Is there a reliable way to track new account names vs new leads?

Iryna_Zhuravel4
Level 8 - Champion Alumni

Is there a reliable way to track new account names vs new leads?

I am looking for a way to track not just new lead names in the database, but new account names that enter the system. In our B2B business a lot of form requests come from new names from existing accounts, I am planning to get a third party tool to route and attach folks like this directly to their respective accounts, this should clean things up a bit with the new leads. However, even once that is done I still don't see a straightforward way to put together a report for the number of net new account names that entered the system within a certain period of time, but I am sure there is an app for that

Has anyone done something like this? What tools did you use?

8 REPLIES 8
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Is there a reliable way to track new account names vs new leads?

Have you tried doing anything using RCE? It may not be the most elegant solution in the world but it may get the job done. You could do something with the Month and Company Name count. Then again, you may have better luck doing this directly out of your CRM.

Josh_Hill13
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

Re: Is there a reliable way to track new account names vs new leads?

Totally depends on how you process and create Accounts. Account Create Date and Source would help here without fancy tools.

Iryna_Zhuravel4
Level 8 - Champion Alumni

Re: Is there a reliable way to track new account names vs new leads?

I guess I didn't explain it well enough.

I can very easily pull a list of accounts created within a certain period of time of course. What I need to track is how many new company names entered the system before leads from these companies are even converted to accounts.

Say if john.smith@abc.com is acquired by a form, and we do not have an ABC account nor do we have anyone else in the database with the @abc.com email, then ABC will count as 1 new company name. However, if we already had a lead steve.smith@abc.com in the system at the time John filled in the form, then ABC won't count as a new company name.

Our management is adamant that we need to get this metric, and I can't think of a way to do it without having to spend my days buried in spreadsheets.

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Re: Is there a reliable way to track new account names vs new leads?

Hi Iryna,

This a trickier question than it seems. Accounts are frequently mispelled on new leads, leading to "false" new names that, once corrected, appear to already be known.

Marketo standard will not allow you to do this, and you would have to extract the lead DB, including old and new leads, and create some pivot table on account name, keeping the oldest "created" date for each account.

RCE, might also be a solution.

Without RCE, If I had to guess, I would probably do the count on the CRM side, at the end. In SFDC, I would add all my leads and contact to a campaign, create a mechanic to save in a field the lead original creation date", add this field to a formula field on campaign members that brings the lead or account creation date and create a report on campaign members, grouped by account name.

-Greg

Iryna_Zhuravel4
Level 8 - Champion Alumni

Re: Is there a reliable way to track new account names vs new leads?

Thanks Greg, exactly!

We are global as well, so we might have different spellings and divisions of the same company called something different in different locations (e.g. Gmbh vs Inc vs LLC).

The only way I could think of would be a spreadsheet, but we have 1M+ leads in our database, it is a little problematic to dump them all into one spreadsheet.

That's why I was thinking of looking for a third party tool that could may be do something like this. ABM is a hot topic now and tracking new company names somewhat is related to ABM, so I was hoping there is something out there

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Re: Is there a reliable way to track new account names vs new leads?

Hi Iryna,

What CRM are you using?

-Greg

Iryna_Zhuravel4
Level 8 - Champion Alumni

Re: Is there a reliable way to track new account names vs new leads?

Hey Greg,

Salesforce

Thanks

Iryna

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Re: Is there a reliable way to track new account names vs new leads?

So the approach I was mentioning above should work:

  1. Create a campaign in SFDC.
  2. From Marketo, run a batch that adds all leads and programs to this campaign.
  3. In SFDC, lead and contact objects, create a field named Marketo Creation Date. Let these 2 fields sync with Marketo and be mapped.
  4. In Marketo, create a smart campaign. Trigger Lead is Created, flow step "Change Data value" - Attribute: "Marketo Creation Date" - New value: {{system.date}}
  5. In Marketo, reprocess the whole DB for existing records, flow step flow step "Change Data value" - Attribute: "Marketo Creation Date" - New value: {{lead.Created At}}
  6. In SFDC, object campaign member, create 2 formula fields:
    • Account Name that returns either the company name if the member is a lead or the account name if it's a contact. The formula is:
      • if( isblank( ContactId ), Lead.Company, Contact.Account.Name)
    • Marketo Creation Date that returns the "Marketo Creation Date field" above. The fomula is
      • if( isblank( ContactId ), Lead.Marketo_Creation_Date__c, Contact.Marketo_Creation_Date__c)
  7. In SFDC, Create a report on campaign members, make it a summary report, group by Account Name, add the Marketo Creation Date, an summarize it on lowest value.

-Greg