Why does an eCommerce Store need Multi-Channel Attribution

Table of Contents

What is Multi-Channel Attribution?

Multi-channel attribution is a process of determining marketing channels that ultimately lead to conversions or sales. Customers interact with your brand through various channels, including search engines and social media. Multi-channel attribution helps your company in figuring out what campaigns or strategies lead to higher conversions. Also known as multi-touch attribution, it lays down certain rules to assign appropriate value to each channel based on their conversion rates.

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Types of Multi-Channel Attribution

Multi-channel attribution is the most valued analytics that helps you track your conversions. There are three types of multi-channel attribution, namely single-touch attribution, multi-touch attribution, and position-based attribution that precisely identify the “how” and “where” of customer engagement with your brand before they choose to convert.

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Single-Touch Attribution

Single-touch attribution is the simplest of all attributions as it focuses on a single channel or campaign. Basically, it credits just one channel for the conversion. Usually, it tracks the channel that the visitor interacted with before conversion and assigns conversion values accordingly. So it can be further divided into first-click attribution or last-click attribution.

First-click attribution means that whatever led to a customer’s first click is credited for the conversion. It does not matter how many other channels the customer may have visited between the first click and the purchase- the credit is awarded to the channel that received the first click.

Last-click attribution refers to the final channel that guided the customer to order. It gives credit to the last channel they visited before making a purchase, regardless of how many others they may have visited prior to it.

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Multi-Touch Attribution

Multi-touch attribution gives due credit to every touch point that guided the customer on their journey to make a purchase. It allows marketers to analyze the customer route to their brand more clearly and accurately. It is further divided into linear and time-delay attribution.

Linear attribution divides the credit equally to every channel the buyer interacted with on their search to make a purchase. From an Instagram ad to signing up for a newsletter that sent an email that led the buyer to place an order, each channel is given due credit.

Time-delay attribution or time-decay attribution assigns higher credit to the most recent channels as compared to the rest of the marketing touchpoints.

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Position-Based Attribution

Position-based attribution is a combination of single-touch and multi-touch attributions in which the first and the last touchpoints get the most credit (equally) while the touchpoints in between get the rest of the conversion credit distributed equally among them.

If a customer visits 5 channels before buying from your brand, the first and the last channel is awarded 40% weightage and the 3 channels in the middle get the remaining 20% credit value evenly assigned to them.

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Reasons Your Business Needs Multi-Channel Attribution

It is always better to know which campaign works for your business and which does not. Multi-channel attribution provides much-needed insight into your marketing strategies and helps you figure out the reasons for conversions and also failed strategies to turn clicks into sales.

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For Tracking Top-Performing Marketing Channels

Multi-channel attribution is focused on where and how to allocate the marketing budget efficiently. Just Google Ads is not enough to keep driving sales. To increase conversion rates in the long run, multi-channel attribution advises using paid social media as well. It helps you avoid investing advertising money in the wrong direction. It efficiently determines the touchpoints that drive true engagement.

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For Understanding Customer Journey

It provides valuable insight into the customer’s journey. The analytics clearly lay down the channels that contributed the most in turning the visitor into a customer. By keeping track of the customer’s journey, you can allocate your budget properly and shape your marketing strategies accordingly. A large percentage of companies use at least eight channels to engage customers. Thus, multi-channel attribution is a blessing for marketers to gain visibility into the customer’s interests.

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How to Set Up Multi-Channel Attribution

Multi-channel attribution can often prove overwhelming in the absence of proper knowledge and tools. The three steps to setting it up are:

Choosing the attribution style, configuring the analytics, and testing and analyzing the data.

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Choose your Attribution Style

You must choose the attribution style that best depicts the point where most of your conversions or sales come from. Picking between the first click, last click and splitting attribution between both can be a daunting task.

There are two ways to determine the best attribution for you:

Look back at existing analytics- analyze the existing data thoroughly. Test it with different attributions to determine what works for your brand the best.
Compare multiple data sources- expand your data collection to compare and analyze the data better. This would help avoid attributing credit to the wrong channel.

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Configure your Analytics

You need to be properly acquainted with Google Analytics to choose the model that would best contribute to conversions.

Cross channel first click: it is a single-touch attribution that credits the first touchpoint of customer engagement.
Cross-channel linear: it refers to a multi-touch attribution assigning equally distributed credit to all the channels of the customer journey.
Cross channel position based: 40% credit value is attributed to the first and last interaction equally while the middle channels get the remaining credit distributed equally among them.
Cross channel time decay: the touchpoints that are closer to the conversion are prioritized.

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Test your Data and Analyze

You need to collect the right sample size and analyze the data to correctly determine the best channel attribution for your brand.

Roll out post-purchase surveys: post-purchase surveys provide you with data to compare to your multi-channel analytics. This helps you figure out the gaps and misallocation of conversion credits.
Watch the timing: the timing of your conversion will give you an idea of whether you have chosen the right attribution model.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What are the advantages of multi-channel attribution?

Multi-channel attribution determines the user engagement with your website and their behavior through the funnel, helping you correctly allocate conversion credits.

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What are the 4 attribution types in marketing?

There are four types of attribution models in marketing, namely single-touchpoint model, multi-touchpoint rule-based model, algorithmic or data-driven model, and econometric model.

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