Is the Root Problem Silos or Measurement?
	Posted by Guest Blogger at Dec 12, 2012 07:00 AM CST

This post was written by guest author Chip Grizzard, Chief Executive Officer, Grizzard.

Organizational culture, budgets and structure are usually aligned around each channel of communication instead of the donor. As a result, each department has different goals and strategies that drive its decision making, and there are usually no incentives to collaborate. When mail was the only channel, there were no problems. But, as each new channel was added to the mix, a new department was created.
 
Most organizations either don’t recognize the challenges with a siloed organization, or they don’t want to go through the pain of addressing people, technology, culture, turf wars, budgets and incentives. Unfortunately, the more markets fragment, the more a siloed approach will negatively impact results. Maybe there is a better way to gain buy-in to a re-organization, and it starts with changing how we measure results.
 
According to the Adobe Digital Index Report, marketers are not giving channels the credit they deserve. “The assumption that the marketing channel most responsible for a consumer’s behavior is the channel that the consumer last touched before a visit or donation is called last-click attribution. Last-click attribution became widely used in the early days of e-commerce….But the digital paths consumers (and donors) take are rarely this straightforward.”
 
“If the consumer’s (donor’s) path to purchase (donating) was even longer and involved multiple channels -- as it often does -- accurately attributing credit to each site (touch point) along the path becomes very challenging. Marketers are (Grizzard is) developing a sophisticated cross-channel attribution model to address this complexity.” Grizzard’s model will better track cross-channel promotions, show how one marketing effort impacts the response through another channel and will allow organizations to better allocate marketing dollars to channels and activities that drive response.
 
Once ROI is measured by the channel that most influences a gift versus the channel the donor last touched, I think organizations will begin to change how they allocate budgets. That could be the first step to better measurement, improved collaboration and the elimination of silos.
 
Please share your thoughts through the comments link below.