1 - Introduction to Funnel Metrics

What is a Funnel?

In the kitchen, a funnel helps pour orange juice into a jug without spills. Similarly, marketers use funnels to show how leads move through the sales cycle—from many at the top to fewer customers at the bottom.

Full Circle’s Funnel Metrics with Response Management lets you track multiple funnels—sales, partners, marketing, and more. You can use the same or custom stages and milestones for each funnel, depending on your needs.

Since Funnel Metrics tracks funnels via the campaign member object, it follows leads through to contacts and opportunities seamlessly. Funnels work best when campaigns are used consistently, and we can help set up special campaigns to ensure complete tracking.

The Classic Funnel

Full Circle's classic marketing funnel includes the following steps:

• Inquiry Everyone who enters the funnel. You might also think of an inquiry as a hand-raise. Anyone who fills out a form or responds to your marketing in any way is considered an inquiry.
• Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) As soon as an inquiry meets your designated threshold through scoring (or other criteria as applicable), that inquiry is now an MQL.
• Sales Accepted Lead (SAL) Once an MQL’s interest and qualification has been verified by a sales rep, that MQL becomes an SAL.
• Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) Now we’re getting serious! When an opportunity has been created and the lead has been converted to a contact, that contact is an SQL.
• Won Woohoo - the desired endpoint! The lead that started as an inquiry has made it all the way through your funnel and is now a bona fide customer. Congratulations!

Funnel Metrics uses a classic marketing funnel by default, ready to use immediately after installation. You'll collaborate with your Customer Success representative to customize funnels for your company. While you can modify them later, maintaining a consistent model ensures reliable data.

How Funnels Track Data on the Campaign Member Object

Funnel Metric tracks funnels using the campaign member object, allowing seamless tracking from lead to contact to opportunity. Each funnel stage (Inquiry, MQL, SAL, SQL, Won) has matching checkbox and date fields on the campaign member. When stage criteria are met, these fields are updated:

For example, here are the fields on the campaign member:

And as each funnel stage criteria is met, the values get populated as defined by each funnel stage:

Skipped funnel stages

Funnel stages are sequential but can be skipped. For instance, a lead might move from Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) directly to Sales Qualified Lead (SQL), bypassing the Sales Accepted Lead (SAL) stage. When this occurs, skipped stages are backfilled with the necessary data. This highlights the importance of ordering funnel stages correctly and viewing them as a whole.

In this example, the SAL date matches the SQL date, indicating the SAL stage was likely skipped and inherited the SQL date.

Milestones

Funnel Metrics also uses Milestones. Milestones are similar to funnel stages, except that they are standalone instead of sequential.

Milestones have criteria that may be met any time throughout the funnel, and when a criterion is met, the event is recorded.

Just like funnel stages, Milestones are tracked on the campaign member object.

Multiple funnels

Your business may need multiple funnels to support different segments with unique styles.

Funnels are defined by the Campaign Sourced By picklist in the Campaign object, part of Funnel Metrics. By default, it includes Sales and Marketing, allowing two funnels. To create more than two, add more values to the Campaign Sourced By picklist.

Default funnel

However, you may not need multiple funnels, or several Campaign Sourced By values may use the same funnel. This is why we always force one funnel to be the Default funnel, designated by a checkbox next to the funnel name. The Default funnel will be used for any Campaign Sourced By values that do not have a unique funnel defined.

For example, if your Campaign Sourced By picklist field has 4 values:

But only have two funnels defined:

All Campaign Sourced By values that do not have a unique funnel will use the default funnel. So in this example, all campaigns with Campaign Sourced By = Sales will use the Sales funnel, and all campaigns with Campaign Sourced By = Marketing, Partner or Internal will use the Marketing campaign.