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  • June 23

Including E-mail in the Attribution Equation

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In the 1999 movie “Analyze This,” the psychiatrist(Billy Crystal) asks his insecure gangster patient (Robert De Niro), “What is my goal here? To make you a happy, well-adjusted gangster?”

Keep that question in mind as we move forward here.

Everyone knows segmentation can help success along in the marketing department, but what about other lesser known facets? If you’re a success-driven optimization junkie, the question you always ask is “What to optimize?” This inevitably leads to “What to analyze?” Analyze this.

How Do We Attribute Conversions in a Multi-Channel World?

Over the last decade or so, E-mail marketing has advanced in great leaps and bounds. It truly has optimized how marketers interact with their audience. Marketers who successfully use this information stay way ahead of the pack.

Most of this success has been focused on so-called “point optimization,” which measures an e-mails success as a standalone channel which in turn drives customer relationships and revenue. This model, while successful, only capitalizes on a singular resource. It’s time to move beyond the silo and embrace the whole village.

The next phase is to measure an e-mails impact across a variety of media sources, both online (Web site, e-mail, search, mobile, Twitter, Facebook, blogs) and offline (print, broadcast, out-of-home, etc.). This is something that is helped greatly by hands on support.

Measurement: From Channel-Specific to a Holistic View

The old models were simple. When you’d write an e-mail, you’d ask the reader to clink a link or buy a product. Easy to measure. Easy to quantify.

The new model, however, goes more like this: “Hear about this product on TV. See a mention in a tweet or on a social network blog post. Receive an e-mail promoting this product from a trusted source. Click the link to view the product on the site. Search for more information. Read product reviews. See product display in store and buy it there.”

Yeah. So very many steps. Consumers are savvier than ever before. They practice the “last click” model of sales. The purchase isn’t finalized until interactions with a multitude of media sources. This model must be replaced with a more holistic approach. This, however, will not be easy.

Call to Action: New Standards for Allocating Attribution

Shop.org, an online retail group, is attempting just that. It’s come together to define the standards used in allocating the proper amount of attribution for a conversion. Shop.org’s Online Marketing Attribution special interest group (SIG) recently issued a call-to-arms of sorts. It is looking to standardize conversion rate measurement, even in this new media-saturated world. Anne Ashbey, a group leader with the company, explains the idea in a a blog post.

The initial guidelines will likely be a “good, better, best” evaluation. These techniques will be adjusted for company size and for the types of products sold. Other factors may come into play, as well.

This is not just for online retailers. Anyone marketing or selling in a multi-channel environment will benefit from this group’s findings and results, whether you measure success in sales, registrations, donations, downloads, subscriptions, or even requests for more information. Retailers actually represent a scant minority of people who would benefit from this information.

Attribution Management Is Critical for E-mail Marketers

Models that measure first, last, or in-between attribution are all the rage in search and display advertising, but are also quite important in regard to e-mails. Having said that, there are still some problems with methodology. For starters, look at the American Attribution Index, which measures “the relative effectiveness of each online advertising source and influence factor on consumer purchases and conversions.”

Multi-channel retail outlets find that customers brought in via cold e-mails make up 30-40 percent of their total sales, as measured by the last-click attribution model. The AAI model allocates e-mail exactly 0.0 percent of attribution for “large advertisers” and 1.25 percent for “small advertisers.” This is utterly ridiculous. Clearly there is much work to be done.

Let’s Get Started

Now, back to Billy Crystal’s psychiatrist. Let’s rephrase his question to Gangster Deniro: What is our goal here?

Discussion should follow these main points:

  • What is our goal?
  • What should the SIG accomplish?
  • Do you want to be a part of the standards-development group?
  • What special concerns do you want me to relay to the rest of the group members as we begin our work?
  • Do you have any solutions we should consider?
  • What else do you want to know about attribution allocation or management?

Any questions or suggestions? Drop them in the comment box or send an email on over.




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