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As technology evolves and consumers become more tech-savvy, marketers face the challenges of an increasingly complex digital marketing landscape. There are now multiple touchpoints to engage a customer and get the coveted conversion. Meanwhile, strict data privacy laws make it challenging to gather customer data.
To help you navigate this complexity, marketing attribution software collects data securely and processes them to give you accurate customer insights that will optimize your campaigns.
Check out the top marketing attribution software for 2023.
Top Marketing Attribution Software in 2023
Active Campaign is a customer experience automation platform built for each customer journey stage. It has tools to help you reach, nurture, convert, and grow your customers automatically and intelligently. It’s used by over 180,000 small, medium, and large businesses in 170 countries. Their products are designed to help you build customer relationships through email marketing, personalization, sales engagement, and more. Its Attribution Reporting tool helps you identify which traffic sources and touchpoints helped convert your leads. It collects your contact records in one place and updates it with all the conversions the contact makes along specific touchpoints. Using Segment Builder, you identify which channels worked best for conversions of specific customer sets so that you can fine-tune your campaign. And with its automation triggers, you can set up automated rules to start a series of actions whenever a contact achieves a specific conversion. Features: Pricing: Starts at $49 per month for three users (Marketing Plan) AppsFlyer is a leading marketing attribution platform that top brands like Disney, Trivago, TikTok, Shein, and Square use. The company started over ten years ago when it saw a need in the mobile industry. Apps are becoming an increasingly important marketing tool, but marketers need to be made aware of the impact of their mobile strategy. AppsFlyer built its platform focusing on mobile marketing attribution. Their solution measures post-install behavior and identifies recurring users through rich in-app events. They are also committed to protecting customer data privacy and use privacy-preserving measurement and cost aggregation technologies that gather accurate customer insights without compromising data privacy. Another danger with mobile marketing is fraudulent data from bots and click farms. These sources generate clicks but not revenues. AppsFlyer provides a comprehensive fraud protection solution to ensure you invest in the proper channels that produce real actions. Features: Pricing: Available upon request Ruler Analytics is a closed-loop multi-channel marketing attribution software that gives you access to all your revenue and conversions in a single location. It can automatically reveal which marketing channels drive the best leads by making tracking customer journeys easy and matching them to the source. Learn if your customers convert through phone, form, or live chat, and push this data to your analytics platform for further marketing insights. Ruler Analytics integrates with over 1,000 apps like Salesforce, Zoho, LiveChat, Google Ads, Microsoft Dynamics, and more. This lets you plot your sources across the sales pipeline so you can view your opportunities by stage and find the channels that influenced their conversion. You’ll be able to determine what works and what doesn’t and make data-driven strategic decisions. Features: Pricing: Starts at £199 per month for up to 50,000 monthly visits If your business primarily relies on phone leads, you need dedicated marketing attribution software to show which marketing campaigns drive the most leads. Invoca uses an award-winning Signal AI speech analytics to analyze spoken conversations and identify call outcomes. The solution can accurately classify which calls led to purchases, appointments, or applications. It can integrate with multiple marketing platforms like Google, Facebook, Salesforce, Instagram, Adobe Experience Cloud, and Microsoft Advertising. With better visibility into calls, you can also identify training opportunities for contact agents so they can improve their conversion skills. You can also determine which locations drive the most calls and highest conversions. Features: Pricing: Available upon request. Google Analytics 360 is a more robust version of the comprehensive Google Analytics platform. It gives you visibility on every action your customers perform on your website so you can precisely understand their behavior. You can get a cross-channel view and post-click performance metrics of your Ads campaigns by integrating the tool with the rest of the Google suite and other third-party software. Data is also collected in real-time so you get the freshest results, and smart insights are available so you can make sense of everything quickly. Features: Pricing: Freemium version available; Contact sales for a customized plan C3 Metrics is an enterprise-level marketing attribution tool that provides advertising analytics and insights across multiple channels, such as digital, TV, radio, and direct mail. Their MMM (Marketing Mix Modeling) proprietary software also considers external factors like competition and industry trends when attributing data. This results in a comprehensive analysis of marketing campaigns so you can make better decisions fueled by a 360 view of your industry and customers. They work best with marketing programs spending $6 million annually across five or more advertising channels. They have deep experience within the D2C, e-Commerce, financial services, automotive, and healthcare industry. Features: Pricing: Available upon request Branch is a cross-channel marketing attribution platform that helps you make better investment decisions regarding your paid, owned, and earned channels. It focuses on unified attribution giving you a cross-platform, cross-device, and cross-channel view of your attribution data. Branch believes modern customer journey is no longer linear, with conversions happening at any platform. They ensure their attribution reporting is free from systemic bias by implementing last-touch attribution, best suited for omnichannel strategies. You can also compare your marketing campaigns apples to apples regardless of where they happen. Branch gives you multiple methods to segment your data and complete freedom to utilize it. Features: Pricing: Self-serve plan at $0/month for up to 10,000 monthly active users Adobe Analytics is an advanced marketing attribution software that collects and processes data from online and offline sources. It has multiple rules-based and advanced attribution models to help you understand your customers’ behavior across all channels. It integrates with other Adobe apps and third-party channels like BrightEdge, Invoca, and Hootsuite. You can also connect it to your CRM system or other sources of offline data so you can add another layer of analysis. Adobe Analytics utilizes a machine-learning approach to assign attribution values to different channels to detect a successful conversion accurately. This is achieved by automatically assigning a weight to the most important touchpoint so you can get a best-fit model per channel based on customers’ actual interactions. However, it has a steep learning curve typical of enterprise-level software with robust functionalities. Features: Pricing: Available by request. Dreamdata is a B2B revenue attribution platform that simplifies your B2B marketing data. Their goal is to show which channels drive revenue so you can optimize your ad spending and content. The team behind Dreamdata understands that the modern B2B go-to-market tech stack needs to be more cohesive and cohesive. Automation, tracking, CRM, customer service, business intelligence, and ads tools interconnect but rarely work together. Dreamdata aims to end the silos and deliver a single source of truth. You can integrate multiple tools directly into Dreamdata, and their platform will reveal the insights you need. You can build multi-touch attribution models to track ROI across all activities. Dreamdata will also detect duplicates and erroneous data and then clean and correct it so you can have accurate insights based on truthful data. They also guarantee data privacy and security by complying with all data privacy laws. Features: Pricing: Free for up to 30,000 monthly tracked users and five seats Attribution is another enterprise multi-touch marketing attribution platform built for B2C and B2B marketers intent on optimizing their marketing ROI. It automatically collects and organizes online and offline data across multiple touchpoints, then cross-reference the information with your marketing spend. You can use the platform to manage and improve affiliate marketing campaigns and compare them with your other touchpoints and channels. You can automatically build automated attribution models using machine learning algorithms to identify patterns and trends. You can also use traditional rules-based models to audit every customer touchpoint accurately. You can drill down to every customer action and use offline campaigns to understand online activities. These features will give you the confidence to optimize channels with the highest ROI. Features: Pricing: Available upon request
1. Active Campaign
2. AppsFlyer
3. Ruler Analytics
4. Invoca
5. Google Analytics 360
6. C3 Metrics
7. Branch
8. Adobe Analytics
9. Dreamdata
10. Attribution
What is marketing attribution?
Marketing attribution identifies and assigns credit to the marketing activities or touchpoints that contribute to a desired outcome, such as a sale, conversion, or customer acquisition. It aims to understand which marketing efforts are most effective in driving customer behavior and influencing their decision-making process.
Marketing attribution involves analyzing and tracking various touchpoints along a customer's journey, including online and offline channels such as websites, social media, email marketing, display ads, search engine marketing, offline advertisements, and more. By attributing value to each touchpoint, marketers can gain insights into their marketing campaigns' effectiveness and ROI (Return on Investment).
Models of Marketing Attribution
There are different models and approaches to marketing attribution, including:
1. Last-click attribution
This model attributes the entire credit to the last touchpoint or interaction that led to the desired outcome. It assumes that the final touchpoint is the most influential in the customer's decision-making process.
2. First-click attribution
In contrast to last-click, this model attributes all credit to the first touchpoint or interaction that initiated the customer journey. It assumes that the initial touchpoint played the most significant role in capturing the customer's interest.
3. Multi-touch attribution
This model assigns credit to multiple touchpoints along the customer journey, acknowledging that various interactions influence the outcome. It can use different weighting methods to distribute credit among the touchpoints, such as linear attribution (equal credit to each touchpoint) or time decay attribution (more credit to recent touchpoints).
4. Algorithmic attribution
This approach utilizes advanced data analysis techniques, such as machine learning algorithms, to attribute credit to touchpoints based on their statistical significance and contribution to the desired outcome. It considers various factors, such as touchpoints' order, frequency, and timing, to determine their impact.
Marketing Mix Modeling
This model uses historical data from online and offline sources and accounts for external factors such as seasonality and economic conditions when attributing data. This is a popular approach for enterprise companies that considers many factors when evaluating their marketing activities.
Effective marketing attribution enables marketers to optimize their marketing strategies and allocate resources more efficiently. By understanding which channels and touchpoints drive the best results, you can make data-driven decisions, refine campaigns, and improve your overall marketing effectiveness.
Factors to Consider When Choosing a Marketing Attribution Software
When choosing a marketing attribution software, you should consider several factors to ensure the tool aligns with your business goals and requirements.
1. Data Integration
Assess the software's ability to integrate with various data sources, such as your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, advertising platforms, analytics tools, and other marketing channels. It should support seamless data collection and consolidation to provide a holistic view of customer interactions across multiple touchpoints.
2. Real-time Reporting and Visualization
Evaluate the software's reporting capabilities. It should offer real-time reporting and visualization of attribution results, allowing you to monitor campaign performance, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions promptly. Interactive dashboards and customizable reports can provide deeper insights into attribution data.
3. Customization and Flexibility
Determine whether the software allows customization to match your specific business needs. It should provide flexibility in defining custom attribution rules, adjusting attribution weights, and incorporating your unique business metrics or KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).
4. User-Friendly Interface
Consider the usability and user experience of the software. It should have an intuitive interface that enables marketers to navigate easily, interpret results, and make informed decisions without requiring extensive technical expertise.
5. Customer Support and Training
Evaluate the level of customer support and training provided by the software vendor. Ensure they offer comprehensive documentation, training materials, and responsive customer support to assist you in utilizing the software effectively.
6. Cost and ROI
Consider the pricing structure and affordability of the software. Evaluate the return on investment (ROI) potential by assessing how the software can help optimize marketing campaigns, improve efficiency, and drive better results.
7. Security and Compliance
Ensure that the software follows industry-standard security protocols to protect your data. To maintain data integrity and regulatory compliance, consider whether it complies with data privacy regulations, such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) or CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act).
Final Thoughts
Marketing attribution is an essential aspect of understanding the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and optimizing your strategies. With the right marketing attribution software, you can gain valuable insights into customer behavior and make data-driven decisions.
When choosing a software solution, consider data integration, real-time reporting, customization, user-friendliness, customer support, cost, and security. Selecting the most suitable marketing attribution software depends on your specific business needs and goals.
With the right tools, you can navigate the complex and sometimes daunting landscape of digital marketing and launch successful and profitable campaigns.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are marketing attribution tools?
Marketing attribution tools are software platforms or solutions that help businesses track, analyze, and attribute credit to various marketing touchpoints, enabling them to measure the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns and optimize their strategies.
How to do marketing attribution?
To perform marketing attribution, you need to:
- Define your goals and desired outcomes.
- Identify and track relevant marketing touchpoints across channels.
- Choose an attribution model (e.g., last-click, multi-touch) that suits your needs.
- Collect and consolidate data from various sources.
- Apply attribution rules or algorithms to assign credit to touchpoints.
- Analyze attribution results to understand the impact of each touchpoint.
- Use insights to optimize marketing strategies and allocate resources effectively.
What attribution model is the most accurate?
There isn't a universally "most accurate" attribution model, as it depends on the specific context and goals. Algorithmic attribution models that use advanced statistical techniques and machine learning algorithms provide more accurate and nuanced attribution insights by considering multiple factors. Still, their effectiveness may vary based on data quality and implementation.
