Marin, RevTrax Link Paid-Search Campaigns To In-Store Sales

LawsonMarin Software has formed a partnership with RevTrax to connect online paid-search ad clicks and analytics to in-store purchases. This should give marketers running campaigns across channels the tools to closely match budgets to media. The agreement supports data analysis on margin and redemption that aims to support brands.

Paid-search promotions link to printable or mobile landing pages that display a coupon with a unique barcode or promo code. The brand can track back the unique code to the coupon and paid-search ad driving engagement. The RevTrax technology triggers a code that sends conversion data to Marin, which attributes the keywords to the specific campaigns, search engine and network.

Seth Sarelson, COO of RevTrax, said the offline data reports on things like margin analysis. Are consumers more likely to buy products with higher margins based on specific search ads? Do they come in the store and redeem the coupons quicker? 

A disconnect kept marketers from attributing paid-search campaigns to in-store purchases, although most sales still take place in brick-and-mortar stores. For every $1 of ecommerce revenue generated from paid search, marketers can expect to see approximately another $6 of in-store revenue, according to a RevTrax study.  The finding shows that if marketers undervalue the search channel by not factoring in-store sales into the paid-search ROI calculation, they may undervalue the channel by as much as 85%.

A handful of companies have begun to link paid search to in-store sales and revenue.

In 2011, Merrell Wreden, vice president of marketing for AMF Bowling, told MediaPost SearchBlog about plans to launch a mobile campaign and tie in coupons. Now, the company takes the strategy a step further to link in paid-search ads. Through support from marketing company MediaWhiz, AMF tied offline conversion data from RevTrax with campaign data from the search engines to analyze return on advertising spend.

It took six months, but monthly revenue attributed to search marketing rose more than 10 times than revenue in the first month of the program. Over nine months, AMF Bowling's conversion rate jumped 74% and cost per conversion dropped nearly 70%. Matt Lawson, vice president of marketing and partnerships at Marin Software, said revenue rose tenfold by optimizing offline conversions.

1 comment about "Marin, RevTrax Link Paid-Search Campaigns To In-Store Sales ".
Check to receive email when comments are posted.
  1. Matt Lillig from Yahoo!, June 28, 2012 at 7:17 p.m.

    Congrats to both the Marin and RevTrax teams!

    This is a great partnership for helping search advertisers understand the attributed value of online marketing on offline redemption/conversion.

    All brick and mortar retailers with an online presence should see value in this opportunity.

    Matt Lillig
    Yahoo! Data Products

Next story loading loading..