Find out what the best marketing attribution software is for your ecommerce business by comparing features and technology.
What Is Marketing Attribution?
When a user takes clicks, opts-in, or makes a purchase it’s important to know what content motivated them to take action.
Marketing attribution software allows you to track which content prompted them to interact with your paid advertising or website.
Accurate attribution will help your brand convert more customers for less money.
Why is Marketing Attribution important to your ecommerce business?
In order to get the best bang for your buck, you want to know what’s working and what isn’t at each step of your marketing funnel.
Attributing user actions accurately can help you cut out content that isn’t converting. This allows you to eliminate that content. The result is improved ROI and a reduced buying cycle. That means you will get more purchases for every dollar spent on paid advertising and convert users to customers faster.
More accurate marketing attribution also allows you to focus on audiences and content that convert to higher value customers, further improving your ROI.
How Can You Track Marketing Attribution Effectively?
It might be tempting to rely on the attribution provided by Ad Managers like Facebook or Google. If you’ve been using them as a sole source of data, you’ve probably noticed that revenue attributed to those channels and your actual revenue don’t match.
This is because advertising channels don’t talk to each other. Not only that, but they have incentive to take credit for a sale even if that credit really belongs to another ad.
This is why it’s really important to track your marketing attribution by using unbiased, third party software. Doing so ensures your attribution is accurate, that multiple channels aren’t taking credit for the same sale, and you are being privacy compliant.
Keep reading to find out what characteristics you can compare to pick the right marketing attribution software for your ecommerce brand.
What to Look For In A Marketing Attribution Software
There are five critical areas that you want to pay attention to when shopping for attribution software:
- Accuracy
- Multiple Attribution Models
- Supports Your Tech Stack with the Right Integrations
- Privacy Compliance
- Track Users Not Devices
Tech Stack / Integrations
Compatibility with your brand’s specific tech stack is critical.
Your tech stack should include advertising platforms, ecommerce platforms, and a CRM.
Some attribution platforms don’t have the ability to connect to multiple Facebook ad accounts. If this is important to you, you’ll want to make sure you ask that question before you commit.
The ability to integrate with Shopify, Klaviyo, or ActiveCampaign for example will make sure that your data is passed without losing anything important.
Next, you are going to want to make sure the attribution software is able to “set it and forget it.” You don’t want to be doing much more than the occasional refresh of an API key (for security reasons).
Attribution Models
Access to multiple ways to look at your data is critical. You will want to find out if an attribution software has models that can deep dive into each step of your marketing funnel.
An example of different attribution models to look for would be:
- First Click ROI
- New Lead ROI
- ReEngaged Lead ROI
- Last Click ROI
- Full Impact ROI
- Linear ROI
A variety of attribution models makes it easy to see where to optimize your ROI. This reduces some of the analysis paralysis from marketing decisions and simplifies your weekly meetings.
Learn more about attribution models and specific problems you can solve by watching our Wicked Quick Wins video series.
Privacy Compliant
In this day and age, privacy compliance is a huge concern for consumers and advertisers. You want to make sure that your attribution software is privacy compliant.
Look for companies that use 1st party tracking technology. This means that they are respecting the privacy of users by only using data from the advertising channel and your own website. It protects users from being tracked across websites.
This is also beneficial because it keeps you in control of your own customers’ data. It includes only data you collect directly from your audience or customers, with their express permission.
Using only 1st party data will make your brand more trustworthy. You won’t have to worry about having to suddenly scramble and pivot in order to comply with new privacy laws, because you are already being responsible with data.
Track Users Not Devices
To get an edge on your competitors, it is critical to be able to track users across devices.
For example, imagine a user clicks on an ad on Facebook desktop, but doesn’t buy. The next day the same user is on their mobile device and makes a purchase from a Gmail ad.
You want to know where to properly attribute that sale by knowing it’s the same user. Facebook should get First Click attribution and Gmail/Google should get Last Click attribution.
Wicked Reports is the only marketing attribution software that is capable of doing this accurately. Other softwares might claim to, but they do not have the patent-pending technology that Wicked uses to make this possible.
A Note About Real-Time Tracking
Some attribution software that emphasize real-time tracking as a benefit.
You should know that this is a red herring to try and sell you something that sounds great but is actually not helpful at all.
Neither Facebook nor Google have real-time reporting for marketing attribution in Ad Manager. This is not only true for data reporting, but also for uploading conversion data for reporting and optimization.
Facebook and Google both actively discourage real-time data uploading via API. This is because it is not ideal for their platform’s optimization of your ad account to receive data constantly.
Both platforms want you to get predictable, helpful optimization. This is why uploading conversion data once a day, at the same time each day, makes the most sense.
Why would attribution reporting be any different?
Clicks and leads take time to buy, often longer than 1 to 2 weeks depending on your buying cycle. So why the hurry? 
By giving your attribution data time to be accurate, you are also going to improve on your marketing decisions. This will ultimately result in better ROI than if you are making rash decisions using “real-time” data.
By taking your time, you won’t turn off a profitable campaign prematurely just because you didn’t give it time to convert.
Real-time data has no place in the world of marketing attribution.
Are you making more money than you are spending?
You need accurate attribution and to increase your brand’s ROI. Find out how much you can improve your marketing by booking a free demo call with Wicked Reports today.
All you have to lose is wasted ad spend.
