Omnichannel Marketing: Linking Online to Offline

O20:

Linking Online Activity to Offline Sales

Introduction

Many online marketers know that their digital marketing efforts will be impacting offline sales but they don’t have the tools in place to measure it.

This can be especially frustrating for any digital marketers working in a business that has historically prioritised their traditional offline marketing channels.

We want to address any scepticism around the ability to measure the impact of online activity on offline sales and provide you with some actionable online to offline takeaways, that will help you to truly understand and authenticate the value of your online marketing efforts.

1 Find the Links &

Capture the Data

Think about where you can make the joins... and don’t stop thinking!

Anything that can be used to build a join to identify as many links as possible.

• Email addresses • Collected in store and matched online • A postcode • On a store finder and delivery confirmation • An online voucher redeemed in store • Quote IDs • Generated online & referenced on the phone Once you have found the joins, ensure that your data platform is flexible enough to handle the imports and provide the structure to glue it all together.

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2 You Won’t Join all the Dots!

Joining a good percentage is enough!

You won’t be able to clearly identify every time an offline sale has been influenced online but a good percentage is enough to: • Map out ‘typical’ user journeys • Gain insight • Infer actions

The user journeys that you have joined can help you to: • Build a clearer view of the link between online activity & offline sales • Identify ‘webrooming’ or ‘showrooming’ shopping trends • Link online efforts to tangible in store purchases

Think about incentivising shop & telesales staff to collect data, which will enable you to join as much data as possible

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3 Joining O2O can

Empower Marketers

It’s not just about ROI & CPA! Showing that you are driving more sales from your online budget should allow you to make a better argument for that budget to be increased. However, the empowerment this insight provides by enabling you to make more confident, data-drive decisions is also important. Imagine how good it would feel to confidently say that:

“17% of any new customer journeys start online and convert offline.”

“23% of our in store shoppers have already researched online.”

To persuade the business, start with smaller assumptions that are believed company wide. Once you have conquered those you can then move on to de-bunk some of the more complex myths

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4 It’s Possible to Join

Online & Offline Now!

O2O is not as complex as you think...

The data structures and technologies involved are not as complex as you might think. This is why so many top brands are already leading the way with an omnichannel marketing strategy.

Every day we help omnichannel retailers to have a much better view of the link between online and offline.

They now have the measureable data to inform their marketing strategies so that they can succeed in a market where there is no distinction between an online customer and offline customer.

Get in touch if you want to discuss the challenge that your business has when understanding the true value of your online marketing on offline sales rm-salesuk@mail.rakuten.com

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Example Summary

Reaching Destination O2O with Virgin Holidays Here is an example of how we made the join for one of our clients, Virgin Holidays: Email addresses were identified as a consistent customer identifier that could be to be collected across channels.

Multiple points where email addresses could be used to log a touchpoint and make a join were identified: Online Offline • Sales • Telephone quotes and • Newsletter sign up sales • Retail appointment requests • In-store quotes and sales • Brochure requests • Interactive map login • Call back request

Our ‘Universal User’ technology uses the unique key to link any number of visits and sales across all online channels and devices, and offline in-store touchpoints and phone calls, to a single user.

Results • Over 200,000 universal user journeys joined YTD • The revenue attributed to online marketing has increased • The ROI of specific channels, consistently increased • Strategic insights are driving increased business efficiency and profitability Click here to read the full case study.

Summary

Still looking for inspiration?

Understanding the correlation between your online marketing activity and offline sales will allow you to turn any assumptions and myths into quantifiable metrics.

Ultimately, this will give you and your business greater confidence when setting budgets and making decisions. But it isn’t just about attribution .

It’s about having the confidence to talk about the influence that your digital marketing efforts have on offline touch points . . .

It’s about being more certain about your instincts or digital marketing ‘spidey senses’.

Let go of any scepticism about linking online to offline and embrace an omnichannel marketing approach in 2015.

The data and proof is out there to be captured if you are willing to see it.

Are you ready to connect the dots?

Rakuten Attribution (formerly DC Storm) arms digital businesses with performance measurement tools, analysis and reporting, powering great decisions and driving success. rakutenmarketing.uk/attribution rm-salesuk@mail.rakuten.com +44 (0)1273 807272