Checklist for Attribution Reporting

[Brian_Law_MKTO]

Customers often ask me for assistance to trouble shoot issues with their attribution reporting. Here a checklist you can use to help make sure you have set-up everything correctly. I will explain each topic and their importance in an upcoming article.

• Establish a good program naming convention that can be used as a filter in reports
• Create only the channels which are necessary to reduce confusion and accidentally using the incorrect channel
• Create only the program statuses which are necessary
• Remember to set success for each program
• Make sure the analytics behavior for each channel except Operational is set to inclusive
• Make sure to use the correct channel when creating or cloning a program
• Create acquisition programs for all records which enter Marketo
• Create smart campaigns to set acquisition for each acquisition program if necessary
• Add monthly period costs to all programs if you want to be able to sort by cost time frame
• Define tags before starting to create programs. Make all tags required.
• Make sure all opportunities are using the standard amount field
• Make sure all opportunities are associated to at least one contact via the contact role/primary if syncing to a CRM

Finally, here is an article about the different attribution settings you can choose in Marketo.

Attribution Exercises (Understanding Attribution).

Here are some additional resources for learning about the Marketo integration with SFDC.

[Jason_Hamilton1]

Another helpful one, thanks Brian!

[Anonymous]

This is very helpful Brian Law, thank you! You mention creating a Smart Campaign to mark Program Success....is there an advantage to doing this in the flow vs. marking the successful channel status by ticking the "success" box next to the stage/s considered to be a success for the Program?

[Rachel_Egan]

I have a question for you, Brian. When I'm setting up my Smart Campaigns to record attribution, does it make sense to have them on the individual program level, or does it make sense to have a master Smart Campaign for each channel?

Right now I have a smart campaign "00-Attribution" on each individual program (every case study, every guidebook, every white paper, etc.) however I remember that, when we were setting up our instance, our consultant said something about having master smart campaigns for attribution instead.

I'm just trying to figure out which one is best.

[Brian_Law_MKTO]

Hi Tiffany, Marketo doesn't automatically move records to a new status like the status you have set to be "Success". You typically have to have a trigger or batch smart campaign change the program status. Change Program Status - Marketo Docs - Product Docs

[Brian_Law_MKTO]

Hi Jason. I appreciate the feedback.

[Brian_Law_MKTO]

Hi Rachel. I would recommend having the smart campaigns in each individual program like how you have it set up. Having everything in one program makes it easier to follow a checklist or clone a program. Great job.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

All of them are excellent points.

A couple of additions :

Name your tags in a way that remembers you how to name the program. For instance, I would name webinar channel as "Webinar (WBR)". The user will know that the keyword WBR will be in the program name whenever the program channel is "Webinar (WBR)"

With regards to your last point, making sure that the opportunities always have a contact, there are a couple for things that one can do in SFDC: prevent creation of opportunities anywhere but on the contact page layout. It's easy to remove the "new opportunity" button for the account layout. It's a little harder to remove it from the opportunity tab screen (it takes a custom visualforce page).

And a last point, vote here:

.

-Greg

[Anonymous]

Thank you, Brian Law I do set the Program Status in the Flow currently, so I am in the clear on where/when to set/update the status.

However, my question was regarding bullet #4, where you state we should "create a Smart Campaign to mark success for each Program member". I am confused why one would need to take this step. I was under the impression that this is already taken care of when you utilize the Flow to set/update the Program Status field to a value which has already been identified as a "successful" when creating the Channel being used for the Program. Thank you!

[Brian_Law_MKTO]

As long as you are already setting the program status to success you are good. I clarified my bullet point. Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Thank you, Brian! At times the flexibility of the system makes me worry that I have done something wrong, so I was inquiring on your recommendation vs. what I do. I have noticed that a few other experts (1) change the status and then (2) set success in the Flow, per your recommendation. However, I avoid having to do this extra step in each and every program by making sure that the status I am changing the lead to in the 1st step is already marked as a "success" in the Channel that the Program is using.