What are the benefits of pre and post-sale attribution?

An abundance of online marketing channels has transformed the way customers engage with brands which has created huge opportunities for organisations to capture additional insight into customer’s preferences. However, many brands are struggling to connect this data with offline customer interactions, in order to gain a view of each individual’s full journey – which makes it near impossible to understand which marketing activities are the most effective in contributing to a sale.

Moreover, many brands also fail to track the customer interactions that occur after a sale which leads to wasted budget on awareness building activities which are targeted at customers who have already purchased.

So, how can these challenges be overcome?

Sarah Constantinou, Senior Marketing Consultant at Jaywing, explains how you can connect pre and post-sale data, both online and offline, and why this is becoming more and more vital to business success.

When do customers convert?

To accurately determine attribution of marketing channels within the customer journey, it is essential to pinpoint exactly which point the customer converted on their journey. It is also important to determine how customers interact with marketing activities, post-sale, to identify where budget may be wasted on brand awareness activities which are only reaching existing customers. Do you know how much of your awareness building PPC activity is actually driven by existing customers who are simply looking to get in touch with you regarding their existing order?

A better understanding of the keywords, site usage, web pages viewed, and customer intention gives you the opportunity to use alternative channels at each point in the customer journey for a lower cost. PPC brand terms may be great for protecting your brand position but, if you know how much of this spend is being targeted towards customers who have already made a purchase instead of attracting new customers, you can make better decisions and direct those customers to more relevant pages on your website.

Online channels give you the opportunity to measure attribution at an individual level with customer identifiers available in email, display marketing, SEO, PPC and other online channels. Offline tools might not have the same benefits but, by feeding attribution models with relevant information such as periods during which TV, Out Of House (OOH) and Press is active, you can effectively measure the impact of offline activity on online behaviours.

In other cases, the customer journey might mean that customers identify themselves earlier on in the sales process. Insurance renewals, TV and OOH viewing rates can be applied at postcode level, which gives greater accuracy to the measurements. You can also include tracking codes within printed materials, allowing data links to be created. Having a greater understanding of which of these channels are driving new or repeat business will give you the ability to determine the correct level of investment in each marketing channel.

Why is pre and post-sale attribution important?

Data attribution models give you the ability to understand the role of your marketing activities at every point within the customer journey - which attract customers, and which lead to sales. Attribution models show you the role each channel plays in your customer’s decision-making process which gives you the ability to direct relevant communications to the right customers at the right time.

Attribution models may reveal that email communications are more effective at the end of the sales journey to help customers make a final decision to purchase. With the knowledge that these customers have clicked a PPC ad, viewed multiple pages on your site or have been exposed to a display ad, you can tailor your email content to recognise which stage they’re at in the purchase cycle.

To stay current and to compete in today’s market, attribution is essential. Customers have come to expect personalised and relevant customer journeys. Combining attribution results and insights with CRM and online programmes gives you the ability to deliver relevant communications. Customers know that you have the adequate information available to you and, as a result, they don’t just want you to recognise they have bought from you before, they also want you to know when they’re back on your site with an intention to re-purchase… and for you to know that they’re not quite ready yet.. This is much more than just an abandoned basket email. With knowledge of how marketing events contribute to the customer journey, you can decide on the next best action in order to deliver maximum ROI.

Where does Jawing come in?

Jaywing’s unique tool, Almanac, successfully assists major brands on this journey. Almanac is a customer data platform which captures all online interactions and combines the data with offline data feeds from CRM and sales database, feeding into unique data-driven attribution models and overlaying our Action Optimiser tool to identify the next best action at a customer level.

To see how Almanac works, click here. Or, you can download our data-driven attribution instantly here..