Marketers who are tasked with Database Acquisition have one of the most essential responsibilities on the brand marketing team. By fueling the growth of their brand’s first party consumer database, this team creates the engines that drives countless other direct marketing and retargeting channels, including: email, Facebook, direct mail, SMS and many others. But even with such a vital job, Database Acquisition campaigns struggle to develop proportionate attribution models that illustrate the true value of their acquisition sources and allow them to finetune their sourcing.

We often see our clients’ Database Acquisition teams in a (friendly) competition for sales and conversion credit with the very direct targeting and remarketing channels that they support. Take email for example: as we discussed in Part 1 of our Attribution Series, sometimes being closer to the end of the conversion funnel can help you get credit for the final result. Since Database Acquisition campaigns are often the entry point for a consumer’s digital interaction with a brand, they can often be forgotten about months or years later when a conversion finally takes place as the direct result of another channel.

There are two key perspectives from which Database Acquisition teams need to consider attribution. Internally, within their own campaigns, correct attribution is a necessity to know which of their acquisition sources are working and which are not so they can optimize their paid efforts. Externally, relative to the other marketing channels within their company, fair attribution is critical in order to illustrate to the C-level team that your campaigns deserve to continue receiving bigger and better budgets.

This second perspective tends to be very difficult for our brands. Too often, we see successful Database Acquisition campaigns suffer because they are not able to claim a big enough piece of the conversion pie.

The multiple angles from which attribution commands attention is just another reason why it is a timeless and endless struggle.