Lead Source Tracking - Best Practices

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Still kind of new to Marketo and trying to figure out the best practices for lead tracking so that we have a clear and organized flow.

What is the best way to insure that we know where a lead came from within our specific campaign, as well as know the original place from where he came when he first entered our system?

In Marketo there are 2 categories:

Lead Source and Original Source Type 

For example, let's say Joe Smith is brand new and we are sending him an email for the first time. His Lead Source and Original Lead Source will both say "campaignX"

However, if Bob Jones is already in our database because he filled out a Contact Us form, and now I am including him in our email campaign, his Lead Source will say "campaignX" but his Original Lead Source will say "Contact Us."

Is this correct?

My thoughts are that while it is always important to know where the lead came from originally, and this information of course must be accessible, we want to measure in the near-term where the source came from for this specific campaign. Essentially our campaign has two versions - an email campaign and nurture campaign with banners and AdWords. Thus we can distinguish between Lead Source of "Outbound" (email campaign) and Lead Source of "Inbound."

Thanks for your answers and suggestions!

[Josh_Hill13]

I'd take a look at this post.
http://perkuto.com/blog/marketing-automation/marketing-attribution-model-for-marketing-automation

You want to track First Touch and Last Touch (or most recent). This is pretty easy to do with Forms, Hidden fields, and URL parameters. You can also run Change Data Values in flow steps, but I think that gets messy eventually.

Generally you are correct, however, Original Lead Source is a system field and you shouldn't rely on that one. Have fields like

Lead Source
Lead Source LT (Last Touch)

For Outbound Emails, you would list this as "House Email" and your display ads would be marked as Display Ad or PPC or something.