Attribution: Customer Journey Based Attribution with Jo Young (episode 137)

by April Buencamino-dy

Today we are joined by Marketing Attribution Expert Jo Young. Jo is the Managing Director at UniFida, a team of data-driven marketing experts with a focus on attribution, especially matching up offline and online marketing. Jo’s been at the forefront of marketing data analysis since 1995!

Jo Young UniFida Attribution

Listen now for free:

Subscribe to Keep Optimising on your favourite Podcast App

listen on YouTube

Getting Into Marketing Attribution

Jo has always been in the business of media measurement and all types of marketing measurement. She was in database marketing in the early days of digital marketing and says that it was a natural progression wanting to understand what media drives people to make purchase decisions.

Marketing Attribution in eCommerce

Media measurement is explaining what you’re getting for all the marketing that you’re doing. So marketing attribution will be able to tell you what events contributed to an outcome, such as a sale, and assign a value to these events. It will also show you what media works with different types of customers and how they work together.

In eCommerce, it’s important to understand the customer journey and what’s working, and attribution helps with that.

The Starting Point: First-Party Data

With marketing attribution, you need to start with data, in particular, first-party data. This is information you get from people who go to your website, which you collect and own.

Combine with this the data you have from people who’ve previously inquired and customers who’ve previously made a purchase, including their media touch points, and you now have a solid starting point for understanding your customers.

Marketing Attribution Benefits

For Jo, the benefits of marketing attribution include being able to understand customer behavior and seeing how digital and direct marketing work together.

Getting into marketing attribution will give stakeholders a holistic view of what happens on the customer journey and how each component on that journey contributes to the final outcome or sale.

Marketing Attribution and Sustainability

At UniFida, they are campaigning to have the carbon cost per sale alongside the KPIs of ROI and cost of sale because they believe that marketing should be environmentally friendly.

Putting up the carbon footprint against all channels will make people more aware of it, track it, and actually see if there’s wastage in what they’re doing.

Insider Tips

If we’ve inspired someone to take their first step with marketing attribution – what do they need to know to give themselves the best chance of success?

Take a look at what you’re measuring and how you’re measuring it, then find out and get a hold of your first-party data.

Once you’ve started of course you’ve got to ‘keep optimising’! So what’s your favourite way to improve marketing attribution performance?

Split your data by new and existing customers. You should be able to see that the media mix between the two is different, and if you don’t, make sure you’re looking at both new and existing customers.

If someone listening wants to learn more about marketing attribution is there one cheap/free resource you’d recommend?

To know more about attribution, Jo recommends UniFida’s resources on the subject, including the frequently asked questions you will find on the page.

Crystal ball time – what’s coming up in the next 6-12 months that we should be getting ready for in marketing attribution?

Jo says everyone should be getting ready for sustainable marketing and how Google’s changes can affect first-party data.

Interview Links

Jo on Social media:

Sponsored by…

Triple Whale

Transform Your Data Into Growth

Triple Whale is the Smart Data Platform.

Manage analytics, attribution, and creative for your Shopify store in one place.

Triple Whale brings the metrics that matter most into one easy-to-use dashboard, giving you the real-time insights you need to grow your brand.

Find out more and book a demo here

Full transcript to read & download:

Click to access