Revenue attribution is the process of tying marketing efforts to revenue generation. Marketing platforms often don't capture the full customer journey, and are limited to how customers interact with the platform.

This typically yields great conversation tracking. However it is impossible to fully understand ROI without tracing customer's actions through purchases. 

As we will see, revenue attribution is fundamental in determining return on marketing investments. 

Ascend2 put together a fantastic resource on revenue attribution strategies. In a survey covering marketing professionals across industries, below were the 7 most cited benefits of revenue attribution.

Source: Ascend2

Below I'll give a brief commentary on how revenue attribution creates value in these ways. 

Decision support is essential in navigating growth. Insights on what drives revenues allows leaders to better judge where they should invest, and where they should pull back.

When different functions use different success metrics, it is difficult to have a single, unified view of their customer base. Bringing revenue into marketing and operational functions is a game changer.

Revenue attribution is a much more powerful way to guide A/B testing in campaigns. Unfortunately, most marketing teams simply don't have the ability to judge on revenue. Instead, they are forced to make judgements on the immediate step - whether that be a click on an email, or downloading a digital asset.

With revenue attribution, teams can tie multivariate a/b testing to the bottom line.

Similar to campaigns, channels can also be optimized with revenue attribution. 

As both channel selection and campaigns become more profitable, more budget is justified. We spoke in-depth about how conversion optimization can lead to lower cost per customer acquisition.

The second order effect is the ability to add channels and justify additional spend.

Across both business and marketing functions, impact analysis is crucial. KPIs like ROMI can transform how you measure success. 

Revenue attribution is the first step in calculating ROI. 

Finally, 22% reported better executive buy-in on marketing activities. To me, this ties back to the most cited benefit, "Ability to make better decisions".

Insight on what drives revenues gives leaders confidence on where to allocate resources. 

View based revenue attribution focuses on when a personalization rule was experience by a customer. 

The purchase must occur in the same session the personalization event was triggered. One helpful tactic is to compare the revenue attributions between a control group (whose rule is to not show the personalization change) to the experiment. 

Click based revenue attribution only assigns revenue if the personalization rule was engaged with by the customer.

As with the view through model, the purchase must occur in the same session the rule was engaged with. 

With the direct revenue attribution model, we attempt to only capture purchases as a direct result of a personalization rule. 

We fine direct attribution as either

With revenue attribution, enterprises can understand which site elements result in purchases. 

Revenue attribution is just one part in a full 360 view of a customer. Barilliance helps eCommerce stores by delivering a customer data platform capable of tracking the full journey, from anonymous visitor to known repeat customer.

You can see how Barilliance helps eCommerce stores here, or by requesting a demo below.