Time and time again we’ve heard companies use the terms “matchback” and “attribution” synonymously. They are simply not the same thing.
Marketing effectiveness was easier to see when we only tracked explicit (ie. customer self-identifies with a promotion code) response sales in one or two channels. Explicit response feels reliable because the marketer is rather confident that the customer was seeing that piece of media when they purchased. Matchback, a.k.a. implicit response, attempts to capture the remaining effect of marketing when an explicit response wasn’t tracked. The online equivalents are simply clicks (explicit) and impressions (implicit).
Experian Channel Match℠ and Abacus ChannelView® are matchback programs, which are processes for understanding who received various marketing treatments across multiple marketing channels. A multi-channel matchback is helpful in creating a “customer event history” – a cornerstone for revenue attribution. In other words, a matchback only provides a piece of the data needed to start an attribution study.
To be clear, matchbacks are important. They can help identify external prospects (list rentals) that purchased without using a promotional code and were previously untrackable. However, only using matchback and not attribution will result in double-counting sales. For example, a matchback process may link a person who was mailed a catalog with their behavior in some other marketing channels, but it won’t accurately account for all revenue. Hence, the sales double-counting. In addition, attributing revenue only to marketing treatments doesn’t account for the impact of the trade area, brand equity, or calendar effects (more on this topic in an upcoming post).
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