Panel of Retailers Talk Attribution at eTail

At 1-800-Flowers.com, the marketing team uses three methods for attribution: last click/last view; first click/first view (which is effective for evaluating the effectiveness of display ads, noted Will Ferguson); and a regression model on all marketing touchpoints.

Vermont Teddy Bear (VTB) mostly uses last-touch attribution, said Victor Castro, but it does have an unorthodox strategy — some might call it crazy — for offline media attribution (the company invests heavily in TV and radio advertising). When customers go to check out on VTB's website, they're required to fill out a text field on how they heard of the company. They can't complete their purchase until they do so. "It may go against best practice, but we get 100 percent participation," Castro said jokingly. He reasons that while he may lose some potential orders, that money is more than made up for in the customer feedback he's getting, which enables him to optimize future marketing spend.