Last Touch Attribution

DemandGen Report just published an article of mine on Last Touch Attribution (The first word on Last Touch Attribution, DemandGen Article).  This term clarifies one of the key areas of marketing measurement and accountability.  A related term has to do with marketing contributions from an Integrated Marketing Campaign which I will talk about in my next post.  Last Touch Attribution was coined a year or so ago to help marketers communicate some simple steps relating to marketing ROI. It refers to attributing all of the weight of the results to a single marketing activity.  It disregards all other touches, whether they are prior or parallel touches using other media.  Synergies, halo and cannibalization are ignored.  So if a single direct mail piece is dropped all of the responses to that piece are attributed directly to that direct marketing activity.  All brand effects are ignored as well as all other components of other marketing campaigns.

Last Touch Attribution

I just spent a day at a ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment) session with a major high tech company that is actually pretty advanced for their ability to track marketing costs and results.  Marketers have been struggling for a long time to finally differentiate and communicate this type of measurement with the measurement of response to an integrated marketing campaign, where all of the direct results can’t be directly measured.  In my example above, response codes clearly delineate where the specific attribution came from (ignoring all other unmeasured effects.)   In an integrated marketing campaign, each of the campaign elements contribute to the overall response, both in the short term and in the long term (e.g., brand value). 

Integrated Marketing Campaign Contribution

So the IMC Contributions represent the value that each of the campaign media elements contribute to the final result.  There are a few other terms that must be covered to deliver the final picture.  But those, I will talk about in my next blog.

If you have any comments, please let me know.