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• The Only 7 Lead Generation Tools You Need in 2024

  7 mars 2024, par Erin

  If you can’t get leads, you can’t get customers. To ensure you always have a steady stream of new customers (and revenue), you need to equip yourself with lead generation tools.

  Lead gen software does the heavy lifting for you so you can focus on providing great products and great services. With it, you’ll be able to turn more strangers into customers and grow your business.

  And you don’t need a ton of tools to get the job done, either. Consolidating your tech stack to a few select tools will help you get more done in less time (and with less confusion).

  In this article, we’ll analyse the top seven lead generation tools to help you grow your business in 2024.

  Let’s dive in.

  What is a lead generation tool ?

  A lead generation tool is software you can use to turn strangers into customers. It helps you draw customers into your sales funnel by learning their contact details, like their email address or phone number.

  

  Lead generation tools are great levers you can pull to drive high-quality leads. They remove the grunt work by automating the lead generation process. 

  Whether it’s through creating lead magnets, offering conversion rate analytics, helping you create high-quality forms or automating the lead follow-up process, lead generation tools can bring in new customers to grow your business.

  The top 7 lead generation tools in 2024

  To land more leads, you need to ensure you’re leveraging the right software. With so many to choose from, here’s just a handful of the best ones available :

  

  1. Matomo : Best conversion optimisation tool

  Matomo is an open-source website analytics tool dedicated to protecting user privacy and data. Trusted on over 1 million websites, the platform offers in-depth insights into your web traffic, including conversion data.

  

  Why Matomo ? Matomo is trusted by over 1 million websites, including the United Nations and the European Commission, making it the leading choice for privacy-focused web analytics.

  It comes equipped with a suite of conversion optimisation features to help you generate more leads. You can easily analyse your target audience’s behaviour while also respecting users’ privacy.

  Standout features : In-depth visitor tracking, From Analytics, Session Recordings, A/B Testing, Heatmaps Marketing Attribution, roll-up reporting (pulling data from multiple sites), Google Analytics importing. and more.

  Integrations : Cloudflare, WooCommerce, Squarespace, Shopify, Drupal, Magento, Vue, SharePoint, WordPress, Wix, Webflow, GoDaddy, Jimdo, Joomla, Kajabi. and more.

  Pricing : Starts free for Matomo On-Premise and increases to $23/month for Matomo Cloud (which includes a free 21-day trial with no credit card required).

  Pros

  • 100% accurate data with no data sampling
  • Leading web analytics tool for respecting visitor privacy
  • Compliant with the strictest privacy laws, like the GDPR
  • No need for cookie consent banner (except in the UK and Germany)
  • Wide range of advanced features to optimise your website and increase conversions
  • Cloud hosting and on-premise options for flexibility

  Cons

  • Matomo On-Premise requires technical expertise (but for the less technical, the Cloud option works instantly)
  • On-Premise plugins are an additional cost

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  2. HubSpot : Best all-in-one CRM for organising leads

  HubSpot is a customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing software with over 194,000 customers worldwide. This user-friendly platform is dedicated to helping businesses of all sizes manage leads and customers.

  

  Why HubSpot ? HubSpot Marketing integrates seamlessly with the HubSpot CRM to help with everything from lead capture to conversion. The platform also features a free version — a great starting place for lead generation and management.

  Standout features : A robust set of no-code lead gen tools, like ads, forms, customisable landing pages, lead capture templates for potential customers, email campaigns, analytics dashboards and a free CRM to track leads.

  Integrations : Google Ads, WordPress, Jotform, Facebook Ads, Magento, Shopify, Weebly, WordPress, Zapier and Drupal.

  Pricing : Starts free for anyone and increases to $800/month for a professional plan.

  Pros

  • User-friendly interface
  • All-in-one lead management solution
  • Easy integration with HubSpot CRM
  • Simple analytics for beginners
  • Includes landing page tools
  • Offers email marketing tools to nurture leads

  Cons

  • Free version has limited functionality
  • Expensive jump to paid plans

  3. Leadfeeder : Best for finding warm B2B leads

  Leadfeeder is a business-to-business (B2B) marketing tool that shows B2B brands which companies are visiting their websites and gives them contact information to reach out to the right decision-makers.

  

  Why Leadfeeder ? Leadfeeder simplifies outreach for B2B organisations because it shows you what businesses are interacting with your website. Rather than trying to reach out to completely cold leads, the tool highlights brands that are already checking out your content and offerings.

  Standout features : Many account-based marketing (ABM) tools enable you to discover B2B accounts with insights into when you should contact them after they visit your site, as well as their job titles. The platform also includes a range of features that notify you and your sales team when qualified B2B leads come to your site so that you can move to capture them quickly.

  Integrations : Zoho, Google Chat, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Google Looker Studio, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Microsoft Dynamics and Slack.

  Pricing : Starts at $139/month (includes a 14-day free trial).

  Pros

  • Easily find prospective customers
  • Track website visitors and potential customers freely
  • Simple filtering capabilities

  Cons

  • Few integrations available
  • Can be difficult to contact customer support

  4. OptinMonster : Best all-in-one lead generation form tool

  Founded in 2013, OptinMonster has over 1.2 million users worldwide. It offers a wide range of lead gen tools led by robust form tools that turn your target audience into leads.

  

  Why OptinMonster ? The platform is one of the most reputable lead generation platforms available. With nearly 100 lead capture templates, it’s highly customisable to almost any business looking to begin capturing leads with different forms.

  Standout features : 95 customisable form templates, drag-and-drop builders, onsite retargeting, segmentation, A/B testing and exit-intent popups that present forms when a user is about to leave the site.

  Integrations : Constant Contact, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, Salesforce Pardot, Campaign Monitor, HubSpot, Jilt, Keap and Mailchimp.

  Pricing : Starts at $16/month (no free trial offered).

  Pros

  • Easy drag-and-drop form-builder
  • Wide range of form templates
  • Customisable forms for any business
  • Simple A/B testing to help optimise form performance

  Cons

  • No free trial available
  • Growth features, like onsite retargeting, are only available on higher-tiered plans

  5. Intercom : Best live chat tool for capturing leads

  Intercom is one of the top live chat tools for helping businesses maintain solid communication with their customers. Founded in 2011, this live chat platform serves over 25,000 users around the world with a simple, sophisticated experience and seamless lead generation features.

  

  Why Intercom ? Intercom is a live chat tool first. But many people don’t know it’s also a simple lead capture tool. When people think of lead generation, they think of static or popup forms. But Intercom allows you to capture forms directly within a live chat conversation.

  Standout features : Lead generation via live chat that allows you to naturally capture potential customers’ information to turn them into a lead. The tool also comes equipped with chatbots that can automate the communication and lead gen process on autopilot.

  Integrations : Pipedrive, Typeform, Google Analytics, Zapier, Calendly, Salesforce, Stripe, Campaign Monitor, Clearbit Reveal and HubSpot.

  Pricing : Starts at $39/month (with a 21-day free trial).

  Pros

  • Live chat lead gen capture
  • Chatbot lead generation automation
  • Wide range of integrations and apps
  • User-friendly interface

  Cons

  • Fairly expensive for small businesses
  • Customer support isn’t the fastest

  6. Callingly : Best for making inbound calls with leads

  Callingly is a sophisticated call software that lets you get the most out of every inbound call you get from leads. Founded in 2019, this software company gives valuable insights into your inbound call leads, pulling information from various integrations and forms.

  

  Why Callingly ? Callingly is a robust call software that gathers lead information through forms, lead magnets, landing pages and forms. The software also has intelligent routing, which sends a call to the most relevant salesperson.

  Standout features : Advanced lead routing ensures inbound leads are directed to the most appropriate sales rep based on their unique needs and geographic location. The tool is also equipped with call tracking, analytics, lead source tracking and more to help personalise the experience for quick capture and conversion of leads.

  Integrations : ClickFunnels, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Drip, Aircall, HubSpot, Jotform, OptinMonster, Unbounce and Zapier.

  Pricing : Starts at $49/month (with a 14-day free trial).

  Pros

  • Instantly see robust caller information based on previous interactions
  • Intelligent routing places leads with the right sales reps
  • Call recordings to capture data and transfer it into your CRM
  • Voicemail and caller ID capabilities
  • Reporting and analytics for performance tracking

  Cons

  • Doesn’t include lead segmentation
  • Limited customisations
  • No email integration

  7. Notion : Best for creating informational lead magnets

  Notion is one of the most popular collaboration tools on the Internet. Founded in 2013, the platform has over 35 million users worldwide. While it’s known primarily for its advanced note-taking capabilities, Notion is also a simple tool you can use to create informational lead magnets.

  

  Why Notion ? Notion is a simple yet powerful tool you can use to create almost anything. If you want to generate more leads, then creating a free info product with Notion is a simple and effective way to do that. It enables you to create ebooks, digital courses and video courses without having to rely on expensive software.

  Standout features : Documentation tools, note-taking, collaborative documents and duplication capabilities. It’s simple to create a high-value informational product, like an ebook or course with multiple chapters.

  Integrations : Audienceful, Miro, Momentum, Slack, ChatGPT, Clockify, Desktop.com, SureTriggers, Trello and Google Drive.

  Pricing : Starts at $8/month (no free trial available).

  Pros

  • Easy to create a digital product or lead magnet
  • Leads have access with a simple link
  • Lead magnet can be updated in real time
  • AI writing assistant
  • Drag-and-drop functionality
  • User-friendly interface
  • Low-cost pricing plans

  Cons

  • No free trial available (though there is a free version)
  • Search function could use some improvement
  • Performance isn’t the fastest

  Use Matomo to generate more leads

  If you want more leads, then you need to start tracking your website’s forms.

  With Matomo, you get access to features like Form Analytics, A/B Testing, Heatmaps, and Session Recordings to help with conversion rate optimisation.

  Recently, Concrete CMS leveraged Matomo’s funnel analysis feature to improve its lead capture. The CMS was then able to identify bottlenecks in user onboarding. Matomo’s insights showed that users were getting stuck at the address input stage of the form.

  By tweaking their form, Concrete CMS tripled their leads in just a few days.

  If you want to improve your lead generation, then get started with Matomo’s 21-day free trial today. No credit card required.

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• Web Analytics : The Quick Start Guide

  25 janvier 2024, par Erin

  You’ve spent ages carefully designing your website, crafting copy to encourage as many users as possible to purchase your product. 

  But they aren’t. And you don’t know why. 

  The good news is you don’t have to remain in the dark. Collecting and analysing web analytics lets you understand how your users behave on your site and why they aren’t converting. 

  But before you can do that, you need to know what those metrics and KPIs mean. That’s why this article is taking things back to basics. Below, we’ll show you which metrics to track, what they mean and how to choose the best web analytics platform. 

  What is web analytics ?

  Web analytics is the process of collecting, analysing and reporting website data to understand how users behave on your website. Web analytics platforms like Matomo collect this data by adding a code line to every site page. 

  Why is it important to track web analytics ?

  There are plenty of reasons you should start tracking web analytics, including the following :

  

  Analyse user behaviour

  Being able to analyse user behaviour is the most important reason to track website analytics. After all, you can’t improve your website’s conversion rate if you don’t know what users do on your site.

  A web analytics platform can show you how users move around your site, the links they click on and the forms they fill in. 

  Improve site experience

  Web analytics is a fantastic way to identify issues and find areas where your site could improve. You could look at your site’s exit pages, for example, and see why so many users leave your site when viewing one of these pages and what you can do to fix it.

  It can also teach you about your user’s preferences so you can improve the user experience in the future. Maybe they always click a certain type of button or prefer one page’s design over another. Whatever the case, you can use the data to make your site more user-friendly and increase conversions.

  Boost marketing efforts

  Web analytics is one of the best ways to understand your marketing efforts and learn how to improve them.

  A good platform can collect valuable data about your marketing campaigns, including :

  • Where users came from
  • What actions these users take on your site
  • Which traffic sources create the most conversions

  This information can help you decide which marketing campaigns send the best users to your site and generate the highest ROI. 

  Make informed decisions

  Ultimately, web analytics simplifies decision-making for your website and marketing efforts by relying on concrete data instead of guesswork.

  Rather than wonder why users aren’t adding products to their shopping cart or signing up for your newsletter, you can analyse how they behave and use that information to hypothesise how you can improve conversions. Web analytics will even give you the data to confirm whether you were right or wrong. 

  What are the key metrics you should track ?

  Getting your head around web analytics means knowing the most important metrics to track. Below are seven key metrics and how to track them using Matomo. 

  Traffic

  Traffic is the number of people visiting your website over a period of time. It is the lifeblood of your website since the more visits your site receives, the more revenue it stands to generate.

  However, simply having a high volume of visitors does not guarantee substantial revenue. To maximise your success, focus on attracting your ideal customers and generating quality traffic from those who are most likely to engage with your offerings.

  Ideally, you should be seeing an upward trend in traffic over time though. The longer your website has been published and the more quality and targeted content you create, the more traffic you should receive. 

  Matomo offers multiple ways to check your website’s traffic :

  • Visits log report
  • Real-time visitor map
  • Visits in real-time report

  The visits log report in Matomo is perfect if you want a granular view of your visitors.

  

  It shows you each user session and get a detailed picture of each user, including :

  • Their geographic location
  • The number of actions they took
  • How they found your site
  • The length of time they stayed
  • Their device type
  • What browser they are using
  • The keyword they used to find your site

  Traffic sources

  Traffic sources show how users access your website. They can enter via a range of traffic sources, including search engines, email and direct visits, for instance.

  Matomo has five default traffic source types :

  • Search engine – visitors from search platforms (like Google, Bing, etc.)
  • Direct traffic – individuals who directly type your website’s URL into their browser or have it bookmarked, bypassing search engines or external links
  • Websites – visits from other external sites
  • Campaigns – traffic resulting from specific marketing initiatives (like a newsletter or ad campaign, for instance)
  • Social networks  – visitors who access your website through various social media platforms (such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram. etc.)

  But each of these can be broken into more granular sources. Take organic traffic from search engines, for example :

  

  Matomo tracks visits from each search engine, showing you how many visits you had in total, how many actions those visitors took, and the average amount of time those visitors spent on your site. 

  You can even integrate Google, Bing and Yahoo search consoles to monitor keyword performance and enhance your search engine optimisation efforts.

  Pageviews

  Whenever a browser loads a page, your web analytics tool records a pageview. This term, pageview, represents the count of unique times a page on your website is loaded.

  You can track pageviews in Matomo by opening the Pages tab in the Behaviour section of the main navigation. 

  

  You can quickly see your site’s most visited pages in this report in Matomo. 

  Be careful of deriving too much meaning from pageviews. Just because a page has lots of views, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s quality or valuable. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, the page might be confusing, so users have to keep revisiting it to understand the content. Second, it could be the default page most visitors land on when they enter your site, like the homepage. 

  While pageviews offer insights, it’s important to dig deeper into user behaviour and other metrics to truly gauge a page’s importance and impact.

  Average time on page

  Time on page is the amount of time users spend on the page on average. You can see average time on page in Matomo’s page analytics report.

  A low time on page score isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Users will naturally spend less time on gateway pages and checkout pages. A short time spent on checkout pages, especially if users are successfully completing their transactions, indicates that the checkout process is easy and seamless.

  Conversely, a longer time on blog posts is a positive indicator. It suggests that readers are genuinely engaged with the content.

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

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  Returning visitors

  Returning visitors measures the number of people who visit your site more than once. It can be expressed as a number or a percentage. 

  While some analytics tools only show returning visitors as a percentage, Matomo lets you learn more about each of them in the Visitor profile report. 

  

  This report offers a full summary of a user’s previous actions, including :

  • How many times they’ve visited your site
  • The pages they viewed on each visit
  • Where they visited from
  • The devices they used
  • How quickly pages loaded

  When people keep coming back to a website, it’s usually a positive sign and means they like the service, content or products. But, it depends on the type of website. If it’s the kind of site where people make one-off purchases, the focus might not be on getting visitors to return. For a site like this, a high number of returning visitors could indicate that the website is confusing or difficult to use. 

  It’s all about the context – different websites have different goals, and it’s important to keep this in mind when analysing your site.

  Conversions

  A conversion is when a user takes a desired action on your website. This could be :

  • Making a purchase
  • Subscribing to your newsletter
  • Signing up for a webinar

  You can track virtually any action as a conversion in Matomo by setting goals and analysing the goals report.

  

  As you can see in the screenshot above, Matomo shows your conversions plotted over time. You can also see your conversion rate to get a complete picture and assign a value to each conversion to calculate how much revenue each conversion generates. 

  Bounce rate

  A visitor bounces when they leave your website without taking an action or visiting another page. 

  Typically, you want bounce rate to be low because it means people are engaged with your site and more likely to convert. However, in some cases, a high bounce rate isn’t necessarily bad. It might mean that visitors found what they needed on the first page and didn’t feel the need to look further. 

  The impact of bounce rate depends on your website’s purpose and goals.

  You can view your website’s bounce rate using Matomo’s page analytics report — the same report that shows pageviews.

  Try Matomo for Free

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

  Start for free

  No credit card required

  Web analytics best practices

  You should follow several best practices to get the most from website analytics data. 

  Choose metrics that align with your goals

  Only some metrics your analytics platform tracks will be relevant to your business. So don’t waste time analysing all of them.

  Instead, focus on the ones that matter most to your business. A marketer for an e-commerce store, for example, might focus on conversion-related metrics like conversion rate and total number of transactions. They might also want to look at campaign-related metrics, like traffic sources and bounce rates, so they can optimise paid ad campaigns accordingly. 

  A marketer looking to improve their site’s SEO, on the other hand, will want to track SEO web analytics like bounce rate and broken links.

  Add context to your data

  Don’t take your data at face value. There could be dozens of factors that impact how visitors access and use your site — many of which are outside your control. 

  For example, you may think an update to your site has sent your conversions crashing when, in reality, a Google algorithm update has negatively impacted your search traffic.

  Adding annotations within Matomo can provide invaluable context to your data. These annotations can be used to highlight specific events, changes or external factors that might influence your website metrics.

  

  By documenting significant occurrences, such as website updates, marketing campaigns or algorithm changes, you create a timeline that helps explain fluctuations in your data.

  Go further with advanced web analytics features

  It’s clear that a web analytics platform is a necessary tool to understand your website’s performance.

  However, if you want greater confidence in decision-making, quicker insights and better use of budget and resources, you need an advanced solution with behavioural analytics features like heatmaps, A/B testing and session recordings. 

  Most web analytics solutions don’t offer these advanced features, but Matomo does, so we’ll be showcasing Matomo’s behavioural analytics features.

  Now, if you don’t have a Matomo account, you can try it free for 21-days to see if it’s the right tool for you.

  

  A heatmap, like the example above, makes it easy to discover where your users pay attention, which part of your site they have problems with, and how they convert. It adds a layer of qualitative data to the facts offered by your web analytics tool.

  Similarly, session recordings will offer you real-time playbacks of user interactions, helping you understand their navigation patterns, identify pain points and gain insights into the user experience.

  Then you can run experiments bu using A/B testing to compare different versions of your website or specific elements, allowing you to make informed decisions based on actual user preferences and behaviour. For instance, you can compare different headlines, images, page layouts or call-to-action buttons to see which resonates better with your audience. 

  Together, these advanced features will give you the confidence to optimise your website, improve user satisfaction and make data-driven decisions that positively impact your business.

  Try Matomo for Free

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

  Start for free

  No credit card required

  How to choose a web analytics tool

  A web analytics tool is the best way to track the above metrics. Choose the best one for your company by following the steps below. 

  Look for the right features

  Most popular web analytics platforms, like Google Analytics, will offer the same core features like tracking website traffic, monitoring conversions and generating reports. 

  But it’s the added features that set great tools apart. Do you need specific tools to measure the performance of your e-commerce store, for example ? What about paid ad performance, A/B testing or form analytics ?

  By understanding exactly what you need from an analytics platform, you can make an informed choice. 

  Think about data accuracy

  Data accuracy is one of the biggest issues with analytics tools. Many users block cookies or opt out of tracking, making it difficult to get a clear picture of user behaviour — and meaning that you have to think about how your user data will be collected with your chosen platform.

  Google Analytics, for instance, uses data sampling to make assumptions about traffic levels rather than relying on accurate data. This can lead to inaccurate reports and false conclusions. 

  It’s why Matomo doesn’t use data sampling and provides 100% accurate data. 

  Understand how you’ll deal with data privacy

  Data privacy is another big concern for analytics users. Several major analytics platforms aren’t compatible with regional data privacy laws like GDPR, which can impact your ability to collect data in these regions. 

  It’s why many companies trust privacy-focused analytics tools that abide by regulations without impacting your ability to collect data. Matomo is a market leader in this respect and is one of the few web analytics tools that the Centre for Data Privacy Protection in France has said is exempt from tracking consent requirements.

  Many government agencies across Europe, Asia, Africa and North America, including organisations like the United Nations and European Commission, rely on Matomo for web analytics.

  Conclusion

  Web analytics is a powerful tool that helps you better understand your users, improve your site’s performance and boost your marketing efforts. 

  If you want a platform that offers advanced features, 100% accurate data and protects your users’ privacy, then look no further than Matomo. 

  Try Matomo free for 21 days, no credit card required. 

  Try Matomo for Free

  21 day free trial. No credit card required.

  
  

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• Benefits and Shortcomings of Multi-Touch Attribution

  13 mars 2023, par Erin — Analytics Tips

  Few sales happen instantly. Consumers take their time to discover, evaluate and become convinced to go with your offer. 

  Multi-channel attribution (also known as multi-touch attribution or MTA) helps businesses better understand which marketing tactics impact consumers’ decisions at different stages of their buying journey. Then double down on what’s working to secure more sales. 

  Unlike standard analytics, multi-channel modelling combines data from various channels to determine their cumulative and independent impact on your conversion rates. 

  The main benefit of multi-touch attribution is obvious : See top-performing channels, as well as those involved in assisted conversions. The drawback of multi-touch attribution : It comes with a more complex setup process. 

  If you’re on the fence about getting started with multi-touch attribution, here’s a summary of the main arguments for and against it. 

  What Are the Benefits of Multi-Touch Attribution ?

  Remember an old parable of blind men and an elephant ?

  Each one touched the elephant and drew conclusions about how it might look. The group ended up with different perceptions of the animal and thought the others were lying…until they decided to work together on establishing the truth.

  Multi-channel analytics works in a similar way : It reconciles data from various channels and campaign types into one complete picture. So that you can get aligned on the efficacy of different campaign types and gain some other benefits too. 

  Better Understanding of Customer Journeys 

  On average, it takes 8 interactions with a prospect to generate a conversion. These interactions happen in three stages : 

  • Awareness : You need to introduce your company to the target buyers and pique their interest in your solution (top-of-the-funnel). 
  • Consideration : The next step is to channel this casual interest into deliberate research and evaluation of your offer (middle-of-the-funnel). 
  • Decision : Finally, you need to get the buyer to commit to your offer and close the deal (bottom-of-the-funnel). 

  You can analyse funnels using various attribution models — last-click, fist-click, position-based attribution, etc. Each model, however, will spotlight the different element(s) of your sales funnel. 

  For example, a single-touch attribution model like last-click zooms in on the bottom-of-the-funnel stage. You can evaluate which channels (or on-site elements) sealed the deal for the prospect. For example, a site visitor arrived from an affiliate link and started a free trial. In this case, the affiliate (referral traffic) gets 100% credit for the conversion. 

  This measurement tactic, however, doesn’t show which channels brought the customer to the very bottom of your funnel. For instance, they may have interacted with a social media post, your landing pages or a banner ad before that. 

  Multi-touch attribution modelling takes funnel analysis a notch further. In this case, you map more steps in the customer journey — actions, events, and pages that triggered a visitor’s decision to convert — in your website analytics tool.

  

  Then, select a multi-touch attribution model, which provides more backward visibility aka allows you to track more than one channel, preceding the conversion. 

  For example, a Position Based attribution model reports back on all interactions a site visitor had between their first visit and conversion. 

  A prospect first lands at your website via search results (Search traffic), which gets a 40% credit in this model. Two days later, the same person discovers a mention of your website on another blog and visits again (Referral traffic). This time, they save the page as a bookmark and revisit it again in two more days (Direct traffic). Each of these channels will get a 10% credit. A week later, the prospect lands again on your site via Twitter (Social) and makes a request for a demo. Social would then receive a 40% credit for this conversion. Last-click would have only credited social media and first-click — search engines. 

  The bottom line : Multi-channel attribution models show how different channels (and marketing tactics) contribute to conversions at different stages of the customer journey. Without it, you get an incomplete picture.

  Improved Budget Allocation 

  Understanding causal relationships between marketing activities and conversion rates can help you optimise your budgets.

  First-click/last-click attribution models emphasise the role of one channel. This can prompt you toward the wrong conclusions. 

  For instance, your Facebook ads campaigns do great according to a first-touch model. So you decide to increase the budget. What you might be missing though is that you could have an even higher conversion rate and revenue if you fix “funnel leaks” — address high drop-off rates during checkout, improve page layout and address other possible reasons for exiting the page.

  

  By knowing when and why people abandon their purchase journey, you can improve your marketing velocity (aka the speed of seeing the campaign results) and your marketing costs (aka the budgets you allocate toward different assets, touchpoints and campaign types). 

  Or as one of the godfathers of marketing technology, Dan McGaw, explained in a webinar :

  “Once you have a multi-touch attribution model, you [can] actually know the return on ad spend on a per-campaign basis. Sometimes, you can get it down to keywords. Sometimes, you can get down to all kinds of other information, but you start to realise, “Oh, this campaign sucks. I should shut this off.” And then really, that’s what it’s about. It’s seeing those campaigns that suck and turning them off and then taking that budget and putting it into the campaigns that are working”.

  More Accurate Measurements 

  The big boon of multi-channel marketing attribution is that you can zoom in on various elements of your funnel and gain granular data on the asset’s performance. 

  In other words : You get more accurate insights into the different elements involved in customer journeys. But for accurate analytics measurements, you must configure accurate tracking. 

  Define your objectives first : How do you want a multi-touch attribution tool to help you ? Multi-channel attribution analysis helps you answer important questions such as :

  • How many touchpoints are involved in the conversions ? 
  • How long does it take for a lead to convert on average ? 
  • When and where do different audience groups convert ? 
  • What is your average win rate for different types of campaigns ?

  Your objectives will dictate which multi-channel modelling approach will work best for your business — as well as the data you’ll need to collect. 

  At the highest level, you need to collect two data points :

  • Conversions : Desired actions from your prospects — a sale, a newsletter subscription, a form submission, etc. Record them as tracked Goals. 
  • Touchpoints : Specific interactions between your brand and targets — specific page visits, referral traffic from a particular marketing channel, etc. Record them as tracked Events. 

  Your attribution modelling software will then establish correlation patterns between actions (conversions) and assets (touchpoints), which triggered them. 

  The accuracy of these measurements, however, will depend on the quality of data and the type of attribution modelling used. 

  Data quality stands for your ability to procure accurate, complete and comprehensive information from various touchpoints. For instance, some data won’t be available if the user rejected a cookie consent banner (unless you’re using a privacy-focused web analytics tool like Matomo). 

  Different attribution modelling techniques come with inherent shortcomings too as they don’t accurately represent the average sales cycle length or track visitor-level data, which allows you to understand which customer segments convert best.

  Learn more about selecting the optimal multi-channel attribution model for your business.

  What Are the Limitations of Multi-Touch Attribution ?

  Overall, multi-touch attribution offers a more comprehensive view of the conversion paths. However, each attribution model (except for custom ones) comes with inherent assumptions about the contribution of different channels (e.g,. 25%-25%-25%-25% in linear attribution or 40%-10%-10%-40% in position-based attribution). These conversion credit allocations may not accurately represent the realities of your industry. 

  Also, most attribution models don’t reflect incremental revenue you gain from existing customers, which aren’t converting through analysed channels. For example, account upgrades to a higher tier, triggered via an in-app offer. Or warranty upsell, made via a marketing email. 

  In addition, you should keep in mind several other limitations of multi-touch attribution software.

  Limited Marketing Mix Analysis 

  Multi-touch attribution tools work in conjunction with your website analytics app (as they draw most data from it). Because of that, such models inherit the same visibility into your marketing mix — a combo of tactics you use to influence consumer decisions.

  Multi-touch attribution tools cannot evaluate the impact of :

  • Dark social channels 
  • Word-of-mouth 
  • Offline promotional events
  • TV or out-of-home ad campaigns 

  If you want to incorporate this data into your multi-attribution reporting, you’ll have to procure extra data from other systems — CRM, ad measurement partners, etc, — and create complex custom analytics models for its evaluation.

  Time-Based Constraints 

  Most analytics apps provide a maximum 90-day lookback window for attribution. This can be short for companies with longer sales cycles. 

  

  Marketing channels can be overlooked or underappreciated when your attribution window is too short. Because of that, you may curtail spending on brand awareness campaigns, which, in turn, will reduce the number of people entering the later stages of your funnel. 

  At the same time, many businesses would also want to track a look-forward window — the revenue you’ll get from one customer over their lifetime. In this case, not all tools may allow you to capture accurate information on repeat conversions — through re-purchases, account tier updates, add-ons, upsells, etc. 

  Again, to get an accurate picture you’ll need to understand how far into the future you should track conversions. Will you only record your first sales as a revenue number or monitor customer lifetime value (CLV) over 3, 6 or 12 months ? 

  The latter is more challenging to do. But CLV data can add another depth of dimension to your modelling accuracy. With Matomo, you set up this type of tracking by using our visitors’ tracking feature. We can help you track select visitors with known identifiers (e.g. name or email address) to discover their visiting patterns over time. 

  

  Limited Access to Raw Data 

  In web analytics, raw data stands for unprocessed website visitor information, stripped from any filters, segmentation or sampling applied. 

  Data sampling is a practice of analysing data subsets (instead of complete records) to extrapolate findings towards the entire data set. Google Analytics 4 applies data sampling once you hit over 500k sessions at the property level. So instead of accurate, real-life reporting, you receive approximations, generated by machine learning models. Data sampling is one of the main reasons behind Google Analytics’ accuracy issues. 

  In multi-channel attribution modelling, usage of sampled data creates further inconsistencies between the reports and the actual state of affairs. For instance, if your website generates 5 million page views, GA multi-touch analytical reports are based on the 500K sample size aka only 90% of the collected information. This hardly represents the real effect of all marketing channels and can lead to subpar decision-making. 

  With Matomo, the above is never an issue. We don’t apply data sampling to any websites (no matter the volume of traffic) and generate all the reports, including multi-channel attribution ones, based on 100% real user data. 

  AI Application 

  On the other hand, websites with smaller traffic volumes often have limited sampling datasets for building attribution models. Some tracking data may also be not available because the visitor rejected a cookie banner, for instance. On average, less than 50% of users in Australia, France, Germany, Denmark and the US among other countries always consent to all cookies. 

  To compensate for such scenarios, some multi-touch attribution solutions apply AI algorithms to “fill in the blanks”, which impacts the reporting accuracy. Once again, you get approximate data of what probably happened. However, Matomo is legally exempt from showing a cookie consent banner in most EU markets. Meaning you can collect 100% accurate data to make data-driven decisions.

  Difficult Technical Implementation 

  Ever since attribution modelling got traction in digital marketing, more and more tools started to emerge.

  

  Most web analytics apps include multi-touch attribution reports. Then there are standalone multi-channel attribution platforms, offering extra features for conversion rate optimization, offline channel tracking, data-driven custom modelling, etc. 

  Most advanced solutions aren’t available out of the box. Instead, you have to install several applications, configure integrations with requested data sources, and then use the provided interfaces to code together custom data models. Such solutions are great if you have a technical marketer or a data science team. But a steep learning curve and high setup costs make them less attractive for smaller teams. 

  Conclusion 

  Multi-touch attribution modelling lifts the curtain in more steps, involved in various customer journeys. By understanding which touchpoints contribute to conversions, you can better plan your campaign types and budget allocations. 

  That said, to benefit from multi-touch attribution modelling, marketers also need to do the preliminary work : Determine the key goals, set up event and conversion tracking, and then — select the optimal attribution model type and tool. 

  Matomo combines simplicity with sophistication. We provide marketers with familiar, intuitive interfaces for setting up conversion tracking across the funnel. Then generate attribution reports, based on 100% accurate data (without any sampling or “guesstimation” applied). You can also get access to raw analytics data to create custom attribution models or plug it into another tool ! 

  Start using accurate, easy-to-use multi-channel attribution with Matomo. Start your free 21-day trial now. No credit card requried.