Don't focus on attributed revenue

Here's why

Author

Angus Cowan
May 28, 2024

Yes, I don’t pay much attention to attributed revenue

As long as it’s floating around 25-50%, I’m pretty happy and don’t often look at it.

Attributed revenue is more of a holistic overview. But is has a lot of flaws, and I think way too many people hold it in too high of a regard.

I’ve seen many stores attributing 40%+ revenue who have pretty awful email marketing strategies.

And by awful I mean:

  • bad deliverability

  • half cooked flows

  • just sales focused campaigns

Which means even at 40% attribution they’re leaving considerable revenue on the table.

There are a few key reasons that attributed revenue doesn’t paint a good picture:

  1. If your ads are flying, email revenue will be lower. Not a bad thing.

  2. If your ads are performing awful, revenue from email will be HIGHER. This isn’t a good sign.

  3. Often times multiple platforms attribute the same revenue from one sale (someone might purchase, and it will show up in Facebook ROAS & Klaviyo revenue)

The metrics you should be focusing on are:

  • Customer Acquisition Cost (the lower the better)

  • Click Rates

  • Customer Life Time Value

  • Average Order Value

  • Site Conversion Rate

  • nMER (new customers acquired divided by total marketing spend across all channels including subscriptions and agencies etc)

With attribution becoming less and less accurate, this is the way forward.

Hope this helps

Angus Cowan

The DTC Growth Letter