Online marketers working with multiple advertising vendors might double, triple, and even quadruple count conversions.  When a marketer uses several vendors to run campaigns like paid search, search engine optimization, display advertising, and email marketing, the same conversion might be counted multiple times across vendors. This increasingly common practice happens in many organizations who farm out isolated online marketing jobs to various agencies.

All too often we hear from online marketers who don’t trust the numbers from one, more, or all of their vendors because their back-end numbers don’t jive with vendor reports.  Many explanations exist for the discrepancy. Throughout my 12 years of Internet marketing experience, the primary reason I’ve seen this happen is because each vendor tracks its own sales attributed to its own advertising efforts...but many consumers DO NOT convert on the first visit to a given website. This occurrence is known as a latent or delayed conversion.  It may take a consumer a number of website visits, triggered by two or more separate advertising channels, to convert. Think about the last 2 or 3 online purchases you made. How many times did you visit a site (to read product reviews/descriptions, compare products, compare prices, etc.) before you converted?

Here’s an example of a delayed conversion resulting from a combination of website visits:

1. Bob initially visits a site from an email received at work about iPod accessories. Although he visits the site advertised in the email, he just browses and doesn’t convert. (e-mail delivered/tracked from Vendor A)
2. Later that evening, he wants to look up the site from home but can’t recall the website’s address because it’s in the email he saved at work. From his home computer, Bob searches on Google for “IPOD Accessories” and finds the same website through a paid search ad. Even though he visits the site again, Bob still does not convert. (PPC managed by Vendor B)
3. The following morning before he goes to work, Bob searches for the company “Apple” on Google. He once again finds the same site. This time, he locates it under the natural search listings instead of from a paid search ad. Bob clicks on the link and finally converts by buying an iPod accessory. (SEO managed by Vendor C)

The 3 different steps or actions taken by Bob to buy the iPod accessory activate 3 different vendor tracking systems.  Because each vendor operates independently from the others, all 3 tracking systems take credit for the same conversion.  An online marketer unaware of this type of latent conversion may think he received a total of 3 different conversions from 3 different vendors...when it was really JUST ONE conversion with 2 earlier events assisting.  Although the last clicked-on ad/channel normally gets credit for the conversion, it is crucial to understand how other ads/channels assist in the conversion process.

Ultimately, the best way to protect yourself from this type of conversion counting conundrum is to work with a multi-disciplinary organization like WebMetro who can support your business’ primary online marketing needs and still support tracking of adhoc advertising channels you may manage yourself.  Here, we facilitate this through our centralized tracking tool called DSMM™ (Dynamic Search Media Marketing) Advantage. DSMM Advantage not only functions as many of our clients’ centralized tracking tool, but it also provides advertisers with extensive details on which advertising channels assisted with the overall conversion process.  In the example using Bob and iPod accessories, the email and paid search ad would be classified as assist channels/campaigns.  

In addition to working with a collaborative Internet marketing partner like WebMetro, leveraging a centralized reporting tool like our DSMM™ tool, Google Analytics and/or Omniture to track ALL your conversions is a must.  These tools will help resolve some of the duplicate tracking problems since most analytics solutions give conversion credit to the last advertising campaign exposed to the consumer.  In many cases, our clients hire us to complete a conversion analysis and dedupe (remove duplicates) conversions from all their different vendors.  This helps them understand the percentage of duplicates found within different reporting platforms so they can make appropriate and informed decisions on historical data collected.  The key here is to ensure ALL Vendors use the same Conversion ID’s, Order/Transaction Number, the same Revenue Numbers (if applicable), along with a date & timestamp of when the conversion occurred. We also use data mining techniques to produce a detailed report showing which orders have been duplicated in each venue. This gives our clients the ability to make much more educated decisions on channel performance.

Let us know if you’re encountering these reporting problems. We’d love to hear from you and help you get out of the conversion counting conundrum!

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