Why offline is so important
Over 90% of all retail purchases are still made offline, in stores, branches, shopping centres and over the phone. Despite the digital takeover, we continue to develop high streets, build shopping centres and open new branches.
Clearly, offline remains an invaluable marketing channel.
So how much of the 90% of in-store sales, mortgage applications or phone sales come about as a result (direct or otherwise) of online marketing channel activity? If these interactions are not in your attribution model, it means you’re trying to measure your total marketing activities based on a very limited, incomplete picture. It’s like trying to map an entire house by looking through the front door keyhole!
Find a way to measure offline to online attribution
Cross-channel measurement is by no means easy, but it is essential to build a true picture of your customer journeys and marketing performance. If you knew that people who did A, B and C offline were 10 times more likely to buy D, E and F products in stores, you’d invest heavily in A, B and C. But putting the digital picture together is hard – you can’t share cookies between different marketing applications, platforms and channel silos.
And then there’s the offline piece. Here you are, sitting on a great database of people who bought from you in shops or visited you in a branch. You even have their email addresses (because they’re in your loyalty programme, or they use your credit card, or they opted in to your email newsletter or got your mobile app). You know exactly who bought what products. And you know where and when.
The problem is, there is no way to connect this data to what those people did online. You can’t see the activities in one channel that drove desired behaviour in another, or which audience segments were ultimately converted by which marketing channels. You need a way to connect online and offline data silos.
That’s where identity resolution and data onboarding come in…
Understanding Identity Resolution
Identity Resolution ties together cookies, device IDs and de-identified information across all of your marketing, enabling you with the omnichannel view you need to build a holistic and accurate attribution model. From here you can build better budgets, improve your efficiency and connect all your disparate silos. And by onboarding your CRM and transaction data, you can measure the effectiveness of each channel in driving those offline purchases.
We’ve recently launched an eBook that explores the cross-channel attribution challenge further. It’s called Half-Blind Attribution Modelling – take a look!