Omnichannel Retail Marketing & Attribution e-book - US

Be the 1%

Drive Cross-Channel Clarity & Make 99% of Your Budget Work Harder A Rakuten Marketing Report on Omnichannel Retail Marketing & Attribution

INTRODUCTION Have you ever pulled up a coupon on your mobile phone while shopping at a store, only to find you are not able to use it because your store isn’t eligible?

Our money is on yes.

What about when you’ve switched from your tablet to your desktop or smartphone to complete a purchase … and then you get an email 24 hours later saying ‘you left something in your cart.’ Not only do you have a mild panic attack that your order didn’t go through, but now you’re also slightly disappointed by the experience you just had with the brand.

As a marketer, frustration is the last thing you want people to experience, because winning back displeased consumers is not easy. It is essential to your business that the consumer has a seamless interaction with your brand. Delivering an omnichannel experience is key.

THE MOVE TOWARDS OMNICHANNEL Today’s modern shopper moves continuously from mobile to tablet to desktop to in-store. They shop when they want and how they want. We recognize that technology can be chaotic and trying to reach shoppers throughout their journey is challenging.

But there’s a better way to look at it – through the omnichannel lens. As marketers, we can’t keep viewing our marketing in silos. There are no channels from a consumer perspective.

In a multi-channel world, it’s the connected brand experience that impacts consumers most, not the siloed efforts. Marketers need to become channel agnostic and look at everything from a consumer-centric view.

To do this brands need to operate as omnichannel organizations. Today, as companies prioritize the need to deliver what we call an ‘Omni Experience’ to the customer, this shift in strategy encompasses not only change within the marketing department, but also a structural and data driven approach to how you run your business.

In this report, we examine how you can make 99% of your budget work harder through organizational adjustments, marketing optimization and measurement.

WHOSE SALE IS IT? Do you often find overlap in your marketing reports? Many marketers know there is more than one channel claiming the same sale. In reality both drove an interaction along the way and each contributed to the consumer’s path to purchase.

A siloed approach hinders growth for all marketing channels and causes a disjointed consumer journey that only focuses on the lower funnel. With this model in place, a brand cannot optimize cross-channel data to paint the full consumer relationship.

Additionally, a disjointed marketing structure is an inefficient use of time and money; it requires each channel to drive individual relationships with ad-tech vendors, creative agencies and analytics teams. Time and again, this creates duplicate meetings, repeat conversations and, more importantly, the loss of a cohesive strategy for the brand marketer.

GET TALKING Your channels need to be on the same page.

In today’s omnichannel environment, the path to a sale can come from a myriad of different sources. Brands must look at how all channels, in-store retail and e-commerce (desktop, mobile) work together across the entirety of the purchase journey.

FINDING HARMONY For omnichannel marketing to work most effectively, keeping it simple is critical.

Structuring your business in an omnichannel world means having everything aligned – merchandising, IT, customer service, etc. – with the consumer at the core. And for marketers, this means that your channels need to work together – your managers for display, affiliate, social, and paid search all work together alongside managers for offline channels – catalog, TV, print, etc.

“JetBlue Airways Corp. is pushing deeper into digital advertising, but the journey hasn’t been easy. Over the past year the airline has used about 40 advertising- technology companies to get its message out on computers and mobile devices.”

Source: Wall Street Journal, “Why Does It Take So Many Companies to Produce One Digital Ad?” - Nov 2013

To find harmony, a consolidation of agencies and external teams will allow brand marketers to save time and create internal efficiencies and external brand uniformity. When working with an omnichannel marketing agency, you gain the benefit of a unified account team that has a cross-channel view of all media, and the ability to allocate spend based on performance optimization.

IT’S ABOUT CONSOLIDATION An ideal account team is led by an omnichannel account manager, responsible for the day-to-day communication with the brand, who acts as an internal liaison with channel-specific experts.

The consolidation to one service provider will: ○○ Save numerous business hours with one point of contact

○○Eliminate time-wasting repeat conversations ○○Drive information sharing ○○Provide a holistic brand strategy for delivering an omni experience

DIG INTO THE DATA Once you have the marketing organization aligned, it is time to start digging into the data to make your budgets work harder. To do this, it is pertinent to understand attribution.

So what is attribution?

Attribution is a way to accurately assign value to each marketing touch point across the complete user journey, providing a greater understanding of what combination of events drives conversion.

Attribution provides transparency, empowering marketers with deeper, actionable insight to drive higher return on investments.

It allows marketers to easily answer complicated business challenges and to defend spend.

It’s no secret that understanding and optimizing the consumer journey is a multi-dimensional challenge that involves significant investment in both technology and expertise – so why not continue with the same marketing activity and just spend more?

WHY MAKE THE INVESTMENT? Attribution provides a more accurate picture of how each channel works together throughout the path to purchase, allowing you to optimize activity accordingly.

While yes, measurement has an associated cost, it must be considered in the context of benefit and value. A shift in budget from an ineffective activity to an effective one has the potential of both saving budget and generating additional revenue.

Simply put, attribution allows you to clearly see the connection between your marketing investments. You can glean insights like the effect of a PPC campaign on your retargeting pool, and an email campaign on in-store visits.

Such insights also create an internal demand to break the habit of the all too common projectby-project collaboration between online and offline marketing. It really ties all of your marketing teams together.

PROVE IT OK, OK. Show me an example of what an attribution investment can get me.

Have you noticed the increase in email address requests at the cash register in-store? Or the influx of gated retail websites requesting an email address as the initial prompt?

Retailers know that online marketing is driving a significant amount of in-store purchases and foot traffic. Half of consumers gather product information via webrooming prior to heading to the store, whether to save on shipping costs or to see a large ticket item in-person. It is important to understand which online activities are driving in-store traffic and conversions, and vice versa.

Linking online journeys and offline sales can be done by applying an attribution solution that can integrate the data from both ends using a key identifier to bring it together. Recent data shows that consumers actually long for a connected experience, and are willing to provide personal information to do so.

IS YOUR ORGANIZATION READY? Here’s a list of questions to help you identify whether your organization is truly ready for this shift: ○○ Is there willingness to let go of business rules that were set years ago but never progressed (e.g. departmental silos, lack of data sharing, consumer view by channel)? ○○ Do you have what you need to convince internal stakeholders to buy into your vision of the truly integrated consumer journey and let go of channel-centric silos? ○○ Can you convince your channel managers that it is not about cutting their budgets but helping them see how the relationship between channels drives the best consumer experience and increases conversions? ○○ Do you have the data points to confidently stand in front of your tech and data teams and convince them to prioritize support for this initiative and why it will move the business forward? ○○ Are you willing to act on this integrated view? This is the most challenging – it is not just about getting another cool reporting tool, but about testing and making decisions to truly uncover the value that a good attribution solution can bring to the business.

IT IS NOT JUST ABOUT GETTING ANOTHER

COOL REPORTING TOOL

...BUT ABOUT TESTING AND MAKING DECISIONS TO TRULY

UNCOVER THE VALUE

THAT A GOOD ATTRIBUTION SOLUTION CAN BRING TO THE BUSINESS.

DRIVE THE OMNI EXPERIENCE Now that you are ready to break down your silos, it’s important that you make it simple to understand when discussing with your boss and other internal stakeholders.

Make it a story they can’t ignore, relate it directly to them, start with a recent retail blooper you experienced. These disconnected stories and bloopers surround us in everyday life, and make consumers (and marketers alike!) cringe.

Delivering an omnichannel experience is within reach: ○○

Fix the bloopers – eliminate consumer fragmentation

○○

Save time and increase efficiency – get back to marketing

○○

Evolve budgets – reflect a cross-channel strategy

○○

Understand attribution and apply it to your business

○○

Go beyond digital – connect your online to offline story

○○

Drive change – start an evolution in your organization

With just 1% of your marketing budget dedicated to attribution, you can make the other 99% work harder.

ABOUT RAKUTEN MARKETING Rakuten Marketing is the global leader in omnichannel marketing, delivering its vision of driving the omni experience - marketing designed for a streamlined consumer experience. Offering an integrated strategy that combines consumer centric insights with e-commerce expertise, Rakuten Marketing aims to inspire better marketing. Rakuten Marketing’s omnichannel services include Rakuten Affiliate Network (formerly LinkShare), Rakuten Display (formerly MediaForge), Rakuten Attribution (formerly DC Storm), and Rakuten Search.

Operating as a division of Rakuten, Inc. (4755: TOKYO), one of the world’s leading Internet service companies, Rakuten Marketing is headquartered in New York City, with additional offices in Australia, Brazil, Japan, the United Kingdom, and throughout the United States.

LET’S TALK Web: RakutenMarketing.com/lets-talk Email: rm-salesUS@mail.rakuten.com | Phone: +1 855 776 0507 This booklet includes content from various reports and articles published by Rakuten Marketing.