5 Reasons Why You Should Start Using Multi-Touch Attribution in Marketing Cloud

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Intelligence is great for marketers and by ingesting all of your marketing channel data together with your first part data it creates a single source of truth. CMOs, directors, and marketers log into Intelligence on a daily basis to analyze the performance of their digital marketing efforts. 

But most of this data is based on single-touch attribution, specifically last-click. And when looking at platform data (from Facebook, Google, and others), we’re even combining different attribution models in one dashboard. When looking at a single attribution model that applies value across the customer journey (multi-touch attribution), we get far closer to the actual truth. 

In this article, we’ll cover the importance and advantages of multi-touch attribution insights in your SSOT Intelligence. 

Increase the ROI of Your Marketing Spend

All marketers want to increase their ROI, it’s one of the reasons we like using Intelligence. With Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA) we get a better view of the performance of marketing channels and marketing data. Now, we are looking at the entire customer journey, as opposed to single touchpoints. 

With apps like Odyssey on AppExchange and ad spend recommendations in Intelligence, marketers can see how much of their budget they should be spending on their channels. By combining this with the connect and mix functionalities of Intelligence, you can easily compare your current ad spend and your suggested ad spend. This results in an under/overspend, which is an awesome way to optimize your ad spend and increase ROI. 

Attribute the True Value of Every Touchpoint

With last-click attribution as the industry standard, brands often value their campaigns incorrectly. Marketing campaigns at the bottom of the funnel are overvalued, while top-of-the-funnel campaigns are undervalued. 

Single-touch attribution models only assign value to one marketing touchpoint, whereas in reality, many touchpoints contribute to a conversion. Therefore, applying multi-touch attribution allows you to analyze customer data more accurately and assign the true value to your marketing channels.

For instance, many consumers use top-of-the-funnel content (i.e. blog posts or Facebook campaigns) to get inspired. However, when they show the intent to purchase, they might click on a paid search ad. In this case, last-click attributes all value to the latter, which undermines the value organic traffic had in this transaction at the top of the customer journey.

By looking at every touchpoint in a customer journey, marketers can finally see how their top-of-funnel marketing efforts are driving revenue later in that journey. Having these insights in MC Intelligence makes all marketing teams more aligned. Everyone can see how different campaigns are driving value throughout the journey.

Get Incrementally Insights the Easy Way

Incrementally lift testing is a great way to see how much incremental value your creative drives. But it's also a highly resourceful way of testing, which requires a lot of time and budget. So incrementally testing is not something that can be done for every creative on a daily basis.

Become Independent from Google

As marketers, we can't avoid Google. Their search engine is one of the most used engines in the world and for many brands, Google Ads is the channel where they spend most of their budget. But Google also has a leading role in marketing analytics with Google Analytics. So in the marketing world, Google is everywhere and can't be avoided. But what can we do to become less dependent?

By using Datorama for marketing analytics, the first step in becoming less dependent on Google is already made. But if you are still using the attribution model(s) of Google, there is room for improvement. When the default attribution model of Google is changed to multi-touch attribution in Datorama, it leads to significant opportunities. Brands are claiming back a lot of their dependence and can get more insights.  

Ready to start using Multi-Touch Attribution for your marketing needs? Check out apps like Datorama on AppExchange today!  

About the author: Toon Hilhorst is the managing director of marketing attribution company and AppExchange partner Odyssey Attribution, trying to help marketers get better and more holistic attribution insights through the multi-touch attribution app Incrementally by Odyssey.