Common Challenges With Closed Loop Analytics

Josh Becerra: Hey, everybody, this is Josh Becerra from Augurian. I’m here with our director of services, Derrick Turner. We’re talking about the challenges of closed-loop analytics. We’ve done a couple of videos now on closed-loop analytics, but it’s not perfect out of the box. It comes with some challenges. Do you want to tell us a little bit about generally what those challenges might look like?

Derrick Turner: Sure, yes. A huge advocate for closed-loop analytics in general just in terms of it brings data to the actual decision-makers to give them an idea of what are the correct levers to pull next to actually make a difference. However, there are some challenges and barriers that make 100% attribution knowing exactly what’s happened. Virtually impossible. Typically what I tell people is, “If you’re going to go through this process, we might be able to measure 60, 70, in a lot of cases higher, percent of the actual outcomes offline and connect that to digital clicks.”

I’ll go over some of the reasons why that might not work for a potential company. In general, I’d say that the biggest general challenge is just the actual use of the CRM itself. Are people adhering to process?

Josh: Like the sales team.

Derrick: Sales team often. Is there a clearly defined process which they are expected to go through? Is that being followed? In order to connect offline events, we need to have basically data that is pretty standardized in that sense. If there are teams that are only partially using it, that is really going to impact what you ultimately see to the detriment of marketing. If there are leads being driven and there are in fact sales and it’s just simply not being shown in the CRM, then marketing is not going to feel so great when that report ultimately comes out.

Josh: Yes, it’s like if you put in bad data, you get bad reporting and insights out. Besides the sales team and whether they’re inputting the proper data or not, how does this look when you are talking about bigger companies?

Derrick: Sure. The nice thing about working in bigger organizations is they’re typically going to have those processes well-trained, well-measured and ironed out. You typically run into that general issue less. However, there is increasing complexity just in the fact of you might have multiple divisions, the actual lead routing. Particularly when it comes to things like call tracking, there are ways to be able to measure call outcomes, but the systems there aren’t perfect.

If your business relies heavily on calls, there’s going to be some nuance just in terms of the implementation that’s needed to actually identify those levers. Additionally, if you’re using add on softwares that more or less route calls, that can create some additional complexity just in terms of the setup and really understanding how that data flow works and what you can expect to fall out at the end with some type of closed-loop reporting.

Josh: Any other challenges that you see with big companies?

Derrick: I would say another high level one is just the sales process is long and complex. There is additional nuance there that you need to think about. Frequently we will work with clients where, there is maybe somebody who will initially make the contact, but they might not be the actual decision-maker. You might actually talk to a few different people from the company itself before an actual decision is made over the period of six, 12 months.

That creates some challenges just in terms of, “Well, how do we ultimately reflect, what was that ultimate reason for the sale in the first place? How do we distribute dollars that we would attribute to any potential click that reflected or was tied to an offline sale? Just exactly how do we do that?” There’s a fair amount of discussion and consulting that goes into our closed-loop system and how we set up.

It can go ways just in terms of if we can identify, “Well, who is really the important buyer, who are the people that we need to talk to?” Often that’s good enough, but otherwise, we might have to do something a little bit more sophisticated and really start to divide out credit over multiple people to really understand what is driving business from your paid media efforts, from your digital efforts.

Josh: Yes, obviously, the longer the sales cycle, the more complex the multiple touches, the attribution just gets a little bit more tricky.

Derrick: Yes, it’s a conversation and often times there are solutions. Perfect can’t be the enemy of good. I think a lot of times even just 40 to 60 percent more visibility than you had there is really going to identify some aha moments as it is. Yes, there are just challenges that come with this process and it does require some partnership and just some general discussion to find out what solution is ultimately going to be best. Typically, we do scoping projects to really try to have those conversations, flesh out the details before we get into any type of engagement. Yes, it’s always conversation.

Josh: Yes, so it’s never going to be 100% and it helps to work with people who have experience putting it together. That’s what we’ve got for you today. Thanks, Derrick. I really appreciate it. Those are some of the challenges you might encounter with closed-loop analytics. See you.