Finding Success With Data Activation and Attribution
Data & Analytics
Jan 31 2024
Making business decisions based on user data isn’t a new practice, but that doesn’t mean every organization gets it right. Between evolving methods of tracking both online and offline conversions and marketing platforms employing a variety of attribution models, it can be difficult to tell which data best represents your business — and which can be used to most positively impact your digital strategy.
Improved data activation and attribution can help a business generate actionable results from its user data. Here’s how to overcome common challenges with data-driven tactics and digital media solutions.
The Challenges of Interpreting Customer Data
Brick-and-mortar retailers with a strong ecommerce presence often face an interesting predicament: how does one business integrate customer data from both its online and in-store transactions to make marketing decisions that attract and retain both types of shoppers? Some factors contributing to this challenge include:
– Reorganizing and maintaining up-to-date data segments
– Leveraging value proposition to reach potential customers
– Mitigating costs on high lifetime value (LTV) buyers more likely to repurchase
– Steadily growing sales in underperforming core categories
Let’s delve deeper looking at one of our retail clients. Our team worked with a regional chain of successful appliance/electronics/furniture/mattress stores with a well-established customer base. The depth of their customer data was vast and provided excellent insights via their CRM system.
Their challenge wasn’t so much in acquiring customer data as it was in how to leverage that data to acquire new customers, particularly in other core categories aside from major appliances. It wasn’t immediately clear how to use what they already had to drive toward their new business goals.
Making the Data Work for Your Business
The first step to successful data activation is compiling user data across your tech stack into one space where internal teams can easily locate necessary information. In the case of our retailer example, our data science teams took seven years’ worth of customer purchase history and generated a table that identified each customer’s last purchase date, last item purchased, previous purchase history, and cumulative lifetime value.
Once a brand fully understands its customer interactions — what initially draws them in, how many touchpoints they typically encounter before purchase, and so on — that brand is better equipped to design marketing campaigns that convert efficiently. This is why attribution models are so important — they help businesses see where their marketing budget generates the highest ROI.
Successful data activation occurs when attribution data and other customer insights are used to build personalized experiences that guide customers through each logical step in the buyer journey. 66% of customers expect brands to understand their wants and needs. Consumer expectations show data activation isn’t simply a cost-saving marketing strategy — it’s a crucial aspect of satisfying and retaining today’s digital consumers.
Solutions for Data Activation and Attribution
Experimentation based on collected insights can help uncover which platforms and/or strategies are serving your business objectives — and which ones need to be scaled back.
When working with the appliance/electronics/furniture/mattress retailer, we segmented the CRM list into strategic segments before importing them to our applicable ad platforms, then used online and offline measurement tools to gather current customer data through each platform. This allowed us to test different supported attribution models and time-decay windows, giving us better insights and ultimately, better optimization capabilities.
Segmenting the CRM list into strategic segments was key to making the most of data activation. This strategy helped the client not only reach new potential customers but also mitigate costs on past purchasers with high LTV who would most likely repurchase without heavy retargeting.
What Could Data Activation and Attribution Do for You?
With data-based strategies, proper execution, and weekly analysis, data activation and attribution can help organizations grow their customer base through new customer acquisition and stronger customer retention.
This retail client saw positive results almost immediately after we implemented the above data activation strategy. By the second period of their new plan, the results were even more robust:
– 39% increase in in-store purchases across two respective quarters
– 59% increase in total in-store purchase revenue, including mattress/bedding purchase revenues up 83% compared to the previous period and furniture category up 28%
– ~200% increase in ROAS for mattress/bedding category
Partnering with an expert can help alleviate confusion created by connecting platforms and parsing out which data will provide a legitimate boost to your marketing efforts. Visit our resources page to access the full case study and learn how our team could help your business create more effective data integration strategies.
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