There seems to be an increased buzz around cross-channel media attribution from many vendors lately and although we posted on the subject of attribution before we never really got into the nuts and bolts of the different platform options so here you go.

Check out the below slides we recently pulled together for one of our clients - the 1st part is a recap on cross-channel media attribution best practice in case you're new to the topic but the 2nd part goes into the detailed pros and cons of the various different technology platforms we've had experience with.

• Google Analytics multi-channel funnels
• Adobe SiteCatalyst Cross-Visit Participation JavaScript plugin, Light Server Calls and DoubleClick/Mediamind Genesis integration
• Atlas, Mediamind and DoubleClick ad server based purchase path tracking plus custom media attribution modelling
• Specialised ClearSaleing media attribution platform and out-of-the-box reports

Finally, it's important to make a distinction between media attribution and purchase path tracking, one is necessary to enable the other but they are not the same. Tracking the complete purchase path, i.e. every paid and organic campaign touch point leading up to a conversion is a necessary requirement to be able to actually do media attribution or the allocation or conversion credits back to those touch points. The purchase path tracking is the data collection if you so want and the media attribution the actual analysis or modelling part - given attribution modeling is only as good as the underlying data the below slides are focusing manly on the data collection aspects of the different options.

Below are yesterday's slides from the Competitive Intelligence presentation at the Online Marketer conference in Melbourne.

We used the recent grounding of the Qantas fleet as an example to showcase some of the free (and paid) online tools that can be used to collect competitive intelligence - in our example, insights informing a Virgin campaign designed to poach Qantas customers.

Check out the tools we used and please leave a comment on this post if you know of any other great competitive intelligence tools!

Google just uploaded the videos from last year's Think Auto events in Sydney and Melbourne so I thought I'd share that with you. Check out the below recording including slides on how we think the automotive industry could crack cross-channel media attribution and finally give digital the credit (and budgets) it deserves.

The presentation covers basic media attribution best practice as well as some suggestions on how to track offline media responses online and link offline car sales back to online campaigns and website behaviour. Have a look, especially if you work in marketing in the automotive industry, as everyone seems to know how important digital is in the research process but no-one seems to be able to quantify exactly how much - here's a few ideas.

In case you missed my presentation on The Power of Raw Visitor Data at today's SiteCore Dreamcore event in Sydney, check out the below slides.

SiteCore's build-in visitor profiling and segmentation capabilities are awesome but you can do even more advanced data mining and modelling by connecting to the platform's raw web analytics database with tools such as Tableau and SPSS. 

The dataset basically contains all campaign response and visitor behaviour in a readily accessible MS SQL data warehouse which makes it easy to create custom Tableau reports and interactive dashboards as well as run more advanced statistical analysis in SPSS such as regression modelling. In addition, Tableau makes it easy to combine the web analytics data with additional data sources such as your CRM or call center data.

You might also want to have a look at our earlier blog post and video on how to use Tableau to analyse raw SiteCore web analytics data and build interactive dashboards.

Are you an online marketer responsible for media budgets? Then you should at least have a quick look through the below slides (if you didn't attend our session at the Online Marketer BootCamp last week) to make sure all that media spend doesn't just evaporate but actually converts.

The slides mention the usual landing page optimisation best practice (i.e. headline, calls to action, social proof, etc) that everyone is writing about but then go into some of the things we don't see as much content on such as the importance of auto address completion, social subscription mechanisms, heat maps, statistical significance and unique phone numbers to optimise the offline user experience.