Multi Touch Attribution for leads who attend multiple events

[svandermeeden]

Hi! Does anyone have recommendations for methods using marketo or salesforce to track attribution for leads who attend multiple events per year? We aren't sure if we should attribute the pipeline to the most recent event, the first event, or split between the multiple events and I'm not sure if there are other tools that we could be using to better help us with multi-touch attribution tracking. Right now we use marketo (for forms to track attendees), salesforce (reports), and a google sheet and just count the pipeline under the first event someone attends. 

[Darshil_Shah1]

Marketo measure would be an ideal solution for your use case as, given it's properly integrated and configured, you can see all of your attribution data in one place and aren't bound to use a single attribution model, you can easily switch between the available OOTB and custom attribution models.

But I understand, a platform of that size may not be ideal for folks with limited attribution needs, and they could do with building a setup in Marketo + SFDC to get the desired insights.

Choosing the right attribution model is a clear strategy question and is mostly based on the unique sales cycle of the business, the insights the model provides, as well as the impact of the insights on campaign efforts. Eg., First and Last touch models are better suited for shorter sales cycles, on the contrary for the longer sales cycle, models that provide weight to the middle touches are better suited.

I've seen people using the dedicated synced fields to store the first and last interaction in Marketo (setup field update blocks on the first touch fields) to store the interaction data and report from it. You'd need a solid channel/sub-channel/source/etc. strategy and build a proper setup to capture the interaction data in Marketo from various channels and input sources. Any reason you're just hyper-focused on building the attribution setup just for the event initiatives? Ideally you should have other intitatives also included in the attribution.

Also, IMO it gets a bit messier when you're trying to store the middle touches in Marketo w/o any dedicated attribution platform (like Marketo Measure).

[mfoulke · Accepted solution]

Hi! 

There are all great questions!

Breaking down your questions into three areas: 

1. How to track attribution to multiple events

2. Using Marketo and SFDC to track

3. Tools to better understand

How to track attribution to multiple events

To answer your question about how - it's unfortunately not black and white. The reason that it's not black and white is because of the way you decide to track answers to a different set of questions (echoing what @Darshil_Shah1 had mentioned).

Journey #1: First-touch Model

This is considered a single-touch model. 100% of the attribution is given to the first engagement that a person has with your brand on the account. You use this model to answer questions like, “What content piece is most successful at bringing brand awareness?”

Journey #2: Lead-Created Model

Similar to the first touch, this is also a single-touch model. 100% of the attribution is given to the engagement that promoted a known person (a.k.a they filled out a form). You would use this to answer more detailed questions about what drives a person to provide their information. This type of engagement implies a more motivated buyer!

Journey #3: the U-shaped Model

Now we are journeying into the multi-touch models. The U-Shaped model splits up the attribution between the first touch and the lead-created engagements. Teams use this to understand what the journey is from awareness to a lead. This information is useful for top-of-funnel campaigns and initiatives.

Journey #4: W-Shaped Model

This model brings opportunity dates into play but gives a percentage of the attribution to the engagement that happened right before the opportunity was opened. This model is extremely useful in answering pipeline-related questions like, “How does content change as a person progresses through the funnel?” or “What campaigns (events) are best at converting opportunities?”

Journey #5: Full-Path Model

This final model incorporates opportunity closed information by giving a quarter of the percentage to FC, LC, OC, and Closed. This model is important to answer questions for closed deals to understand how opportunity journeys differ when they are closed won or closed lost.

Moving on to question #2: how to use Marketo and SFDC to do the attribution tracking. 

There are a variety of whys to set up your Marketo and SFDC systems in order to get different levels of granularity into attribution reporting.

1. a single canonical approach (least detailed/quickest way to setup): This approach uses a single SFDC campaign to track engagement with an offer
2. Canonical Content Campaign Structure with child campaigns for tactic (middle ground): This approach groups SFDC Campaigns by a parent Canonical Content

3. Initiative/Theme Campaign Structure (most detailed, longest way to setup): This approach groups SFDC Campaigns by a parent initiative or theme (aka UTM Campaign)

Without an attribution tool in place, these three options can provide different levels of attribution reporting. From either of these options, you can understand how a person is engaging at different levels of granularity. However, you would still need to ensure that your SFDC is set up to connect persons to an account with opportunities. From there you can build a set of reports to look at opportunities and campaign-level data to filter engagements happening before the opportunity created/closed date to start painting a picture. 

Reporting options in SFDC: 

1. Depending on if your team uses contact roles, add to the campaign on the opportunity record, or primary campaign source field, the SFDC campaign with influenced opportunities report could be useful (sfdc doc). You could use this report and filter by the specific event campaigns + member status to see how attendees of the events are connected to opportunities. From there you could sort by member date to see if the engagement occurred before or after the opportunity created/closed date to start to build a journey picture. 
2. Campaigns with Contacts report - a little more work may be needed here, but you can use this to filter down to the specific events and identify accounts with contacts that attended that event and then utilize google sheets to append opportunity information that falls after the campaign member engagement date. 

Attribution Tools

If your team is thinking about moving towards an attribution tool, Marketo Meausre is a great option (article linked on some setup requirements)! It does a lot of that manual work for your team and integrates with both SFDC & Marketo.