HSBC

Global in-housing of marketing attribution operating model

01. Challenge

HSBC lacked transparency and control of the operating model which were being used to attribute and measure their digital marketing performance. This was owned and operated by their global media agency. As well as concerns around the potential commercial ramifications of a lack of transparency, ownership of marketing data was seen of strategic importance for the bank. HSBC came to LEAD to solve their challenge.

02. Solution

LEAD ran a six-week discovery, combining in-person stakeholder interviews across four continents with collateral analysis of hundreds of media plans, agency invoices, performance reports and more. The discovery allowed LEAD to make a recommendation to take direct ownership of the attribution technology and processes globally across 33 markets.

The final solution was a fully transparent model, which enabled HSBC full ownership of the marketing performance data globally. To this day this is the foundation of marketing analytics globally at HSBC. LEAD worked with HSBC and their selected vendors to, procure onboard technology and build the ways of working across all internal teams to fully embed the operating model into the entire organisation.

03. Results

The transition to the in house model was incredibly successful for HSBC. The model delivered a $9m+ saving in fees across their agencies and marketing technology, as well as the removal of barriers to their marketing performance data that allowed them to have full real-time access to performance reporting.

The ownership and access to marketing performance data gave HSBC a foundation to build their digital marketing maturity. This has since led to several key strategic initiatives including end-to-end sales attribution and an understanding of the lifetime value of customers acquired through digital marketing channels.