Knowledge of your customer is a must-have, but complex journeys across multiple devices present travel brands with huge challenges.
Travel brands should attack the issue of attribution from multiple angles, finds a brand new report from EyeforTravel. The approaches, which include tracking through cookies, data-driven attribution and encouraging customers to log-in to own brand sites and apps, all need to be underpinned by a strong data programme that measures change over time.
Travel brands need to undertake an extensive and multifaceted approach because attribution requires capturing interactions at so many touchpoints over extended periods and from different devices.
Mobile bookings, in particular, have additional complexity in terms of attribution. As mobile is a last-minute channel with short lead times, there is limited time to build up tracking data. To back this up, some key stats from EyeforTravel’s Mobile Industry Survey 2018 reveal that:
- 80% of accommodation business surveyed reported that mobile lead times were shorter
- 58.7% said that they were much shorter
- Only 1.3% found that mobile lead times were longer
The result is that often brands are left to rely on just last touch attribution, particularly when it comes to mobile bookings, and are often looking at an incomplete view of the customer journey.
Maria Gómez Bada, analytics expert at HomeAway.com, argues that travel firms should fight the tendency to analyse just the last click, and see the whole picture. Google Analytics’ default attribution model, she argues, which will show you your customer’s last known direct click, gives an incomplete picture. Instead, she proposes data-driven attribution models for most online, complex companies.
“Data-driven attribution understands the value of the whole path, not only considering clicks but also impressions,” she explains. “[For example]… a customer has seen your ad in Facebook, doesn’t click on it but recalls your brand, and might come in later through SEO [search engine optimisation] or SEM [search engine marketing]. Data-driven attribution gives a value to each medium and channel, considering clicks and impressions. Not only that, it works with predictive models to try to understand how you can invest in better marketing channels and ultimately get more conversions.”
