1. What is attribution?

Attribution is giving the proper credit to all advertising and pre-visit actions that resulted in (introduced or influenced) a sale or conversion.

2. How is attribution different than web analytics?

Most web analytics packages focus their sales and conversion data on either first click or last click. They don’t spread the credit properly across all contributing factors.

3. Why does attribution matter to me?

By only focusing on first click or last click, you are not seeing the true picture. Chances are you are making bad decisions that are wasting your budget. You are likely spending more money for less valuable clicks and not focusing on the true campaigns and keywords that have the most impact on your bottom line.

4. First click/Last click – What does that mean?

Just like visitors take many different paths through your Web site, there are lots of different paths that visitors take on the Internet to get to your Web site.

Most web analytic packages weren’t built to analyze the complex pre-visit behavior. Their reports base the calculations on either the first click or the last click.

First Click/Last Click Example

Visitor searches on Google for the phrase ‘home gym’ – They get to your site – They leave – The next day, that same visitor searches on Yahoo for the term ‘Bowflex’ – Visitor gets to your site – They purchase.

First Click – The sale or conversion would be credited to Google with the phrase ‘home gym.’

Last Click – The sale or conversion would be credited to Yahoo with the keyword ‘Bowflex’

5. How does ClearSaleing know that a visitor is the same visitor?

ClearSaleing uses a first party cookie as a visitor identifier. A cookie is just a file that most Web sites place on a visitor’s computer upon arriving on the site. The ClearSaleing cookie has a unique ID number that gets assigned to that visitor. The ID is good for 6 months from the time of the visit. When the visitor comes back to the site, ClearSaleing checks to see if that visitor has an assigned ID on their computer (ClearSaleing cookie), and if so knows that the visitor is a return visitor with a history in ClearSaleing.

6. What happens if my conversions don’t take place on my website? Won’t those be invisible to ClearSaleing?

No. ClearSaleing can track conversions that take place in the real world (non-Internet). As part of the implementation, we work with you to set up communication between offline systems and ClearSaleing.

7. How do I know how much credit to give to each click?

Generally companies don’t know at first. Over time, as ClearSaleing gathers data, proper weighting models become apparent. For that reason, there are several options on how to assign the credit. Starting off with ‘Even’, where every click gets the same percent of credit, is the best way. For example, if a visitor came to your Web site from a search on Google and purchased immediately, Google and the appropriate keyword would get 100% credit. However, if they first came to your site from a link in an email, then clicked on a banner, then did a search and then returned to your site by typing your URL in the browser, each one of those steps would get 25% of the credit.

As you see patterns in the data, you may choose to switch to a custom model where you assign the percent of credit to each step. Or you may want to use either the Attribution Pattern or have a Customized Attribution Model developed for you.

8. What happens if there is more than one conversion on my site? For example, my site is an e-commerce site, but I also consider a conversion when someone signs up for my email newsletter.

ClearSaleing supports multiple conversions on a Web site. During the initial setup and training, these can be configured.

9. What is the difference between ROI and ROAS?

ROAS is ‘Return on Ad Spend.’ Although it is a good metric, it does not give you the complete picture. It only shows you what you are generating in revenue for every dollar you spend. It does not take any costs beyond what you are spending on specific marketing campaigns into consideration. You can have a ‘successful’ campaign based on ROAS that is actually losing a great deal of money.

ROI takes into consideration all of the cost factors (costs to create the goods or provide the services, shipping, tax, etc.) beyond just marketing spend. It is based on actual profit. For that reason, it is much smarter to make business and financial decisions (pay-per-click budget, etc.) using ROI, not ROAS.

10. I don’t have access to all of this financial information. Perhaps ClearSaleing is not the right tool for me?

Start small and use what you do know. Once you start showing executives that you can base decisions on calculations beyond ROAS, you will find help within your organization to get this information. And you will be proving yourself as a next generation marketer and an invaluable resource in your organization. No longer are you making decisions from the gut or on metrics that may actually be distorting the true story – you will be able to make marketing a profit center.