Digital Analytics MiniDegree — Week 11–12

Here I come again this another week continuing with the review of the lessons that I have done during week eleventh of the Digital Analytics MiniDigree of CXL. This week I started the Attribution course. In this course, we keep learning about the theory behind attribution and everything we need to know to start thinking with an attribution model in mind every time we analyze the data we gather from our analytics solution.

What data is needed

The first thing you need is in order to start analyzing attribution is web analytics data. After that, the other thing that is important for you to know is what granularity of data do we need.

Granularity: are you able to get event-level data to the level that you need? Are you able to see not just a visit? One of the things that are really integral when it comes to understanding the data is the segmentation and the groupings that you require to make decisions.

Within our site, we can have different types of conversions:

We also have to take into consideration n the model the impressions of our display advertisement before the user even goes to our site. One of the key things that attribution helps you understand is return on investment or return on ad spend.

So in general, we have to get information from our analytics site, and the costs from the display network we are using, our affiliates network, the cost we are investing in SEO, etc…

Tactics CRO

CRO: Conversion Rate Optimization. Conversion rate optimization typically focuses on improving the conversion rate on a singular interaction. When we are optimizing a landing page, we should be looking at the advancement from that landing page through to the final conversion. We have to take into consideration that conversion rate optimization is not just about an individual, it’s about groups of individuals.

So typically, the analysis that you would use is based on the last non-direct click or last click depending on how you’ve set up your activity.

You can change the attribution model in the Google Ads account and it will impact the performance of the activity of just our Google Ads account and it won’t take into consideration all of the other channels.

Attribution is key behind the strategy as well as the tactical deployment within PPC because a lot of the activity you’re going to be doing is going to be very different, whether it’s brand or generic.

• Brand, for example, is typically right at the end of a journey. It will have a low cost per click. Those types of users are going to have very high brand awareness and exactly the type of user who you want to convert very quickly.
• Generic: If that person is engaging with you on a generic PPC term, they tend to not have as much knowledge of the brand or service that you’re offering. In generic PPC is that that user is not yet ready to convert. Micro-conversions come very powerfully with the generic visits. Users do not tend to convert on generic visits This is why we tend to see a much higher CPC and CPA on generic campaigns.

Tactics SEO

SEO analysis falls into three different categories:

• Technical SEO.
• Onsite SEO.
• Off Site SEO.

So when we talk about SEO from an attribution perspective, we’re looking at the impact that has on the consumer journey and their decision-making.

So the first thing that we want to have as an input is what is that person engaging with onsite? The second thing we want to do is understand the concept of their perception before they arrive at the website. We can do this using the Search Console.

There’s a multitude of different keywords that you will be going to rank for within SEO, and each one would have a different value to the consumer based on their perception of where they are in the buying journey.

it’s our job to understand the context of where each individual keyword that someone would want to rank for as a brand would be within a consumer’s buying process. We know what landing pages rank for what terms. We can now have a much clearer understanding of where in the particular journey those types of landing pages appear most.

We are able to manipulate what consumers are doing and where they’re going based on just improving the consumer journey when they land from an SEO perspective.

Tactics Display

Display advertisement is bought in a CPM model. In Display, you can’t see the impact very often on a click-based model. The model that is most often used is a post-impression model: So if a person views any impressions and then within a period of time visits the website and then ultimately converts, that conversion is given some attributed value back to the impression that was served.

Things that we have to take into consideration when thinking about display attribution:

• Are we able to get the user data?
• Do we get the campaign information? Did that user see campaign A or B?
• When did that user see that impression?

One of the things that come out very early in the data is the ability to change the recency and frequency of your ads.

Tactics Affiliates

First, you have to have the commission and cost data,assigned to the affiliate interaction.

Different types of affiliates

• Regular affiliates: those are the ones that help you increase your sales.
• Content affiliates,which are out there to educate,and be a voice within the industry. content affiliates,which are out there to educate,and be a voice within the industry.

Tactics Email

First, we have to send the information from our mail service providers to the attribution model. Attribution can give you the value of each one of those interactions similar to what we went through in display. The majority of the emails you should be sending and the ones that actually make a difference to future revenue will be to existing customers.

Tactics TV

What data can we actually get from TV? In the modern world, we can get spot-time data. So we can say that that particular advert for that brand was served at 8:32 in the evening on this channel. The problem we have is that the data that is available is not going to be an individual interaction. We need to use it in its desired form which is in aggregate.

What we can do it is overlay the times that the adverts were on against the digital behavior. If we overlay every single advert that has gone on you can then see the impact that would have on your digital performance. Attribution is you’ll be able to see the increase in the perception that that user has of the brand.

Just because someone saw a TV advert today doesn’t mean they’re going to buy today. But did it increase their likelihood to buy in the future?That’s where attribution and specifically thingslike TV can be really valuable because then you’re going to start to be able to understand the return on investment for all of your marketing spend,not just your digital activity.

Tactics Direct Mail

How do we link Direct mail to our attribution model? every single piece of direct mail that’s sent is being sent to an address,that address should be assigned to a customer ID and that customer ID will sit in the attribution model.

What we would want to load into the attribution model is that that particular piece of direct mail has been sent to that customer ID on this day.

We can create a custom smart URL from the direct mail to link it to the website so the user is tagged as the channel of direct mail.

So this has been my eleventh week with the CXL Digital Analytics mini degree.

See you next week