May11 Written by:Scott Rakestraw
5/11/2006 10:34 PM
Drag in marketing measurement referrers to lagging sales from a campaign. Basically, sales that are traceable to a campaign, e.g. 800#, that are posted well after the initial campaign drop or impression, typically 4 weeks.
When does drag end?
Depending on whom you ask and the campaign’s marketing channel, sales are classified as drag that occur four weeks or four months after the initial drop or impression. I know this is a big range but if you can track the sale, marketing wants credit.
For one of my clients, we had a four month drag rule for direct response campaigns, things like ValPak and Parade, which translated means sales that occur four months after the initial drop got bucketed as miscellaneous sales. The four month rule made sense initially but when preparing presentations, the client questioned why so many sales were miscellaneous. The client bought in to the four month rule upfront but when they were not getting credit for sales, the four month rule went out the window. When you think about, if the sales are traceable and no other campaigns are associated to the 800#, why shouldn’t the sales get credited?
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