)
• #11: Mobile itself accelerated customers life being more digital and more tractable. Though our 2013 mobile online survey, we found that customers expect brands to have a mobile strategy—as indicated by 62% expect a mobile friendly website. Further, we’ve seen an acceleration of growth of mobile apps to make customers lives easier. In response, companies will spend 130 BILLION to engineer platforms to encourage mobile engagement. This solidifies the fact that (CLICK)
• #12: We are in the age of the customer. Your customers, empowered by technology, can leave at any moment. Companies like Hilton Worldwide and The Home Depot plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to redefine customer engagement. This redefinition takes many forms in both consumer and business-to-business markets. These companies are customer-obsessed; in the age of the customer, you must be, too. CMOs, CIOs, and business professionals must work together to create this companywide-transformation. Part of this transformation is turning big data into big insights (CLICK)
• #13: Image source: http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2014/mar/21/whats-your-most-embarrassing-technology-mishap
• #14: Image source: http://pixabay.com/en/spotlight-headlight-headlamp-147742/ Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/111692634@N04/16388916661 Image source: Gigaom (https://gigaom.com/) this means that CI professionals must step up to the plate and provide relevant analytics. Approaches—like attribution, churn analysis, text analytics, marketing mix modeling—are needed not only to understand and determine future marketing and media investments, but to understand customer behaviors and craft experiences and messages to get customers to return and grow…. But it’s not easy. To create a measurement centric organization requires 5 core capabilities from CI professionals…(CLICK)
• #17: Image source: http://www.mspy.com/blog/research-shows-people-watch-tv-when-playing-on-the-mobile-phones/ And how do YOU think your brand is measuring something like cross-channel today? Show of hands…fairly well? Ok? Terrible. Let’s not shame our colleagues in thinking their far behind the advanced measurement curve. Measuring the complex customer purchase path is nearly impossible. Customers are connected—and in control. They have access to information about specific products and services at their finger tips—through reviews, blog posts, display ads, videos. Across multitude of devices, ipads, smart phones, TV, lap top computers. Our research shows that 68% of customer use internet connected devices while watching TV. So, you have the opportunity to reach them through two different touch points—and understand what matters to them. BUT to do this, you must measure how impactful an TV ad, an online video, and email really is. Why, you need this information to determine where to invest in the future. So, while customers are connected, we found that (CLICK) SO HOW WELL DOES YOUR BRAND MEASURE THIS? <CLICK> http://www.forrester.com/The+New+Layers+Of+TV+Audience+Insight/fulltext/-/E-RES74181 Base: 22826 US Online Adults 18+ (Online Weekly or More) Source: North American Technographics Online Benchmark Survey (Part 2), 2013
• #18: The data suggests to me not well. Let’s go through two supporting facts… Challenging question: When you think about balancing and sequencing messaging types….differentiating messaging and experience be predicted LTV…investing in new channel that seems important, but which the brand has no experience… A few more scary facts from the same survey: only 36% of top marketers report being able to prove the value of marketing quantitatively in the short-run and 31% in the long-run. Demonstrations of the value of social media are even more elusive with only 15% able to offer quantitative evidence for the value of social media spending. TO ME, THIS FEELS LIKE AN UNACCEPTABLE STATE. AND WHATS WORSE IT SEEMS STAGNANT—AT LEAST OVER THE LAST 2-3 YEARS
• #19: Marketing teams lack analytical skills. Analytics is not a historical skill set of marketing departments. So many CMOs don't come with analytics backgrounds, especially those who rose through the ranks of marketing communications and branding. In research we conducted on how marketers manage performance, we were dismayed to find that only 10% of respondents felt that their marketing teams were effective at using data analytics to make decisions (see Figure 1-1). (see endnote 1)  CLICK
• #20: …and when looked for an explanation, we found that more than half (61%) admitted that most of their data work went into reporting on how they did, not showing how marketing drives better business results (see Figure 1-2).
• #21: To perform more effectively and efficiently at work, 89% of respondents say that employees need more access to customer data. When armed with this information, 82% said that they would make better business decisions, and 81% said that they would serve customers better (see Figure 5). Hearing the customer's voice gives employees more confidence: 69% feel that they could represent their brands better with more access to this information. CMOs who foster this ability across the workforce see direct improvements in topline growth, operational efficiency, and value delivered to customers, like Intel did when it unleashed itsTablet Smart Squad of socially enabled employees on introducing a new line of tablet-specific technology. (see endnote 8)
• #22: More accurate measurement of incremental performance. Increasing marketing performance is the top driver of analytics adoption, but many CI pros rely on shaky numbers to know if they are accomplishing that task. Only leaders regularly hit that mark with high confidence in their metrics by accurately measuring performance across channels and return on marketing investments. This allows analytics leaders to focus on building solid recommendations rather than hedging rickety approaches.
• #24: Diverse measurement approaches try to uncover the drivers of a customer action. Most legacy measurement methods rely on last- or first-touch credit, or rules-based attribution approaches to determine the value of each interaction (see Figure 2). Each approach oversimplifies a consumer's purchase path and decision-making process. Forrester views attribution as the current standard of campaign measurement; it gives marketers a clear understanding of how their campaigns and channels are performing. We define cross-channel attribution as: The practice of using advanced statistical approaches to allocate proportional credit to marketing communications and media activity across all channels, which ultimately leads to the desired customer action.
• #26: Allocates appropriate credit to each marketing interaction. What if you knew the real value resulting from your search or display ads? Or whether serving up a dynamic banner ad and sending an email with a personalized URL drove more conversions than a direct mail offer and email campaign? Attribution measures the relative impact of each potential interaction a brand has with a customer, and it assigns the appropriate value to each marketing interaction that leads to a desired customer action. As a result, CI pros can determine how much an email is truly worth or how much value a display ad really generates. Calculates more accurate customer valuation metrics. Twenty-nine percent of CI pros use attribution to recalculate customer-based metrics — including customer value and customer profitability — resulting in more accurate customer metrics. (see endnote 7) One retail marketer told us, "By understanding the true cost of my marketing efforts, I can fine-tune my customer value metrics and understand who is more profitable." Empowers marketers to spend more wisely. Over 90% of CI pros and marketers use attribution to better allocate marketing dollars to ensure future marketing effort. (see endnote 5) CMOs are demanding that their teams stretch the existing media and marketing budgets while still meeting their acquisition and retention goals. By understanding how an actual channel, campaign, or marketing tactic performs, you can spend more of your budget on tactics that are working — and divest yourself of tactics that are failing. Allocates appropriate credit to each marketing interaction. What if you knew the real value resulting from your search or display ads? Or whether serving up a dynamic banner ad and sending an email with a personalized URL drove more conversions than a direct mail offer and email campaign? Attribution measures the relative impact of each potential interaction a brand has with a customer, and it assigns the appropriate value to each marketing interaction that leads to a desired customer action. As a result, CI pros can determine how much an email is truly worth or how much value a display ad really generates. Calculates more accurate customer valuation metrics. Twenty-nine percent of CI pros use attribution to recalculate customer-based metrics — including customer value and customer profitability — resulting in more accurate customer metrics. (see endnote 7) One retail marketer told us, "By understanding the true cost of my marketing efforts, I can fine-tune my customer value metrics and understand who is more profitable." Empowers marketers to spend more wisely. Over 90% of CI pros and marketers use attribution to better allocate marketing dollars to ensure future marketing effort. (see endnote 5) CMOs are demanding that their teams stretch the existing media and marketing budgets while still meeting their acquisition and retention goals. By understanding how an actual channel, campaign, or marketing tactic performs, you can spend more of your budget on tactics that are working — and divest yourself of tactics that are failing.
• #30: Cross-channel attribution is high on the wish list of many marketers and CI pros, but it's challenging to implement. To help manage and deploy their attribution strategies, many firms turn to external vendors. The reference customers that we surveyed: Leverage agencies and vendors to help manage attribution efforts. Thirty-five percent of respondent companies now manage their attribution strategy with internal teams supported by external agencies or consultancies (see Figure 3). Since our previous survey in 2012, firms have reduced the amount of support they request from their attribution vendors' professional services teams — either alone or in partnership with an agency. Why? Attribution vendors want to focus on providing advanced measurement tools, which is often at odds with the in-depth strategic services marketers need help with. As a result, marketers lean more on marketing consultants and agencies.
• #31: The Forrester Wave is Forrester's evaluation of vendors in a software, hardware, or services market, written for the role professionals we serve. In our Forrester Wave reports and spreadsheets, we expose both the criteria that we use to grade the vendor offerings and how we score and weight those criteria. Clients are encouraged to modify the weightings in the spreadsheet to create custom vendor shortlists that best meet their specific needs. Forrester Wave evaluations are driven by our analysis of data collected from the marketplace and the experience of our analysts. This document is your guide to understanding how we create a Forrester Wave report; it outlines the methodology that our analysts use to produce great Forrester Wave research.
• #32: During the recent Forrester Wave™ evaluation of cross-channel attribution service providers, we surveyed 71 reference customers to learn about their relationships with and perceptions of these vendors (see Figure 1). Customer insights professionals and marketing leaders we surveyed: Represent a range of industries. Effective cross-channel attribution requires access to a wide range and depth of data. As a result, most attribution customers we surveyed are from companies in the categories of financial services (21%), retail and wholesale (19%), and media and entertainment (14%). These industries have sufficient access to rich, cross-platform data, customer insights, and affinity data to embrace a more advanced attribution measurement approach. Vary in size of organization. Of the clients who responded, 69% work at companies with more than 1,000 employees. A significant portion of the respondents are from very large enterprises; 34% of respondents work at companies with more than 20,000 employees, and 35% earn over $1 billion in revenue. (see endnote 1) Primarily market to consumers. Fifty-nine percent of respondent companies market solely or primarily to consumers, while 31% split their efforts between consumers and businesses. Only 10% are solely or primarily business-to-business (B2B). Forrester finds that business-to-consumer (B2C) companies with robust customer and marketing data have a higher adoption of advanced attributionthan B2B firms, as B2B marketing encompasses the complexity of longer sales cycles, active sales forces, and influencer dynamics. (see endnote 2) Balance direct response and branding objectives. Firms have made a significant shift in focus in the past two years from primarily direct response (47% in 2012) to a mix between direct response and branding objectives (63% in 2014) (see Figure 2). While understanding the value of the channel that resulted in a conversion is still very important, firms are now also looking to discern the brand impact of their marketing activity. Visual IQ, an attribution measurement vendor, indicated more interest from brand-based marketers wanting to measure the impact of marketing on brand awareness and brand value.
• #33: Most important factors when selecting an attribution provider Thought leadership and measurement depth. Fifty-one percent of customers list thought leadership as one of the three most important factors when selecting an attribution provider (see Figure 11). In addition, one quarter of respondents state that measurement depth is critical — specifically measuring across a wide range of channels and generating deep customer insights. Vendors that support the proliferating breadth of channels and the high demand for actionable insights with updates to their tools ascend to the position of thought leader.
• #34: A flexible and intuitive attribution interface. A client-friendly attribution interface enables customers to easily understand and use a product's metrics, data, reports, and analysis. Thirty-eight percent of respondents indicate that usability is one of their three most important criteria for vendor selection (see Figure 12). The next most important area for improvement is scenario planning — "what-if" — capabilities within the attribution interface. As vendors devise new opportunities and standards for measurement, they must ensure that users can get what they need — quickly and easily.
• #36: Note: Tone is not to be afraid of attribution. Case study is needed Begin with an end goal in mind. Take stock of your key strategic objectives and outline how you will use attribution to achieve them. For example, you may want to use attribution to reallocate marketing budgets, gain marketing efficiency and effectiveness, or understand the customer purchase path. Once the strategic goal is set, determine how you will develop an attribution solution and what the potential impact of your attribution measurement strategy will be. Figure out what you have — and what you don't. The resources leading the attribution project must identify what data, analysis, resources, and technology you have — and what their current limitations are. From that point, you can determine if attribution is even possible. Calculate the potential ROI of attribution. Before undertaking the attribution project, calculate the anticipated ROI. Regardless of whether you conduct attribution in-house or engage with a vendor, you must calculate the potential project costs, the marketing efficiencies you will gain, and how effective marketing will be as a result of the project. Develop a case study-this goes hand in hand with the previous suggestion. To mitigate the worry of executives, present relevent case studies that showcase the tangiable value of attribution measurement. A case study can come in the form of a cost benefit/ROI analysis, or industry examples. Make sure the case study shows the examples of the benefits and cost of attribution—but more importantly the risks associated with not embracing a more advanced measurement approach. Finally, Start with advanced attribution measurement on digital channels first. Why? Digital channels are easier to connect and track. Successful firms tell us they measure display and search first then slowly integrate across digital channels.
• #38: Sound Bite: Build.com, a top 100 online retailer, is using Birst for marketing analytics and customer behavior analytics. By understanding customer profiles and life time value, Build.com is able to focus on the high value customers and personalize offers to them. This has decreased the number of marketing touch points ($), allowing them to reach the right segments faster. For example, by targeting the right customer segment, rather than to a randomly selected list, Build.com was able to gain a 75% to 80% lift in catalog revenue. Roles:  Marketing, product and sales teamsUse Case:  Customer analytics / marketing analytics / sales analyticsData Sources:   Omniture / Google Analytics / Microsoft SQL ServerValue:  Gained a 75% to 80% lift in catalog revenue, increasing customer lifetime value and decreasing cost per acquisition Full Story: Build.com, a top 100 online retailer, competes with the likes of Home Depot in the home improvement retailer market. With heavy focus on marketing analytics and customer behavioral analytics such as browsing behavior, customer interactions with different product categories & web properties as well as social interactions, Build was getting information about their customers across 6 different sites that make up build.com. While web data was stored in Omniture and Google Analytics, Sales data was recorded in a back office ERP system (SQL Server). To drive growth thru acquisition – Build.com wanted to understand customer life time value for customers, differentiating one time shoppers like home-owners from lifelong customers such as general contractors. Using Birst, Build is looking at marketing more strategically. They don’t just want to acquire customers. They want to acquire the right customers. They know that net new customer acquisition costs a lot of money, so they rather lose low value customers to competition and focus on customers that will be worth more over their entire lifetime. Using Birst, Build.com combines web and campaign data with sales data, recommending marketing campaigns and merchandising offers that bring the highest ROI. Using Birst, they also identify which products are popular/movie fast, enabling more sales through on-the-fly pricing adjustments and marketing strategy changes. By personalizing offers, Build is able to decrease the number of touch points and target customer segments that result in increased customer lifetime value and decreased customer acquisition cost. For example, by targeting the right customer segment, rather than to a randomly selected list, Build.com was able to gain a 75% to 80% lift in catalog revenue. Using Birst, Build have also build an attribution model, where they can understand how all the marketing touch-points fit together and which dollars are working the hardest. This helps them build more personalize offers, serving the right products to the right people – to ultimately decrease the number of touch points in the path to purchase. Build picked Birst because of its easy to access nature (cloud & mobile) and also the ease of implementation, data unification (from multiple sources) & adapting to highly dynamic / changing data.  
• #39: What you need to do? You need to bring all your customer data together into a trusted, secure and single source – data about your products, orders, revenue maybe in SAP / NetSuite / Legacy data warehouses, data on how the campaigns you ran to turn them into customers is in Marketo, Eloqua, Salesforce and the social and & clickstream data and ways they found out about you comes from Google Analytics / Omniture. You also need to think about the users involved and provide information that is in context of their role. E.g. Sales, Services, Field Marketing, etc. And lastly you need to do this fast, at speed, without a heavy and cumbersome IT project.
• #40: So… let’s jump into a demo and see Birst in action
• #41: Before we take questions – lets close by a couple of great analyst proof points. The chart on the left shows the results of work done by Garner Group in a survey of business intelligence customers in Q3 of 2014 across all of the leading industry players. As you can see, Birst customers are extremely happy with their choice, with 0% of surveyed customers reporting a negative review of Birst. On the right, this December 2014 survey of business intelligence “full stack” customers by Trust Radius again showed that Birst ranked highest of all mainstream solutions. (Note to presenter: The reason that Tableau was not mentioned in the chart on the right was that they were not considered a “full stack” solution by the analyst firm of Trust Radius.)