"If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it" (Peter Drucker). At YouLead, we are advocates of this maxim and strongly believe that only by monitoring the results of marketing tactics can they be optimized and improved in the future.
However, many marketing professionals (particularly those in digital marketing) continue to struggle with this measurement and with identifying which campaigns, channels, tactics, and content have an impact on lead generation and customer conversion.
In a new era where the diversity of channels and customer touchpoints is ever-increasing, marketing experts face this new challenge. Since consumer interaction with a given brand is anything but linear—and isn’t limited to just one channel between the first interaction and the actual purchase—the need to identify the channels that generate the greatest engagement (and, at the end of the day, the greatest value) is becoming increasingly urgent.
With HubSpot, an integrated CRM platform, you can consolidate all this information and gain visibility into the relative importance of each touchpoint in customer conversion. How? Through attribution reports.
1. What are attribution reports ?
Attribution reports are reports that display all relevant user interactions with a given company’s touchpoints . They use predefined templates that help you understand which channels, pages, and/or content generate the best results.
These reports streamline the entirereporting process, allowing marketers to measure data from various channels in an integrated manner on a single platform.
2. What are the attribution reporttemplates availablein HubSpot?
’s multi-touch attribution reports measure the value of all key interactions a contact has had throughout their buyer’s journey. They allow you to identify the marketing and sales efforts that led, for example, to a conversion.
HubSpot allows you to measure two types of multi-touch reports : the contact create attribution report and the revenue attribution report.
As the names suggest, they allow you to measure data related to contact properties and revenue properties.
- Contact creation attribution reports: These measure the journey of contacts in the CRM up to the point they were created and include models such as: first interaction, last interaction, linear, U-shaped, and time-decay.
- Revenue attribution reports: measure the journey up to the point when contacts become customers and include models such as: first interaction, last interaction, linear, U-shaped, W-shaped, full-path, and time-decay.
3. What are the contact attribution report models in HubSpot?
As mentioned earlier, contact creation attribution reports are used to track marketing efforts that lead to the creation of new contacts. For example, in HubSpot, you can evaluate your marketing campaigns and determine which one is performing best in terms of generating new contacts.
The attribution models break down contact credits into distinct interactions:
- First interaction: assigns 100% of contact credits to the contact’s first interaction in the conversion path;
- Last interaction: assigns 100% of contact credits to the contact’s last interaction in the conversion path;
- Linear: assigns contact credits equally to each interaction in the conversion path
- U-shaped: Attributes 40% of contact credits to the first interaction and to lead conversion interactions. It attributes the remaining 20% of contact credits equally to all other interactions;
- Time-decay: Assigns contact credits more heavily to the most recent interactions. Credits are distributed using a 7-day window. In other words, an interaction that occurred 8 days before a conversion receives half the credit of an interaction that occurred 1 day before the same conversion.
4. What are HubSpot’s revenue attribution models?
Revenue attribution reports, in turn, link revenue—in the form of credits—to customer interactions. The attribution models divide contact credits among distinct interactions:
- First interaction: attributes 100% of the credits to the first interaction that led to the closing of a deal;
- Last interaction: attributes 100% of the credits to the last interaction that led to the closing of a deal;
- Linear: analyzes all interactions that led to the closing of a deal. It assigns equal credit to each interaction;
- U-shaped: assigns 40% of the credit to the first interaction and to the interactions that converted the lead. The remaining 20% is distributed evenly across all other interactions;
- W-shaped: assigns 30% of the credit to the first interaction, 30% to the interaction that generated the lead, and 30% to the last interaction that generated the deal. The remaining 10% is distributed evenly across all interactions between the first interaction and the creation of the deal;
- Full-path: assigns 22.5% credit to the first interaction, 22.5% to the interaction that created the contact, 22.5% to the last interaction that created the deal , and 22.5% to the interaction that closed the deal. The remaining 10% is distributed evenly across all other interactions.
- Time-decay: assigns contact credit more heavily to the most recent interactions. Credit is distributed using a 7-day window. In other words, an interaction that occurred 8 days before a conversion receives half the credit of an interaction that occurred 1 day before the same conversion.
5. What types of interactions are tracked in HubSpot?
- Page view: allows you to see the pages a contact has viewed (whether they are pages hosted on HubSpot or external pages with the HubSpot tracking code);
- Form submission: a contact filled out a form tracked by HubSpot;
- CTA clicks: the contact clicked on a specific HubSpot CTA;
- Social post click: the contact clicked on a social media post published through HubSpot;
- Marketing email click: the contact clicked on a marketing email sent through HubSpot;
- Sales email reply: A contact replied to a tracked one-to-one email sent through HubSpot;
- Meeting: A contact had a meeting with a HubSpot user;
- Call: A contact had a call with a HubSpot user;
- Contact creation: The contact was created in HubSpot (includes imports and manual creation);
- Conversations: The contact had a conversation with a HubSpot user;
- Ad click: The contact clicked on an ad tracked by HubSpot.
To access this HubSpot feature, you need the HubSpot Marketing Hub Enterprise plan. If you already have a Marketing Enterprise license, start creating your attribution reports now and see how easy it is to measure the credit of your different touchpoints for lead generation and deal closure.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us—we’d be happy to help!
Content originally published in October 2021.