Poll: Program Attribution Timeframe

[Anonymous]

We’re evaluating an enhancement to our multi-touch attribution metrics and would love to hear your feedback.

Let’s take for example a lead who attends a webinar on 1/1/11. One month later the lead is converted and an opportunity is created. Clearly, the webinar should receive credit for the opportunity created (pipeline) as it likely influenced the lead. However, the opportunity wasn’t closed won until 1/1/14. Should the webinar receive credit for the opportunity closed won (revenue)?

NOTE: This is an extreme example to highlight the fact that the opportunity was closed long after webinar.

[Brennan_McAdam2]

Hi TJ,

Great to see this.  Would love to connect wit you on this very subject.

[Anonymous]

Hi Brennan,

Absolutely.  I'd be happy to discuss in more detail.  I just sent you an email.

TJ

[Anonymous]

Hi TJ,

I understand the reasoning behing the long period and relating the opportunity to the webinar so long ago. My gut feeling teels me the same initially. However our buying journeys last between 12 and 48 months! Meaning that we should keep every touch attributing. I can imagine if sales cycles are short, you might want to not award MT credits for a webinar long ago. But in my case it should.

I would strongly suggest not to make the discission for the Marketo customers, but let them choose it in the Admin area. (E.g. let them choose the maximum timeframe for MT. Which by default could by 12 months). In that case I would set it to at least 48 months or unlimited.

[Anonymous]

Hi Diederik,

Thanks for your feedback.  We're definitely thinking about this the same way you are.  Our initial design includes a new global timeframe setting that customers would be able to define depending on their sales cycles.  We're also considering an override at the channel or program level, in case there are programs that don't fall under the global setting.

That said, this poll is specifically about the MT Revenue Won metric.  Let's assume the global setting is 48 months.  A lead attends a webinar on 1/1/08.  The lead is converted and an opportunity is created on 1/1/11.  Given that the webinar touch happened within 48 months, it will receive MT Pipeline Created credit.  Now, let's assume the opportunity doesn't close until 1/1/14.  Would you give the webinar credit for MT Revenue Won?

While the webinar touch happened 72 months ago, one could argue that the webinar influenced the creation of the opportunity, so it should also receive the corresponding revenue, regardless of when the opportunity is closed.

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

TJ

[Anonymous]

TJ - 

To the question of whether a program should have an expiration date that deterines whether it should be counted as influencing an opportunity on a multi-touch measure: yes because some companies will want the flexibility to define it.

Whether it should be global or program/channel-based: 

• You probably want Global and Channel -- different customers will have requirements that call for one and/or the other.
• Default would be set by a global variable, out of the box set to no timeframe constraint; this value would override any channel timeframe settings.  By default, calculations will err on the side of more rather than less attribution -- just my .02 on that.
• Program time frame seems too granular and could be hard to manage.  Channel would probably do the trick. Enable a setting at the channel that, if set, will overrride the Global setting and establish a time frame specific for that channel. My guess is most customers would find global to be suitable for most channels with a few channels they would like to define a timeframe on.

You might want to consider including the settings to show in headers of reports so everyone knows what they are looking at.   

Great idea by the way.

Tom

[Anonymous]

You can also add a first touch and last touch tracking and still give the first touch campaign credit to some degree. 

[Kaspersky1_Mark]

I would say give the option to customer to decide in the UI.  The Yes/No would vary based on the Products they sell, Industry, Sales cycles.

[Anonymous]

This is a fantastic idea. Has anything come of this? I would love to be able to use a timeframe on MT attribution.