2023 has been a year of extreme change for most marketers. Everything from the economic landscape to the tools used for content creation to the most effective media attribution model has seen rapid evolution and even upheaval.
One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is how crucial it is for marketers to leverage the most effective marketing attribution model to turn data into reliable actionable insights as quickly and accurately as possible. In fact, Meta went so far as to call 2023 the “Year of Efficiency.”
This enhanced focus on data-driven decision-making and creating concrete results has made it more critical than ever for CMOs and their marketing teams to make every dollar work as hard as they can and show stellar results at all times.
Traditionally, marketers have relied on multi-touch attribution models to measure their campaign results and uncover insights that let them justify their projected marketing spend as they plan for the season ahead. While this technique used to be the gold standard in attribution, a new and much more effective method is on the scene and changing the game at light speed with generative attribution: econometric attribution.
In this post, we’ll explore the amazing benefits of generative attribution as leveraged by Marketing Evolution’s ground-breaking app, now available in the Salesforce AppExchange, with their preferred implementation partner Decision Foundry. We’ll also dive into a wealth of insider insights from Decision Foundry’s own Larry Cohen.
Read on to discover not only how to ensure your marketing programs stay relevant with the most advanced marketing attribution techniques available but also how brand-new solutions from Marketing Evolution in the Salesforce AppExchange with support from Decision Foundry, can make it happen.
How is Generative (Econometric) Attribution Different From Multi-Touch Attribution?
Multi-touch attribution, long idolized as the gold standard of data attribution, is purported to measure the impact of multiple marketing channels and touchpoints on business outcomes like sales by determining which interaction ultimately led to a sale. Each interaction that influences a conversion is assigned credit, such as clicks, views, downloads, and eventually, purchases. It aims to help marketers comprehend how campaigns collaborate to drive a business outcome.
However, these multi-touch attribution models are often inaccurate or inefficient. One such inefficiency is a lack of immediacy, where the results of a marketing campaign take months or even whole quarters to reach decision-makers due to the slow process of data collection and analysis.
In addition, the measurability of the customer journey is handicapped in a multi-touch attribution model due to data privacy regulations. It has also been widely accepted that user-level data is the “gold standard” when it comes to accurate attribution, but as Marketing Evolution’s cutting-edge methodology and generative AI technology prove, that’s nowhere close to the whole story.
In contrast, a generative attribution approach solves the challenge of omnichannel attribution without arousing privacy concerns or requiring long lags between data-generating customer interactions and the point at which decision-makers can use the resulting information to drive marketing strategy.
Advantages of Generative Attribution
Most modern CMOs will tell you their biggest challenge lies in how to make existing budgets work harder, faster, and smarter while also justifying marketing spend and results to their CFOs. However, the overarching challenge for these marketers is usually attribution: with the inaccurate data and slow turnaround times created by outdated attribution models, making timely and data-driven decisions is almost impossible.
As Decision Foundry’s Larry Cohen puts it, “Misattribution is no longer allowed in 2023”. He goes on to say that “understanding data measurement means that not everything can be measured, but everything that can be measured can be managed.” This dual ability to measure and manage in an econometric attribution model empowers marketers to learn faster, pivot faster, and see results faster - in as little as four weeks from contract to the contribution, in the case of Marketing Evolution’s ground-breaking app.
The generative attribution leveraged in this game-changing app enables marketing teams to not just gloss over the surface of their data points but to zero in on an atomic level and determine what’s really driving their most important business outcomes.
Let’s look at some of the most important advantages of generative attribution over multi-touch attribution:
Incrementality
Generative attribution dives into a second derivative level of insight beyond what previous attribution models were able to provide. This level of incrementality allows marketers to understand the true benefit of marketing dollars and goes beyond just throwing marketing spend into the marketplace because marketing contributions can now be precisely calculated. Comparing the effect of marketing dollars and how they impact customer behavior to a baseline formula provides a true and complete analysis of marketing impact. All marketers need to know ‘contribution’ in order to calculate marketing ROI or ROAS. CMOs can now see and track the most granular results possible across all marketing channels and campaigns. They can also see results representing the synergistic effects of media touchpoints on KPI conversions.
Media Contribution to Sales
Exhibiting a direct connection between media spend and sales often creates challenges for CMOs with their CFOs, but it's also an exciting opportunity. Media directly impacts revenue and generation cycles beyond just crediting a sale with marketing dollars. With the right measurements, marketers can connect the dots and see how their marketing dollars translate into actual revenue.
Econometric attribution makes media contributions to sales more immediate and more obvious, giving marketers actionable insights faster. No more waiting for monthly or quarterly reporting tie-ins to see results – econometric attribution is all about getting the insights marketers need to the right decision-makers as quickly as possible. This ‘speed-to-insight enables marketers to then reallocate media investments in enough time (while campaigns are still running) to impact marketing ROI.
ROAS
ROAS is still the fundamental platform for efficacy in 2023 and is still all about gaining granular insights at an actionable interval. Typically, attribution models provide results 45-60 days after the quarter ends to identify sales drivers. But with econometric attribution, as offered by Marketing Evolution’s new app, marketers can get insights every week and sometimes in days. This means CMOs can make real-time shifts in their strategies and drive greater results faster than ever, in just a few short weeks, instead of only after the end of each month or quarter. CMOs are also able to collaborate better with CFOs to defend their budgets and at times prove that larger media budgets will generate additional revenue for the company.
Minimal Exposure Needed
Marketers can now achieve statistical significance faster and optimize their marketing results more efficiently, after an industry-leading minimal exposure time of just weeks, not months. With the speed of digital data accelerating and improving, marketing teams are no longer limited to summary data, giving them the power to make data-driven decisions quickly and effectively.
Citizen Data Science Model
Modern data models need to be robust, going far beyond simple regression models in Excel to include both supervised and unsupervised machine learning models. This approach provides better coverage and handles outliers better than simple regression models. Marketing Evolution’s app takes these complexities and synthesizes them into “snackable insights,” bites of actionable data that can be delivered back into Tableau or Salesforce Marketing Cloud Intelligence (a.k.a. Datorama) for application to marketing campaigns in a way that’s never been done before. This means that complex data is no longer owned by data scientists, but can now be owned, honed, and leveraged by any marketing team member. All organizations are data-hungry and hunting for bite-size insights. With their groundbreaking app and this “snackable insights” approach, Marketing Evolution is effectively democratizing and evangelizing data.
How Does Marketing Evolution’s New App Uniquely Position Marketers for Attribution Success?
While there are as many data attribution solutions on the market as there are marketers who use them, there are a few key elements that make Marketing Evolution’s new app stand head and shoulders above the rest:
Extremely High-Quality Data
As Larry so eloquently puts it, “The devil’s in the details” when it comes to accurate data attribution. The extremely granular, atomic-level data baked into every facet of the app allows marketers to answer more business questions, adjust as operations and results grow, and pivot as needed. This ultra-targeted data analysis grows and evolves as marketing and business need change, creating a solution that’s not only pivotal for 2023 but for years to come.
Very Minimal Exposure Requirements
While other attribution and analysis tools may garner usable data and actionable insights in months or quarters, Marketing Evolution’s solution takes only weeks. In some cases, “snackable insights,” easily digestible chunks of marketing data, can be generated in just days from implementation!
Lightning-Fast Speed to ROI
“Half of every data project is spent on data munging,” Larry emphasizes, highlighting the inefficiency of most data collection and analysis tools. Scouring for data errors and outliers, conducting data cleansing, and bringing it all together eat up precious time that marketers could use to bring critical insights to decision-makers and drive true business outcomes. With an app that sits on top of one of the cleanest data sets and sources in the world through its connection to Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Salesforce Intelligence, these tedious efforts are reduced by 50%. Marketers can now look forward to a win-win solution with better data in less time and money.
Incredible Speed to Implementation
Marketing Evolution’s app can be implemented in just weeks, not months or years, and deliver insights in a matter of weeks. For example, when Marketing Evolution stepped in to give Salesforce Marketing Cloud Intelligence (a.k.a. Datarama’s) attribution and analysis processes an overhaul, they were able to stand up their first insight in just four short weeks from contract signing. This blazing-fast speed to implementation gives CMOs and their teams an unprecedented opportunity to get to the right answer faster and more reliably than any organization has done before.
How Are Marketing Evolution, Salesforce, and Decision Foundry Together Changing the Game for Marketers?
All CMOs have the same challenge - justifying marketing spending and budgets to CFOs. This is the same challenge for every brand, no matter what their industry or vertical is. This means that all CMOs need to be able to show true, dollar-by-dollar results for every action their marketing teams take, particularly in the financially-charged climate of 2023.
Econometric modeling is not just a marketing solution for product-driven organizations but for any organization looking to connect the dots between marketing activity and a business outcome. Those outcomes could be anything from a lead, a phone number, an opportunity, a sale, an MQL, or an SQL. With Marketing Evolution, Salesforce and Decision Foundry, CMOs, and their teams can prove the connection between their marketing efforts and those business outcomes in a way that can’t be realized any other way due to data privacy limitations and tracking.
Go From Contract to Contribution in 4 Weeks with Marketing Evolution
Marketing Evolution offers some of the world’s most advanced data attribution and person-level marketing data solutions. Their suite of best-of-breed tools includes a landmark app in the Salesforce AppExchange, as well as their signature SaaS platform, Mevo. Mevo provides robust planning, measurement, reporting, and insights capabilities to empower your team to make informed decisions quickly and at scale.
Request a demo and talk to an expert to see how Marketing Evolution’s tools can catapult your brand into the future of marketing analytics and strategy today.
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