Page 10 - AeM_Apr_2017

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Advanced marketing automation

techniques are still underutilized

Companies rely on marketing attribution to determine said, adding that they could be doing more if their stack
which marketing channels have contributed directly or were integrated, or if their data were in a single plat-
indirectly to a conversion goal (attribution). It is both form.
about the justification of the expenditure and the im-
provement of the customer journey in the multichannel The report of AdRoll mentioned last week actually
marketing mix. Interestingly, even though aware of the came to a similar conclusion, revealing that only one
importance of attribution, less than a third of businesses out of three marketers knows how to deal with their da-
rely on marketing attribution as an analysis method ta and pointing out that the collection of data isn’t really
when running campaigns. the challenge, but the selection of the relevant data
sets.
According to a January 2017 survey from email market-
ing software provider GetResponse, at least around two- AdRoll cuts right to the chase by explaining: “At one
thirds of email marketers worldwide use email automa- end of the attribution spectrum there are the simplest
tion, but more advanced automation techniques are not models familiar to many marketers, such as first- and
as popular. Email automation is a robust, seasoned mar- last- click attribution, but to add the appropriate sophis-
keting tactic, the company highlights, which is why mar- tication to a model, marketers need to think about the
keters are using it not only to inform customers about actual customer life cycle, pull in the appropriate data
company news, offers and promotions, but also for cus- and understand the kinds of marketing touchpoints that
tomer onboarding and to ask for feedback. When it are predictive of conversion. At the other end of the
comes to enhancing email with more advanced automa- spectrum, there are machine driven models which uti-
tion techniques, however, marketers are not as far lize artificial intelligence built on complex algorithms.
along. Only a third of email marketers used automation These models look at the impact of the marketing
for basic profile-based targeting or targeting email con- touchpoints and enable business analysts to run the
tent based on individual personas and behaviors. Even statistical analysis based on actual conversion events.
fewer, namely just over a quarter, used it for personali- However. all these models are ultimately subjective, but
zation through dynamic content, or content that changes all are better than no model at all.” Not to mention that
depending on who opens an email and when it is there is no one algorithm that solves the problem, in-
opened. stead, you need to keep applying different algorithms
until you get the best answer for the problem you are
“It’s not that marketers don’t want to use these tech- trying to solve.
niques”, eMarketer analyst Nicole Perrin explains. “They
do. The challenge is that for most marketers, the tech Considering these facts, you should constantly work on
stack is not fully integrated, and the customer data that improving your analytical skills and allocate an appro-
would make it possible to create dynamic content or en- priate budget to deploy marketing attribution efficiently,
gage in profile-based targeting is still heavily siloed’, she don’t you think? ◊
10 April 2017 - Marketing Automation & Attribution By Daniela La Marca