Download now: The Value of Attribution in UK Retail
Retail marketers see key benefits from a cross-channel attribution view
We asked retail marketers what, if anything, would be the value for the business if AdTech/MarTech providers enabled effective cross-channel decision-making from attribution. And some of the results are telling.
Here are just some of the highlights:
- Over 40 per cent said they would:
- be able to capture new, incremental customers more easily;
- be able to confidently report on revenue and ROAS;
- spend more in “upper funnel” activity.
- Twenty-four per cent, nearly a quarter of respondents, said they would eliminate spend on campaigns driven by last-click data.
When you consider that last-click data drives most expenditure today, this last stat demonstrates just how frustrated many marketers are about being forced to use expensive, short-term, last-click campaigns.
Outside of that result, the desire for more upper funnel activity is clear and understandable. At QueryClick, we found in a study of a retail customer operating multi-nationally that re-allocating wasted paid search spend on upper funnel activity – powered by effective programmatic and display advertising measured by attribution – returned new customers and 87 per cent lower cost per acquisition.
However, a significant majority of respondents – over 60 per cent – think that data to support effective cross-channel analysis and decision-making is simply not available to them.
There are real doubts about the efficacy of the data they are seeing – and that CRM and CDP platform’s attempts to provide a “single source of the truth” have fallen well short.
Instead, what marketers are given is a single source of truth that is based on email and transactional behaviour that bears little or no comparison to what they do outside of these events.
Over a quarter of retail marketers didn’t know a cross-channel view was possible.
So, if these views are not available why is that?
- For 52 per cent of retail marketers, cost was the overriding issue.
- While 44 per cent said it simply wasn’t a current priority – which is slightly concerning.
But the interesting figure here is that just under a quarter indicated that they weren’t aware that a single view was a possibility.
This demonstrable lack of knowledge explains, at least in part, the over-reliance on last-click data for attribution. Which is truly the same as no attribution at all.
The good news? Over 96.5 per cent of respondents think that CRM/CDP systems offering a single customer view or unified attribution will be available within three years.
But when you consider how long sophisticated CRM/ CDP systems have already been available – and the fact that today we are still dependent on Google and Adobe’s broken cookie systems to join together cross-device sessions after nearly two decades of failure – perhaps that is rather optimistic?
Our latest findings provide a unique insight into the mindset of retail marketers’ views on the importance of multi-channel attribution – as well as additional insight on:
- Ensuring effective spend and assessing ROI.
- Challenges around assessing offline media and digital media spend.
- The effectiveness of web analytics and providers.
- The importance of attribution technology in the marketing stack.
All of which we explore in more detail in the survey. Download your copy now.
