Imagine this user uses three marketing channels and converts for $100
First Click Attribution
Last Click Attribution
Ad Hoc Reporting – each department, provider, or system has their own number
Reporting with Marketing Performance Plugin
Secret Sauce
Default Lags
Most marketing analytics will treat all of your customer’s activities the same. They use techniques like first click, last click, proportional attribution, and such to assign attribution. To get a more realistic picture of your marketing performance, the Marketing Performance Plugin uses time based “Lags” for each marketing delivery event you create. When a customer clicks-through your marketing link and then converts in that visit or even a later visit, some of that conversion is likely to have been influenced by that click-through. You can configure the amount of influence based on the type of marketing and the number of days between the click-through and the conversion. Attribution is then calculated from the marketing influences of that conversion.
For example, if a customer clicks your link and converts that day, you can assume that Delivery Event was highly influential to that conversion. However, if they don’t purchase until 6 days after the click, should you really consider that Delivery Event to be as influential? What if they click-through 3 other Delivery Events during those 6 days?
To solve these problems, this plugin will assign influence of any conversion to EACH marketing Delivery Event, Channel, and Campaign that the customer interacts with, based on the “Lag”. If there is no click-through or the conversion is beyond the lag, then the no marketing will be considered influential to that conversion. Based on all conversion and their corresponding influences, attribution will then be calculated. Any uninfluenced conversion will be bucketed into unattributed. If the influences are less than 100%, the residual amount will be also bucketed into unattributed. If the influences are greater than 100%, the influences are indexed to 100%.
You can set some KPI (Key Performance Indicators) that indicate which of your Delivery Events and Campaigns performed to expectations by calculating return on ad spend (ROAS) taking the attribution divided by the ad spend. Within this plugin, you can specify the expected ROAS. The reports will then show which campaigns met the expected performance by highlighted them in green (exceeded expectation), yellow (came within 95% of expectation), or red.
Visit your “Channels & Lags” page to configure how long and how much influence a Delivery Event click-through should be assigned to a conversion.
If you are unsure of the lag you should assign, use the handy Lag Wizard. It will ask a couple of questions and assign a lag for you. You can always configure the lag as you learn more about your particular marketing.
Example:
Reports
Dictionary:
Campaign – A collection of marketing initiatives to support a business objective. Campaigns usually have a budget and a fixed time duration and can be support by many Delivery Events. There is an expected Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) metric to monitor performance.
Delivery Event – A specific content delivered to your customer in support of a campaign.
Channel – A marketing platform used to deliver your marketing message.
Example:
For example, in support of Black Friday, you may wish to have a Black Friday campaign that will run for 5 days prior to Black Friday and you are willing to spend $1000. You would like to see this campaign generate $3000 in sales. On Day 1, you may send an email blast to your customers and add some Facebook ads. You may also boost your bid on certain keywords on search engines. On Day 3, you send a second email blast and then on Day 5, you may send a final email blast.
In this example, you would have a single campaign for Black Friday with expected spend of $1000 and an expected ROAS of 3. In support of the campaign, you would setup 5 delivery events, one for the first email blast, a second for the Facebook ad, and a third for your pay per click. The second and third email blasts would be the fourth and fifth delivery events using three marketing channels, email, Facebook ad, and pay per click.
Process:
First, make sure email campaign, Facebook ads, and pay per clicks are configured. Under the Marketing Performance link on the left hand navigation, choose Channel in the rollover menu. From there you can setup the marketing channels and include the lags. Lags are the influences that the marketing has on a conversion. Usually the time that the marketing is most influential is the date of receipt. Influence tends to decline after that. If you are unsure, select the Lag Wizard button and it will ask you a couple of questions and then provide you with a recommended lag.
Under the Marketing Performance link on the left hand navigation, choose Campaigns and Events in from the rollover menu. From there, you can add the Black Friday campaign and then the first email blast. Make sure you select the email channel in the dropdown. When complete, you will be given a tracking code, something like vs_evt=12345. On all the links in your email, make sure to append the parameter vs_evt=12345.
Reset the page. This time add the Facebook ad Delivery Event. Repeat for all the remaining events and you are setup.
This plugin support WooCommerce and single thank you pages for conversions. To indicate a thank you page is a conversion, go to the pages section of WordPress and select ‘Yes’ in the dropdown box indicating the page is a conversion.
Reports:
There are two reports:
Attribution Report:
For a selected date range, this shows each channels attribution. Toggle the plus/minus to see the contributing delivery events:
This is also displayed in pie chart form:
As a bonus, there are some pathing charts that tell you the most common paths, the starter channel, and the closer channel:
Campaign Report:
Select a campaign and this chart will show you the total attribution for that campaign and each contributing channel:
This also shows the return on ad spend. If red, the campaign is not meeting expectations. If yellow, the campaign is close to meeting expectations. If green, the campaign is exceeded expectations.