Isn’t technology amazing? Besides the fact that it enhances our daily activities eliminating the boring routine, it also makes our lives much more interesting. Without smart facilities that move things forward we would still lose a lot of time going from store to store for doing our shopping or we wouldn’t be aware of the novelties that appear each day. Not to mention that it helps us a lot with our work. Take for example mobile marketing. Due to its evolution, today’s technology allows us to understand better our opportunities and to measure every move we make. Instead of searching blindly through a dark room how marketing was considered ten years ago we are now aware of the results for each strategy we develop. Let’s explain a little how everything is possible with the help of marketing attribution.
Mobile Attribution Models
Attribution means to measure different user events for a marketing campaign. More precisely, mobile attribution is the method of distributing credit to special marketing touch points during a customer’s journey before the conversion. After concentrating a great part of their resources in a strategy it makes sense that app owners want to have a clearer image on what costs them more but it returns less results and what offers them the wanted effects with less investments. It is imperative to have a measure of what works and what doesn’t for your app and at what price.
Image Source: http://thedigitalspace-blog.tumblr.com/post/56473129690/the-importance-of-multi-touch-attribution-and-why
Single Touch Attribution
Single touch attribution is the simplest form of attribution and it is set to determine a single interaction of the user with your app before the conversion. The advantage is that you can see the first or the last impression that generated the event but if you go with this option you are missing a lot of details that can help you improving your plan, especially when you run your campaign using multiple channels.
Multi – Touch Attribution
Multi – touch attribution is the process of tracking each point until the customer converts. This complex tracking is not that easy to be implemented but it has a lot of benefits for a better understanding of your results. We will discuss further this method because paying attention to more points than the first and the last one can help you when you want to spend less money on what is not going to work for your campaign and to concentrate your budget for the right stages.
Image Source: http://www.bizible.com/blog/single-touch-multi-touch-attribution-state-of-pipeline-marketing
What Is Multi – Touch Attribution?
Multi – touch attribution has multiple variations according to the value attributed to each point. But we will highlight the most usual ones. Keep in mind though that there isn’t such thing as the perfect method and the results are improved by the relevant data you collect during the process.
- Linear – this type of multi – touch attribution distributes the same credit to all points. It is still a more advanced technique than the single touch attribution but it is not as accurate as it sounds since it divides the entire cost equally.
- Time Decay – this multi – touch model is closer to reality because it shares the conversion credit in an incremental way according to chronological events giving less value to first touch point and increasing it with every step until the last touch.
- Custom – this one is defined according to your needs and your implication. You will set the value for each touch in various proportions. Creating your custom model will allow you to gather more precise results since many factors can influence in different ways each business. In this case it is your call to make it work.
Because in mobile environment we can’t use traditional methods like the ones available for online space such as cookies, pixel tags or appending custom parameters to URL there are many challenges for mobile marketers to recognize the source that generated a specific event. This is the reason why for both platforms, Google and Apple there isn’t a standard mechanism for getting insights of your campaign whether your app runs on Android or iOS systems. Even if Google provides some specific features like Google Play Campaign Attribution or General Campaign And Traffic Source Attribution there is still a lack of facilities for iOS devices and an universal solution that makes things easier.
Image Source: https://help.tune.com/marketing-console/an-introduction-to-mobile-app-attribution/
That being said, you don’t have to feel discouraged because there are a few alternatives for adopting a multi – touch attribution plan for your strategy:
- Unique Identifier Matching
- Device Fingerprinting
- Open URL With Click ID
For more information regarding the solutions available for receiving the benefits of tracking each event which can lead users to conversion you can check Tune Help Page.
Why Is It Important In Mobile Advertising?
Let’s see the advantages of considering multi – touch attribution for the success of your campaign(s) and why it is essential to choose this model over the single touch attribution.
Build A Clearer Customer Journey
You know how important is to developed a plan based on a customer’s journey for a better management of your budget and for a closer relationship with your users, but you can’t create a precise map without considering the first stage which is to determine each touch point that will influence the path of your users. Having clear goals will allow you to define a smart strategy.
Image Source: https://segment.com/academy/collecting-data/an-introduction-to-multi-touch-attribution/
Better User Experience
Concentrating your attention in providing the most qualitative elements exactly where users are interested in your app will offer them an improved perception over your brand. It is critical to impress them in any way you can.
Shed Light On Your Path
Creating a plan based on multi – touch attribution helps you to discover where the most demanding steps are and what stages don’t deserve your implication. This way you will know where to invest your budget and when is the right time to stop spending your money.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Focusing your attention on different points during your users’ journey is without doubt the right method for increasing conversions. Other benefits like providing a better experience or knowing the exact place where you lose money should convince you to improve your strategy with more granular elements.