Episode 4
Attribution and Analytics with Moira Miller
Analytics, What's new in the world of analytics for you? We're right now trying to get cleaner data, more data hopefully. And just trying to get to a source of truth, if you will. At some point you're gonna have to just pick a line and be like, this is how we measure everything.
Moira Miller (00:52)
Mm-hmm.
Doug Logan (00:58)
And that's challenging because we look at every platform out there and the way they do attribution is just whatever is in their best interest.
Moira Miller (01:06)
Attribution is one of those conversations that I remember having, 10 years ago and trying to justify, to a client. And it was just such an interesting conversation because, they wanted a certain amount of extra credit to the first click or the last click. It's like, okay, but what about the nurturing that you've done or should it be a portion of credit given to everybody? And I remember using some of the most well-known attribution tools. I run a lot of like testing and AB testing and looking for that statistically significant data. And then I'd say from an analytics point of view I think the thing that's limiting is that your actions and the way that you're reading that data is only as good as the data itself. And I've had, experiences with clients that have said, we don't want any analytics audits. We don't want you to analyze it, we don't want you to give us recommendations, we don't want you to scrub it, just use what we have. Like, okay, so we put that as a disclaimer, saying we're making actionable decisions off to the data as is. And there's been instances where, a client finds out that they're double counting things, so they're skewing their data and for years. The other thing is it's probably the first time that I'm seeing interest from clients in moving away from Google and their products. I think people are actually hearing about other technologies and platforms and they're like, should we explore that? Whereas for so long, you know, Google was the end all be all and the single source of truth and the king of data and this, that, the other thing. But especially as a marketer, you're making all these decisions and it's dollars and it's real time and making sure that the actions that you're taking and the decisions that you're making are based off of that accurate data.
Doug Logan (02:52)
I think that attribution is massive. And if we can accurately, attribute where someone is coming in from fairly, and then level that across the playing field so that every platform, every channel is measured the same way. That's a really great start. But you're still only seeing so much of the picture. I, When we look at analytics and what you can see currently and what's happening across these different channels, I had to guess that you're, you're probably seeing about 10, maybe 15 % of the whole picture. It isn't our goal to get to a hundred percent. It's impossible. But if we can get to like 60, 70 % and then you can use your gut for the rest, then great. We, recently just completed a big campaign for a client where, a lot of our effort was focused on email. And the email marketing platform that they use, that emails drove over $2 million in revenue. And then GA4 says, actually, you did half a million. So somewhere between half a million and $2 million is the real answer. And that's just a huge swing.
Moira Miller (04:03)
Yes, that discrepancy is huge. Like that's massive. Wow. I guess from my perspective, it's like, is that just a fundamental difference between the two and you have to pick which one you want to move forward with? Or is it saying like, actually, let's look a little deeper
Doug Logan (04:21)
Well, exactly. If, like if all we did was email marketing, then it'd be like, well, that's the case study right there. You know, email did $2 million, right? Of that whole, that whole campaign. And the, the reality of it is, is that the email marketing platform and GA4 are both telling the truth. They're just telling two different stories. And so you have to choose the narrative, choose which story you want to tell. I'm not in analytics all the time as much as you are, but if you see the ad on Facebook, then go to the website, not click on the ad, but just go to the website and make a purchase within a certain window of time, Meta is going to say that was us.
Moira Miller (04:57)
100%. They're like, we were obviously involved, therefore we get the credit. And that's, I think the interesting thing about attribution is because, they're both telling the truth. It's just the story is different. That is the of the piece of it, especially when you're running campaigns across channels. So you're doing something with Meta, you're doing something with Google ads, maybe you're also doing...
Doug Logan (04:58)
Yeah.
Moira Miller (05:19)
Display, maybe you're doing LinkedIn, maybe you're doing some sort of remarketing. And you have all these different campaigns and they all have different goals. Some of them are brand awareness, some of them are more a lead generation or conversion focused, or you're trying to get signups for a webinar or something like that. All of these different things have different ways of measuring. So mean, you really do have to of pick and choose what are you gonna use as your source of truth? And that's why I think a lot of clients just default to Google Analytics. How do you make sense of that?
Doug Logan (05:50)
Yeah. And I think probably where the pushback for using Google analytics is coming from is that you're paying them money to run ads on their platform. So, you got to wonder, does that impact in any way the results that we're seeing? Cause at the end of the day, it's not a nonprofit, you know?
Moira Miller (06:06)
Mm-hmm.
Doug Logan (06:11)
I don't have the answer for that. I guess that is where the case could be made for using other platforms. You look at Meta and go back to that example that view through conversion, which on the face value to a marketer, to anyone is not sleazy, a sleazy marketer, right? But there is merit, there is some value to seeing that ad. Granted, they probably have to see it 30 times before it registers in their mind as they're scrolling through their feed, and then they go to the website and search for it or make that purchase. GA would not be able to see that. They would not know that I saw this ad on Instagram a day ago and then saw it again today and then went to Google and searched. Especially if I jump from my phone, scrolling Instagram to now jumping on and typing into Google looking for that particular product again, two different stories, two different sources of truth and somewhere between $5 million and $2 million is the answer. The crazy part is that if email was $2 million of a $5 million sale and then Facebook's claiming $3 million, you just keep adding it up and it's like, everyone thinks we did $20 million, but there's only $5 million in the bank, right?
Moira Miller (07:30)
One of the other things that we used to do was really looking at those user journeys and understanding before somebody visits our website. What actions are they taking, online, offline? And just trying to understand what it looks like for those different audiences. How are they engaging with your site or your product or your services? And then, what does it look like after they engage? Are they going to be a long time user or a long time customer or something like that. The data that you're getting, it's a tiny portion of that whole picture and just trying to make sense of it. That's the other thing that we're seeing clients asking for dashboards, reporting in different ways and different visualizations so that they can try to make sense of all these different platforms and what's successful.
Doug Logan (08:18)
Yeah. I can't think of the name of this metric, but it came up recently. And I told them to forget it because There was a technical term for this, but it was essentially like, put all of your marketing dollars into the same bucket across all your channels.
Moira Miller (08:31)
Okay.
Doug Logan (08:32)
And then just divide by your revenue. It was a pushback on a client that was trying to hit a 20 ROAS, Which we hit. We did hit it and we've maintained it. And it was not easy. but the initial reaction was like, we can't hit that. Like, well, they are the client. If we can't hit it, we can't hit it. They won't be our client for very much longer than that's the reality. So if that's what they're up against internally with their own stakeholders, et cetera, we either play ball or we don't. And I'd much rather get in a situation where the client be upfront about it and be like, that's a high goal. That's a really high goal to hit. And we're gonna do our hardest to get there. And I can say that 20. We're like right under 20 with some of the campaigns in the last several months hitting 20 or better. And it's been a lot of work, but it came from basically not convincing the client that it was the wrong metric because if that's how they need to justify it, then that's how they needed to do it. So then it just becomes, you know, managing expectations.
Moira Miller (09:31)
Right.
Doug Logan (09:35)
A lot of times it's the same amount of work as it is to to manage a couple hundred dollars a day versus a couple thousand dollars a day. You want to hit that metric that's what you got to hit but i can't remember the name of that that BS metric that's what it is in my head.
Moira Miller (09:47)
Well, what's funny is you told them to forget it and you did.
Doug Logan (09:50)
I get that analytics is flawed and I get that we cannot track everything, but we can at least like just try a little, a little bit.
Moira Miller (09:58)
I think sometimes you have to pulse the client a little bit and set expectations. Like we had a client that had really aspirational goals. I said, okay, you know, that sounds a little high, but you know, tell me what your current metrics are. They wanted, I think a thousand new subscribers or something like that within a very short time frame when they were only getting like 10. You know, if they were getting 5,000 or 50,000 and they wanted a thousand new in a month, you'd be like, sure, no problem, same with the targets. Clients have different targets for different reasons. you can show them that you can either achieve it or get really close, and then talk about the different layers that you're leveraging to kind of hit those goals and you're being upfront about it and transparent. Like, I think that's going to probably be a pretty… fruitful relationship for a long time and partnership. I think that's the other thing that some marketers are afraid of. It's like, well, if we hit that target, then they're going to increase it next year. And I'm like, not necessarily.
Doug Logan (11:00)
I'd much rather find out that we're not going to be a good fit sooner rather than later. Right?
Moira Miller (11:05)
Yes, I think that allowing people to self-select out, if they don't align with your philosophy or the way that you approach business or if they, don't seem genuinely interested or willing to make an investment or don't believe in it and don't believe that you can grow and evolve and hit those targets, then they're probably not a good fit. So like, kind of save yourself the headache now.
Doug Logan (11:24)
Yeah, if they don't like dad jokes, then get out. I mean, that's just that aspect of being human and I think with analytics and I think with campaigns and anything, right? We're human, we're gonna make mistakes. I think the goal is that when we make mistakes, we should be the first one to own it. If somebody screws up, I'd much rather them come to me right away and be like, hey, I screwed this up and I've fixed it now or have a way to fix it and here it is, right? Rather than trying to like cover it up. I remember years ago, We had a client that we were doing paid search campaigns with and they were really looking for, last click attribution. And they had a very targeted goal of driving leads at under a certain dollar amount. It was very targeted, very niche campaign. It was a very tight window, really aggressive timeframe and a big amount of spend. So we suggested a DSP. Got in there and set everything up. We then come into like the first meeting to outline the strategy and the marketing guy on our side said, “Hey, what about looking different attribution model?” He made a case for it and the client came back and was like, “no.” And so I said, we'll move forward with that goal in mind. And that's what we're going to, we're trying to achieve. So we had about a three month runway on it to try to test it out, see if we could, we could hit it. And I remember being well under the goal. And I was ecstatic. And we're reporting on like a bi-weekly basis to the client where we're at and everything like that. And then the one day I'm looking over this individual shoulder and I'm like, what is, what is $600 CPL? Well that's like, you know, last click, but I'm looking at blah, blah. And that's where this number's coming. And I was like, Were you not in the same strategy meetings? Like we've been talking about this. I've been presenting this. I've been trusting that we're all speaking the same language. As soon as I found that out, immediately went back to the client. I was like, listen, here's the deal. We've been saying we've been hitting like $60 CPL. And I think it was in reality, it was in the three hundreds, which was just not a good fun conversation to have. The silver lining on it was I fired that team member before that client fired us. And we still tried save face on it. It was not a fun, crucial conversation for sure. Tough too, because like as a leader, our job is to lead people, not lead the work necessarily, right? But I have to be able to trust my people to do a good job.
Moira Miller (13:57)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, if you're in client services or on the agency side, like everybody has a story like that where you have a mistake has happened, whether it you or somebody on your team and you have to, you know, tell the client. But I think like the way that you take that accountability and that ownership, that response and the resolution is really what's pivotal for the longevity of that relationship. And you build that trust because you're being transparent and you're saying, this is what happened, this is why, and this is how we're fixing it moving forward.
