Solving the Store Visit Attribution Puzzle for a Quick Service Restaurant (QSR)

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) Case-study

Introduction

Conversion Attribution is an enigma and marketers seldom have a complete understanding of the marketing channels and their role in bringing conversions. Marketers are constantly spending on a wide range of activities with the hope that their brands, products, and services will gather the attention of their target audience. By efficiently attributing conversions and understanding which tactics are most effective in achieving their goals, marketers are able to make intelligent decisions and apportion marketing budgets to the befitting activities. While the advent of digital advertising has made attribution somewhat easier, marketers still tend to rely on solutions such as Last-click Attribution. The problem with this approach is that it neither provides a holistic picture of a customer’s journey in the conversion funnel nor an opportunity to justify their strategies and their spending. There are a few ways to work around this. In this blog, we explain, with the help of a client success story, how we were able to tackle conversion attribution through the use of a Customer Data Platform (CDP).

The Client & Requirements

Our client is one of the largest Quick Service Restaurants (QSRs) headquartered on the western coast of the United States. Founded over half a century ago, they are present in over 200 locations in the country.

The requirements were two-fold. One was to increase footfall in one of their restaurants and the second was to drive online orders on their website. The client also expected each conversion (restaurant visits and online orders) to be precisely attributed to the right digital media channel and ad creative.

Challenges

Any brick-and-mortar store would agree that it is a challenge to measure the walk-ins as a result of their marketing efforts, digital or otherwise. With the experience of running digital marketing campaigns day-in-and-day-out for clients across industries, we understand that it’s a challenging task to attribute restaurant walk-ins (conversions) to digital advertising (online-to-offline attribution) or even conversions on the client website (online orders) as a result of online marketing initiatives (online-to-online attribution).

The Solution

Our digital marketing experts employed separate strategies to achieve the client’s objectives:

For increasing store visits:

• Incentivize the target audience to visit the restaurant and place an order – by offering a discount on the order value
• Creating ads with offers and showing them to the target audience on relevant mobile apps

For driving online orders on the website (web conversions):

• Show informative ads on relevant websites (both desktop and mobiles) and mobile apps
• Reach out to the right target audience with the right messaging
• Retarget potential customers based on their engagement on the website

In addition to employing Google and Facebook to reach out to the relevant target audience for driving online orders on the restaurant’s website, we decided to leverage Programmatic Advertising for both campaigns along with using Vizibl CDP, our proprietary CDP.

Conversion Attribution Scenarios for a QSR

Since the client had specific requirements that warranted a unique approach, we divided the attribution tasks into three scenarios to simplify the conversion attribution process.

Why we used Programmatic Advertising

• To use CDP pixel on ad creatives for precise attribution in case of restaurant visits and online orders on the website (when ads are shown to the user in-app)
• To reach out to a much larger target audience
• To be able to refine the targeting parameters and reduce ad spend wastage
• To run retargeting campaigns on 1st party data for increased conversions and reduced CPA

Why we used CDP:

• To measure advertising metrics
• To map the users who had seen the ad and converted (either restaurant visit or online order)
• To precisely attribute each conversion to the right ad campaign

In addition to the above, CDP also helped create specific target audience segments, thereby enabling us to retarget them with custom messaging using the Programmatic platform.

Execution

For this purpose, we leveraged Vizibl CDP, our proprietary Customer Data Platform (CDP) built for the mid-size market, to help overcome the challenges posed by conversion attribution and to capture insights on website visitors for retargeting campaigns. Given the nature and complexity of client requirements and challenges, Vizibl CDP was used to attribute the conversions to the appropriate channels.

Vizibl CDP also created a persistent, unified customer database, helping the client generate meaningful customer profiles and actionable insights for precise targeting.

This enabled us to:

• Attribute store conversions to ads shown on mobile apps
• Attribute web conversions (online orders) to ads shown on mobile apps
• Attribute web conversions (online orders) to ads shown on websites (desktop and mobile)

In addition to these, we made use of the CDP pixel placed on the client’s website for funnel-based segmentation and retargeting. Using the pixel, we were able to segment users who dropped off during the various stages preceding the conversion (on the order page, at the ‘Add to Cart’ stage, at Sign in/Sign up, during checkout, or during payment). We then used these segments to aggressively retarget them towards the bottom of the sales funnel by using custom messaging for each segment. By doing so, we were able to increase the number of conversions as also the client’s Return on Investment (ROI).

Results

With the use of Vizibl CDP and our programmatic expertise, we were able to combat the problem of conversion attribution while efficiently utilizing the client’s marketing budget to ensure that they received the maximum ROI.

Restaurant – CDP – Results

With Vizibl CDP, we were able to attribute over 1000 conversions on their web orders through ads shown on mobile apps and over 1600 orders on their website through targeted ads shown on other web pages. Our online-offline attribution estimated approximately 38,000 store visits as a result of the mobile app-based ads. With our custom funnel-based segmenting and retargeting, we were able to increase the conversions on the client’s e-commerce site. 75% of the conversions came from this custom retargeting. We were able to convert 60% of the users belonging to the target segment who were closer to the purchase phase in the conversion funnel, thus pushing them that extra mile to make the purchase. This also helped us in achieving an overall CPA for Web Retargeting (online orders only) of around $8, as compared to the overall CPA for all campaigns at around $24 (online orders only).

Irrespective of the channel used, we were able to track conversions and attribute them to the right marketing tactics using the CDP. With the help of the CDP, we were not only able to deliver on the expectations of the client by addressing conversion attribution but were also able to garner meaningful insights pertaining to customer behavior, which helped us guide customers along the purchase cycle using retargeting.

Although there are numerous CDPs out there, it is important to choose one with the right set of features that best suit your requirements. If you are working with a tight budget, Datawrkz recommends using a low-cost CDP (with limited but important feature sets) instead of a high-cost CDP. By going for a high-cost CDP, you will be paying for a full set of features, which you may end up not using. If you are still unsure of using a CDP or would like to know more about how a CDP can help you, reach out to sales@datawrkz.com.