2 - Orientation: Introduction to Critical Concepts

Find Your Way Around the Documentation Library

Wondering where to find a specific piece of information? Here's a quick rundown of each section of the Funnel Metrics documentation library to guide your search.

Critical Concepts

Just like assembling a complicated piece of furniture is easier when you understand how all the pieces are supposed to fit together, making the most out of Funnel Metrics is easier when you understand the key ideas and components that make it tick.

If the Funnel Metrics documentation were the assembly handbook for a sofa, the Critical Concepts guide would be the page at the front that shows you what each of the different parts look like. In this case, though, there are only nine pieces to wrap your head around. Here they are - no Allen key required!

• Funnels
• Nurture Timeout
• Responses
• Repeat Responses
• Reactivation
• Response Prompt Campaigns
• Scoring
• Sync Fields
• Updating Status Values

Each of these topics has a dedicated article in the Critical Concepts guide. Some are more complex than others, so if questions arise as you read, don't hesitate to contact your Customer Success representative.

Feature Implementation & Configuration Guide

Funnel Metrics is highly configurable. It's amazing how many options there are, and how many little things you can tweak to make your data as useful as it can be for you, specifically. But with great power comes great responsibility. That's why we wrote the Feature Implementation and Configuration Guide: To show you what you can change, how you can change it, and why you might want to.

In addition to the Funnel Metrics Configuration Guide, you'll find that this section contains a series of six videos. These videos answer important questions like:

• How does Funnel Metrics track a funnel?
• How is scoring evaluated?
• How are leads and contacts qualified?
• How do Funnel Metrics' various mode options differ from each other?
• How does data adjustment work during Funnel Metrics implementation?

The Feature Implementation and Configuration Guide will be your friend long after you've completed implementation. So when you wake up in the middle of the night with a brilliant idea for customizing your org, check here to find out how to make it happen.

Understanding Funnel Metrics

The Understanding Funnel Metrics guide is a little like a Critical Concepts guide, but with a narrower focus: Your funnels, and how to use them. After a quick-and-dirty introduction to the concept of funnel metrics, you'll find some articles that'll help you get your hands dirty. This is the guide to use when you want to find out...

• How to configure a new funnel
• How to customize an existing funnel
• How to edit a specific funnel stage or milestone to better suit your needs
   

This guide also give you a crash course in the practical pieces that make Funnel Metrics tick. Things like:

• The three different funnel states, and when to use each one
• The Campaign Member object: Why it's important, and how it's used
• The packaged Campaign Sourced By field, and how it enables you to use different funnels for different departments

The Full Circle Method for Funnel Metrics

The Full Circle Method is all about using data to achieve your marketing goals. We developed the method with marketers' day-to-day performance analysis needs in mind, and it's supported by a structured set of reports and dashboards that take the guesswork out of optimizing your strategy. Four steps make up the Full Circle Method:

• Planning. Trial and error - who has time for that? Certainly not marketers! Using data from your Planning dashboard, you can easily determine how many leads you'll need in order to reach your company's revenue target.
• Achieving. So, you've got this shiny new data-driven goal. Awesome! Now, how will you keep things on track so that goal becomes a reality? More data, of course - in this case, data you can find in your Achieving dashboard. It contains all the key metrics you'll need to measure the progress of your sales and marketing efforts relative to the goals you set in the Planning stage.
• Optimizing. Marketers know that change is the only constant in our business. You can rely on your Optimizing data to show you where patterns are changing, so you can adapt accordingly and make adjustments to keep you on course.
• Evaluating. As important as it is to achieve your goals, it's just as important to learn from the process. Your Evaluating data shows you which campaigns attract the biggest deals, yield the highest conversion rates, and bring in the most revenue, so you can decide what to keep, what to tweak, and what to retire.

Funnel Metrics data helps power the Full Circle Method, and the Full Circle Method helps you make the most of Funnel Metrics. For a deep dive into your dashboards and their components, visit the Full Circle Method guide.