It's a mistake to silo analytics by channel—multichannel and cross-channel touchpoints should each receive appropriate attribution for sales. That's the viewpoint many direct marketers and their vendors shared with colleagues recently, despite the fact that all were attending a search-centric conference.
"Be media agnostic," relates Kevin Lee, CEO of New York-based search marketing agency DidIt.com. "Whatever maximizes profit is the way to go."
Lee was speaking March 24 at SES New York 2011 during the "B2B Lead Generation Management & CRM Integration" morning session.
His sentiments seemed to be echoed throughout the conference, regardless of the session's original topic.
Attribution doesn't work "unless all channels are tied in," says Stuart Bogaty, vice president of interactive marketing at King of Prussia, Penn.-based interactive marketing agency TrueAction Network. He was a session panelist on March 22 at "The AAAA Digital Committee Speaks About Quality."
These thoughts and actionable advice on attribution were provided by other panelists at the conference:
1. When a budget sits within a product line, siloed analytics can lead to undercounting the contributions of channels—such as how much search can drive the phone calls that may become the conversion, says C. Decker Marquis, senior vice president and director of online marketing for Providence, R.I.-based Citizens Bank. She was a panelist during an afternoon session on March 24 titled "Best Practices and Experiences with SEM in the Financial Services Vertical."
"So measure in silos, but look at it across the board," confirms the moderator of Marquis' session, Chris Boggs, search engine optimization director for Hamilton, N.J.-based interactive marketing agency Rosetta.
