Ensuring successful implementation

Whilst multi-touch attribution might make sense in theory (if not read the previous section Click-based Attribution), there are likely to be a number of reasons for doubting whether it would be possible to implement within your business. Kleene frequently works with clients facing hurdles such as not being able to access the data for a portion of their conversion events, being midway through an ERP migration and many more. To ensure the implementation of multi-touch attribution is successful Kleene conducts a data audit which checks each of the steps listed below is either in place already or can readily be introduced.

Recording individual touchpoints

A touchpoint is a record of an individual user interacting with marketing/sales activity at a specific point in time. Primarily this consists of clicks through to the website from digital marketing activity and emails but can include phone calls, in-store purchases, webinar attendance, or in-person meetings. So long as the timestamp/date of the event and an individual user identifier are recorded, the touchpoint can be included. To capture clicks through to the website Kleene leverages event tracking data such as Google Analytics, typically we use client-side tracking but we are also able to use server-side tracking (client-side and server-side tagging). If you do not have an event tracking software in place already we will guide you through setting this up.

Recording traffic origin

When a user clicks through to the site the event tracking software will start capturing the tagged events, but in order to identify where the traffic originated from unique identifiers must be passed through via UTM parameters. These UTM parameters are configured in the digital marketing platforms. If you already have a consistent UTM parameter format that enables attribution to the advert Kleene will utilise this. If not, Kleene will work with you to implement a standardised format across all of your digital marketing platforms such that traffic origin is accurately captured to the level of the advert. Kleene will not ignore your historical event data just because the UTM parameters are not consistent or sufficiently granular, instead the parameters will be cleaned and reporting will be done at the most granular level available e.g. campaign.

Agreeing the conversion events to attribute

For a direct attribution method such as multi-touch there are no benefits to selecting conversion events with larger absolute values, so it makes sense to choose conversion events as far through the sales journey as possible such as a sale or first payment on a subscription. As part of the data audit Kleene will ensure the conversion events are reliably captured (this typically takes place in a commerce platform, CRM, ERP or database) and have the appropriate corresponding data to calculate the KPIs e.g. revenue or subscription tier.

Reliably identifying the same individual

To generate accurate attribution results it is necessary to be able to reliably identify the same user across all touchpoints and conversion events. This means the following conditions must be satisfied:

• Each user/customer has a unique identifier within the software(s) conversion events are recorded such as user_id or customer_id
• Each user has a unique identifier within the event tracking software (in Google Analytics this is the pseudo_user_id )
• The event tracking software is passed a unique identifier for the user or transaction at the point of conversion or earlier e.g. user_id in Google Analytics
• If there are multiple platforms capturing conversion events or touchpoints then a shared identifier for users/customers is needed. Ideally the identifier would be a unique id e.g. user_id, if this is not the case then we can use an alternative field such as full name or email to do a smart match with.

Upon completion of the data audit Kleene provides detailed instructions of any necessary actions required form the partner in order to complete each step.