Is docs correct for Understanding Attribution?

[Mark_Farnell]

Some of my non-Ops colleagues are struggling with the concept of attribution.  No problem, I thought I'd just point them in the direction of docs.marketo.com.

Here is the page on attribution: Understanding Attribution - Marketo Docs - Product Docs

Maybe it's me, but I can't really understand 2 of the 3 rules, and believe me I actually know how attribution works (or at least until I read this I thought I did).

Rule 1 is straightforward "Credit is split evenly".

Rule 2 states "You can't give more credit than you earned" - isn't this simply a repeat of Rule 1?  Why is it there, I MUST be missing something.

Rule 3 states "You can't give credit for something that happened in the past".  My basic understanding of the attribution model is that it is based on the acquisition date/success date being before the Opportunity Create Date, so what does this mean?  We give credit for things that happen in the future?  Maybe it's my odd English brain but this seriously makes no sense to me.

Specifically I'd like to know from the community if I am simply reading Rule 3 wrong before I send my colleagues of to read it.  They're pretty confused as it is, this might melt some people.  And secondly, what is the point of Rule 2?

Wouldn't these 2 rules suffice?

Rule 1: Credit is split evenly

Rule 2: Credit is given when acquisition (first touch) and success (multi-touch) occur before opportunity create date.

Marketo peeps, please chime in too! 

Wouldn't mind someone clarifying the date/time issue either.  Marketo state date a lot but I think it's down to the time, which frankly (if true) is getting a little bit too specific. We usually back date acquisition/success (when we need to) to -1 day before Opportunity Create to be sure.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Mark,

1. "Credit is split evenly": all successful programs will get the same amount of credit, but without rule 2, you could imagine (although this is playing on words, I concur ) that the total of distributed credit could be higher than the opportunity values
2. "You can't give more credit than you earned": so the total of credit distributed cannot be higher than the amount of oppportunites.
3. I agree that the third one could be written better I understand that a program cannot get credit for an opportunity which creation date is older than the lead success date in the program.

BTW, remember that 2 opportunity dates are used:

• Opportunity creation date is used for pipeline measurement: for the pipeline amount to be attributed to a program, the success date has to be older than the oppy creation date
• Opportunity closed date is used for revenue measurement: for the revenue amount to be attributed to a program, the success date has to be older than the oppy close date (and the opportunity has to be won)

-Greg