The Cross-Channel Attribution Landscape
As a new analyst at Forrester, I’m taking over coverage of cross-channel attribution, metrics, and measurement for customer intelligence professionals. It is a wide-spanning topic to cover, but I’m up for the challenge!
One of the major topics that I’ll cover is cross-channel attribution. Cross-channel attribution is essentially an advanced measurement approach to measure channel performance and customer performance metrics more accurately by calculating the true credit given to a specific marketing effort that leads to a desired customer action. It’s a daunting task for marketers because it requires organizational support and a deep understanding of attribution modeling.
For support, marketers often turn to external vendors — the subject of my latest research: Understanding the Cross-Channel Attribution Landscape. As I was researching this report, it was clear that cross-channel attribution is top of mind for marketers and CI folks alike. Why? It’s a more advanced, precise way to measure channel and customer performance. In an age of austerity that requires responsible and efficient marketing investment, it’s no wonder that it’s a priority.
The cross-channel attribution vendor landscape is complicated and grey, filled with new and familiar faces. Organizations have a wide range of options when considering whom to work with for their cross-channel attribution strategy. Each brings specific strengths to solve for cross-channel attribution problem. When choosing to work with a vendor, CI professionals must consider a partner that has a deep understanding of attribution methodology and a willingness to learn about the organizations specific business problems. And most importantly, the organization needs to support cross-channel attribution and the implications the results will uncover.
I am thrilled to be a part of the customer intelligence team here at Forrester. Measurement and metrics is the cornerstone for all CI professionals, and I look forward to providing insights and relevant research to this topic area. Please feel free to share with me some of the challenges you face when measuring and building metrics for marketing efforts and customer behavior. In the meantime, I’ve kicked off a Wave evaluation of cross-channel attribution vendors — if you have additional thoughts to share, consider taking our survey here:
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