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• Attribution Tracking (What It Is and How It Works)

  23 February 2024, by Erin

  Facebook, TikTok, Google, email, display ads — which one is best to grow your business? There’s one proven way to figure it out: attribution tracking.

  Marketing attribution allows you to see which channels are producing the best results for your marketing campaigns.

  In this guide, we’ll show you what attribution tracking is, why it’s important and how you can leverage it to accelerate your marketing success.

  What is attribution tracking?

  By 2026, the global digital marketing industry is projected to reach $786.2 billion.

  With nearly three-quarters of a trillion U.S. dollars being poured into digital marketing every year, there’s no doubt it dominates traditional marketing.

  The question is, though, how do you know which digital channels to use?

  By measuring your marketing efforts with attribution tracking.

  

  So, what is attribution tracking?

  Attribution tracking is where you use software to keep track of different channels and campaign efforts to determine which channel you should attribute conversion to.

  In other words, you can (and should) use attribution tracking to analyse which channels are pushing the needle and which ones aren’t.

  By tracking your marketing efforts, you’ll be able to accurately measure the scale of impact each of your channels, campaigns and touchpoints have on a customer’s purchasing decision.

  If you don’t track your attribution, you’ll end up blindly pouring time, money, and effort into activities that may or may not be helpful.

  Attribution tracking simply gives you insight into what you’re doing right as a marketer — and what you’re doing wrong.

  By understanding which efforts and channels are driving conversions and revenue, you’ll be able to properly allocate resources toward winning channels to double down on growth.

  Matomo lets you track attribution across various channels. Whether you’re looking to track your conversions through organic, referral websites, campaigns, direct traffic, or social media, you can see all your conversions in one place.

  Try Matomo for Free

  Get the web insights you need, without compromising data accuracy.

  Start for free

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  Why attribution tracking is important

  Attribution tracking is crucial to succeed with your marketing since it shows you your most valuable channels.

  It takes the guesswork out of your efforts.

  You don’t need to scratch your head wondering what made your campaigns a success (or a failure).

  While most tools show you last click attribution by default, using attribution tracking, or marketing attribution, you can track revenue and conversions for each touchpoint.

  For example, a Facebook ad might have no led to a conversion immediately. But, maybe the visitor returned to your website two weeks later through your email campaign. Attribution tracking will give credit over longer periods of time to see the bigger picture of how your marketing channels are impacting your overall performance.

  Here are five reasons you need to be using attribution tracking in your business today:

  

  1. Measure channel performance

  The most obvious way attribution tracking helps is to show you how well each channel performs.

  When you’re using a variety of marketing channels to reach your audience, you have to know what’s actually doing well (and what’s not).

  This means having clarity on the performance of your:

  • Emails
  • Google Ads
  • Facebook Ads
  • Social media marketing
  • Search engine optimisation (SEO)
  • And more

  Attribution tracking allows you to measure each channel’s ROI and identify how much each channel impacted your campaigns.

  It gives you a more accurate picture of the performance of each channel and each campaign.

  With it, you can easily break down your channels by how much they drove sales, conversions, signups, or other actions.

  With this information, you can then understand where to further allocate your resources to fuel growth.

  2. See campaign performance over longer periods of time

  When you start tracking your channel performance with attribution tracking, you’ll gain new insights into how well your channels and campaigns are performing.

  The best part — you don’t just get to see recent performance.

  You get to track your campaign results over weeks or months.

  For example, if someone found you through Google by searching a question that your blog had an answer to, but they didn’t convert, your traditional tracking strategy would discount SEO.

  But, if that same person clicked a TikTok ad you placed three weeks later, came back, and converted — SEO would receive some attribution on the conversion.

  Using an attribution tracking tool like Matomo can help paint a holistic view of how your marketing is really doing from channel to channel over the long run.

  Try Matomo for Free

  Get the web insights you need, without compromising data accuracy.

  Start for free

  No credit card required

  3. Increase revenue

  Attribution tracking has one incredible benefit for marketers: optimised marketing spend.

  When you begin looking at how well your campaigns and your channels are performing, you’ll start to see what’s working.

  Attribution tracking gives you clarity into the performance of campaigns since it’s not just looking at the first time someone clicks through to your site. It’s looking at every touchpoint a customer made along the way to a conversion.

  By understanding what channels are most effective, you can pour more resources like time, money and labour into those effective channels.

  By doubling down on the winning channels, you’ll be able to grow like never before.

  Rather than trying to “diversify” your marketing efforts, lean into what’s working.

  This is one of the key strategies of an effective marketer to maximise your campaign returns and experience long-term success in terms of revenue.

  4. Improve profit margins

  The final benefit to attribution tracking is simple: you’ll earn more profit.

  Think about it this way: let’s say you’re putting 50% of your marketing spend into Facebook ads and 50% of your spend into email marketing.

  You do this for one year, allocating $500,000 to Facebook and $500,000 to email.

  Then, you start tracking attribution.

  You find that your Facebook ads are generating $900,000 in revenue. 

  That’s a 1,800% return on your investment.

  Not bad, right?

  Well, after tracking your attribution, you see what your email revenue is.

  In the past year, you generated $1.7 million in email revenue.

  That’s a 3,400% return on your investment (close to the average return of email marketing across all industries).

  In this scenario, you can see that you’re getting nearly twice as much of a return on your marketing spend with email.

  So, the following year, you decide to go for a 75/25 split.

  Instead of putting $500,000 into both email and Facebook ads and email, you put $750,000 into email and $250,000 into Facebook ads.

  You’re still diversifying, but you’re doubling down on what’s working best.

  The result is that you’ll be able to get more revenue by investing the same amount of money, leaving you with higher profit margins.

  Different types of marketing attribution tracking

  There are several types of attribution tracking models in marketing.

  Depending on your goals, your business and your preferred method, there are a variety of types of attribution tracking you can use.

  Here are the six main types of attribution tracking:

  

  1. Last interaction

  Last interaction attribution model is also called “last touch.”

  It’s one of the most common types of attribution. The way it works is to give 100% of the credit to the final channel a customer interacted with before they converted into a customer.

  This could be through a paid ad, direct traffic, or organic search.

  One potential drawback of last interaction is that it doesn’t factor in other channels that may have assisted in the conversion. However, this model can work really well depending on the business.

  2. First interaction

  This is the opposite of the previous model.

  First interaction, or “first touch,” is all about the first interaction a customer has with your brand.

  It gives 100% of the credit to the channel (i.e. a link clicked from a social media post). And it doesn’t report or attribute anything else to another channel that someone may have interacted with in your marketing mix.

  For example, it won’t attribute the conversion or revenue if the visitor then clicked on an Instagram ad and converted. All credit would be given to the first touch which in this case would be the social media post. 

  The first interaction is a good model to use at the top of your funnel to help establish which channels are bringing leads in from outside your audience.

  3. Last non-direct

  Another model is called the last non-direct attribution model. 

  This model seeks to exclude direct traffic and assigns 100% credit for a conversion to the final channel a customer interacted with before becoming a customer, excluding clicks from direct traffic.

  For instance, if someone first comes to your website from an emai campaignl, and then, a week later, directly visits and buys a product, the email campaign gets all the credit for the sale.

  This attribution model tells a bit more about the whole sales process, shedding some more light on what other channels may have influenced the purchase decision.

  4. Linear

  Another common attribution model is linear.

  This model distributes completely equal credit across every single touchpoint (that’s tracked). 

  Imagine someone comes to your website in different ways: first, they find it through a Google search, then they click a link in an email from your campaign the next day, followed by visiting from a Facebook post a few days later, and finally, a week later, they come from a TikTok ad. 

  Here’s how the attribution is divided among these sources:

  • 25% Organic
  • 25% Email
  • 25% Facebook
  • 25% TikTok ad

  This attirubtion model provides a balanced perspective on the contribution of various sources to a user’s journey on your website.

  5. Position-based

  Position-based attribution is when you give 40% credit to both the first and last touchpoints and 20% credit is spread between the touchpoints in between.

  This model is preferred if you want to identify the initial touchpoint that kickstarted a conversion journey and the final touchpoint that sealed the deal.

  The downside is that you don’t gain much insight into the middle of the customer journey, which can make it hard to make effective decisions.

  For example, someone may have been interacting with your email newsletter for seven weeks, which allowed them to be nurtured and build a relationship with you.

  But that relationship and trust-building effort will be overlooked by the blog post that brought them in and the social media ad that eventually converted them.

  6. Time decay

  The final attribution model is called time decay attribution.

  This is all about giving credit based on the timing of the interactions someone had with your brand.

  For example, the touchpoints that just preceded the sale get the highest score, while the first touchpoints get the lowest score.

  For example, let’s use that scenario from above with the linear model:

  • 25% SEO
  • 25% Email
  • 25% Facebook ad
  • 25% Organic TikTok

  But, instead of splitting credit by 25% to each channel, you weigh the ones closer to the sale with more credit.

  Instead, time decay may look at these same channels like this:

  • 5% SEO (6 weeks ago)
  • 20% Email (3 weeks ago)
  • 30% Facebook ad (1 week ago)
  • 45% Organic TikTok (2 days ago)

  One downside is that it underestimates brand awareness campaigns. And, if you have longer sales cycles, it also isn’t the most accurate, as mid-stage nurturing and relationship building are underlooked. 

  Leverage Matomo: A marketing attribution tool

  Attribution tracking is a crucial part of leading an effective marketing strategy.

  But it’s impossible to do this without the right tools.

  A marketing attribution tool can give you insights into your best-performing channels automatically. 

  

  One of the best marketing attribution tools available is Matomo, a web analytics tool that helps you understand what’s going on with your website and different channels in one easy-to-use dashboard.

  With Matomo, you get marketing attribution as a plug-in or within Matomo On-Premise or for free in Matomo Cloud.

  The best part is it’s all done with crystal-clear data. Matomo gives you 100% accurate data since it doesn’t use data sampling on any plans like Google Analytics.

  To start tracking attribution today, try Matomo’s 21-day free trial. No credit card required.

  Try Matomo for Free

  21 day free trial. No credit card required.

  
  

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  Your website address
  

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  Choose your analytics subdomain
  

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  Your information will be used to create an account on our cloud service. For more information please consult our privacy policy.
  
  
  

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• Incrementality Testing: Quick-Start Guide (With Calculations)

  26 March 2024, by Erin

  How do you know when a campaign is successful? When you earn more revenue than last month?

  Maybe.

  But how do you know how much of an impact a certain campaign or channel had on your sales?

  With marketing attribution, you can determine credit for each sale.

  But if you want a deeper look, you need to understand the incremental impact of each channel and campaign.

  The way you do this?

  Incrementality testing.

  In this guide, we break down what incrementality is, why it’s important and how to test it so you can double down on the activities driving the most growth.

  What is incrementality?

  So, what exactly is incrementality?

  Let’s say you just ran a marketing campaign for a new product. The launch was a success. Breakthrough numbers in your revenue. You used a variety of channels and activities to bring it all together.

  So, you launch a plan for next month’s campaign. But you don’t truly know what moved the needle.

  Did you just hit new highs because your audience is bigger? And your brand is greater?

  Or did the recent moves you made make a direct difference?

  This is incrementality.

  

  Incrementality is growth directly attributed to marketing efforts beyond the overall impact of your brand. By measuring and conducting incrementality testing, you can clearly see how much of a difference each activity or channel truly impacted business growth. 

  What is incrementality testing?

  Incrementality testing allows marketers to gauge the effectiveness of a marketing tactic or strategy. It tells you if a particular marketing activity had a positive, negative or neutral impact on your business. 

  It also tells you the overall impact it can have on your key performance indicators (KPIs). 

  The result?

  You can pinpoint the highest-performing moves and incorporate them into your marketing workflows. You also discard marketing strategies with negligible, neutral or even negative impacts. 

  For example, let’s say you think a B2B LinkedIn ads campaign will help you reach your product launch goals. An incrementality test can tell you if the introduction of this campaign will help you get to the desired outcome.

  How incrementality testing works

  Before diving into your testing phase, you must clearly identify your KPIs.

  Here are the top KPIs you should be tracking on your website:

  • Ad impressions
  • Website visits
  • Leads
  • Sales

  The exact KPIs will depend on your marketing goals. You’re ready to move forward once you know your key performance indicators.

  Here’s how incrementality testing works step-by-step:

  1. Define a test and control group

  The first step is to define a test group and control group. 

  • A test group is a segment of your target audience that’s exposed to the marketing campaign. 
  • A control group is a segment that isn’t. 

  Keep in mind that both groups have similar demographics and other relevant characteristics. 

  2. Execute your campaign

  The second step is to run the marketing campaign on the test group. This can be a Facebook ad, LinkedIn ad or email marketing campaign.

  It all depends on your goals and your primary channels.

  3. Measure outcomes

  The third step is to measure the campaign’s impact based on your KPIs. 

  Let’s say a brand wants to see if a certain marketing move increases its leads. The test can tell them the number of email sign-ups with and without the campaign. 

  4. Compare results

  Next, compare the test group results with the control group. The difference in outcomes tells you the impact of that campaign. You can then use this difference to inform your future marketing strategies. 

  With Matomo, you can easily track results from campaigns — like conversions. 

  Our platform lets you quickly see what channels are getting the best results so you can gain insights into incrementality and optimise your strategy.

  Try Matomo for Free

  Get the web insights you need, without compromising data accuracy.

  Start for free

  No credit card required

  Why it’s important to conduct incrementality tests

  The digital marketing industry is constantly changing. Marketers need to stay on their toes to keep up. Incrementality tests help you stay on track.

  For example, let’s say you’re selling laptops. You can increase your warranty period to three years to see the impact on sales. An incrementality test will tell you if this move will boost your sales (and by how much).

  Now, let’s dive into the reasons why you need to consistently conduct incrementality tests:

  Determine the right tactics for success

  Identifying the best action to grow your business is a challenge every marketer faces.

  The best way to identify marketing tactics is by conducting incrementality testing. These tactics are bound to work since data back them. As a result, you can optimise your marketing budget and maximise your ROIs. 

  It lets you run multiple tests to identify the most impactful strategy between:

  • An email marketing strategy
  • A social media strategy 
  • A PPC ad

  For instance, an incrementality test might suggest email marketing will be more cost-effective than an ad campaign. What you can do is:

  • Expose the test group to the email marketing campaign and then compare the results with the control group
  • Expose the test group to the ad campaign and then compare its results with the control group

  Then, you can calculate the difference in results between the two marketing campaigns. This lets you focus on the strategy with a better ROI or ROAS potential. 

  Accurate data

  Marketing data is powerful. But getting accurate data can be challenging. With incrementality testing, you get to know the true impact of a marketing campaign. 

  Plus, with this testing strategy, you don’t have to waste your marketing budget. 

  With Matomo, you get 100% accurate data on all website activities. 

  Unlike Google Analytics, Matomo doesn’t rely on inaccurate data sampling — limiting the amount of data analysed.

  Try Matomo for Free

  Get the web insights you need, without compromising data accuracy.

  Start for free

  No credit card required

  Get the most out of your marketing investment

  Every business owner wants to maximise their return on investment. The ROI you get mainly depends on the marketing strategy. 

  For instance, email marketing offers an ROI of about 40:1 with some sources even reporting as high as 72:1.

  Incrementality testing helps you make informed investment decisions. With it, you can pinpoint the tactics that are most likely to bring the highest return. You can then focus your resources on them. It also helps you stay away from low-performing strategies. 

  Increase revenue

  It’s safe to say that the goal behind every marketing effort is a revenue boost. The higher your revenue, the more profits you generate. However, for many marketers, it’s an uphill battle. 

  With incrementality testing, you can boost your revenue by focusing your efforts in the right direction. 

  Get more traffic

  Incrementality testing tells you if a particular strategy can help you drive more traffic. You can use it to get more high-quality leads to your website or landing pages and double down on high-traffic strategies to increase those leads.

  How to test incrementality

  

  Developing an implementation plan is crucial to generate accurate insights from an incrementality test. Incrementality testing is like running a science experience. You need to go through several stages. Each stage is important for generating accurate results. 

  Here’s how you test incrementality:

  Define your goals

  Get clarity on what you want to achieve with this campaign. Which KPIs do you want to test? Is it the return on your overall investment (ROI), return on ad spend (ROAS) or something else?

  Segment your audience

  Selecting the right audience segment is crucial to getting accurate insights with an incrementality test. Decide the demographics and psychographics of the audience you want to target. Then, divide this audience segment into two sub-parts:

  • Test group (people you’ll expose to the marketing campaign)
  • Control group (people who won’t be exposed to the campaign)

  These groups are a part of the larger segment. This means people in both groups will have similar attributes. 

  Launch the test at the right time

  Before the launch, decide on the length of the test. Ideally, it should be at least one week. Don’t run any other campaigns in this window, as it can interfere with the results. 

  Analyse the data and take action

  Once the campaign is over, measure the results from both groups. Compare the data to identify incremental lift in your selected KPIs. 

  Let’s say you want to see if this campaign can boost your sales. Check to see if the test group responded differently than the control group. If the sales equal your desired outcome, you have a winning strategy. 

  Not all incrementality tests result in a positive incremental lift; Some can be neutral, indicating that the campaign didn’t have any effect. Some can even indicate a negative lift, which means your core group performed better than the test group. 

  Lastly, take action based on the test findings. 

  Incrementality test examples 

  You can use incrementality testing to identify gaps and growth opportunities in your strategy. 

  Here’s an example:

  Let’s say a company runs an incrementality test on a YouTube marketing strategy for sales. The results indicate that the ROI was only $0.10, as the company makes $1.10 for every $1.00 spent. This alarms the marketing department and helps them optimise the campaign for a higher ROI. 

  Here’s another practical example:

  Let’s say a retail business wanted to test the effectiveness of its ad campaign. So, the retailer optimises its ad campaign after conducting an incrementality test on a test and control group. As a result, they experienced a 34% incremental increase in sales.

  How to calculate incrementality in marketing

  Once you’ve aggregated the data, it’s time to calculate. There are two ways to calculate incrementality:

  Incremental profit 

  The first one is incremental profit. It tells you how much profit you can generate with a strategy (If any). With it, you get the actual value of a marketing campaign. 

  It’s calculated with the following formula:

  Test group profit – control group profit = incremental profit 

  For example, let’s say you’re exposing a test group to a paid ads campaign. And it generates a profit of $3,000. On the other hand, the control group generated a $2,000 profit. 

  In this case, your incremental profit will be $1,000 ($3,000 – $2,000). 

  However, if the paid ads campaign generates a $2,000 profit, the incremental profit would be zero. Essentially, you’re generating the same profit as before, which means the campaign doesn’t work. Similarly, a marketing strategy is no good if it generates lower profits than the control group. 

  Incremental lift

  Incremental lift measures the difference in the conversions you generate with each group. 

  Here’s the formula:

  (Test – Control)/Control x 100 = Lift

  So, let’s say the test group and control group generated 2,000 and 1,000 conversions, respectively. 

  The incremental lift you’ll get from this incrementality test would be:

  (2,000 – 1,000)/1,000 x 100 = 100

  This turns out to be a 100% incremental lift.

  How to track incrementality with Matomo

  Incrementality testing lets you use a practical approach to identify the best marketing path for your business.

  It helps you develop a hyper-focused approach that gives you access to accurate and practical data. 

  With these insights, you can confidently move forward to maximise your ROI since it helps you focus on high-performing tactics. 

  The result is more revenue and profit for your business. 

  Plus, all you need to do is identify your target audience, divide them into two groups and run your test. Then, the results will be compared to determine if the marketing strategy offers any value. 

  Conducting incrementality tests may take time and expertise. 

  But, thanks to Matomo, you can leverage accurate insights for your incrementality tests to ensure you make the right decisions to grow your business.

  See for yourself why over 1 million websites choose Matomo. Try it free for 21-days now. No credit card required.

  Try Matomo for Free

  21 day free trial. No credit card required.

  
  

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  Your information will be used to create an account on our cloud service. For more information please consult our privacy policy.
  
  
  

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