Attribution is all about the process of assigning ‘credit’ for your conversions to different channels and messages.
How to assign credit for transactions and other conversions is not a trivial matter. In fact it’s one that has widely varying strategies, and no ‘right’ answer.
Attribution in Frakture is heavily tied to conversion source coding – the process of assigning a source code to transactions and individuals. In order to start assigning credit to different channels, you do need to have quality data gathered about conversions. Bad data in means bad data out. See Conversion Methods for more info about how to ensure you’re gathering quality conversion data, PRIOR to figuring out how you assign credit about those conversions.
The online ad world uses fairly consistent terminology around attribution, and has heavily informed Frakture attribution modeling. The main difference is that online ad models have insight into opens and clicks on a specific platform, whereas Frakture mostly tracks data across platforms, including offline data, which tends to consist of good conversion source coding information. It is not unusual to use both to gather insight into your communications.
Check out Google and Facebook’s attribution model explanations:
About Attribution Models [Google]
About attribution models [Facebook]
First, some definitions:
This is the source code from the last message someone clicked on before their transaction. It is usually carried through the payment form with a string of characters in the URL, and attached to the transaction record.
Last Click is particularly useful when comparing performance between different messaging strategies and channels. A/B message testing, or testing between Facebook and Google are good examples where Last Click performance is key.
The subset of last click transactions that are one-time transactions, or the first transaction of a recurring transaction. It is useful to understand the immediate impact of a message.
Recurring transactions after the first transaction. This is useful to see how well upsell drives, or recurring transaction messaging is working. It may take a few months to understand how a particular fundraising drive did on activating your existing membership – subsequent transactions helps with that understanding. For clarity, Initial Transactions + Subsequent Transactions=Last Click transactions
One other major attribution component is the origin source code. It represents the first occasion an individual has interacted with your organization.
Origin source coding is particularly useful when calculating the long term value of a particular strategy. It’s heavily used when deciding where to spend money to acquire new members, or which partnerships to pursue.
Origin source code is tracked independently of the Last Click source code. Some source codes may exclusively be origin codes (think of a list acquisition). Some codes may be exclusively Last click codes (a donation email). Some source codes may accrue last click transactions, and also lead to new people to sign up, in which case they useful for both Last Click and Origin transactions.