Reporting Training: Tracking the Funnel

Tracking the Funnel

How - and why - does Funnel Metrics track a funnel?

Video Transcript

Hello. In this portion of the Full Circle University reporting training, we will be discussing tracking the funnel.

Half of the Response Management product, and much of the Funnel Metrics product, is dedicated to tracking the funnel. Why do we track the funnel to this level of detail? There are a few ways this data can help your organization become more successful.

For Planning: Knowing the volume, conversion, velocity rate, and average deal size of all your engagements empowers you to develop a quarterly or annual data-driven marketing plan. Know how and where to reduce budget or allocate budget surplus.

For Achieving: Know whether you are reaching your MQL volume goal or your SQL conversion rate goal in real time. Find out what gauges can be adjusted mid-quarter to reach your goals.

For Optimizing: You’ll know who is disqualifying or not following up on MQLs, as well as when and why, and can identify if a Campaign has reached its peak.

(1:00) So how does Full Circle track the funnel? Basically, we evaluate every new campaign member response that enters Salesforce, and we check to see what the associated lead or contact status is. If the campaign response is new and qualified, we’ll begin tracking the engagement in a funnel. Note that Full Circle doesn’t keep funnel information on the lead or contact itself, because the person may change from a lead to a contact with the creation of an opportunity. Instead, Full Circle tracks the funnel on a campaign member record, using it as the data hub.

This slide illustrates some typical examples of how a person lands in the funnel. Leads and contacts perform activities over time, represented in marketing automation and Salesforce by responding to various campaigns. In this example, our potential customers are downloading white papers, registering for webinars, and asking to be contacted.

(2:00) Eventually, a specific campaign tips them over a score threshold, and they are considered qualified. In our example organization, the Contact Us form is automatically a qualifying activity. This campaign member response is the one that pushes them over the score threshold into Qualified, and it is the campaign on which we will now begin to track the funnel. Our user, whether they are in Salesforce as a lead or contact, has become part of an active engagement.

Our product helps you track the sometimes nonlinear sales cycle, recognizing that people can fall out of the funnel when they are dispositioned into a nurture or recycled status, and then can re-enter a funnel through new activity. The re-entry can occur one of two ways: There is a new campaign member that becomes active based on a new activity, or, under some circumstances, a pre-existing campaign member response that is inactive can be made active.

(3:00) Some highlights of Full Circle funnel tracking are:

1. Metrics are based on campaign members that are generated from a marketing campaign, and there is no guesswork.
2. You don’t lose any history, so you can see trends including those related to why and when engagements fall out of the funnel.
3. You will be able to see volume, velocity, and conversion rates between funnel stages to help identify bottlenecks.
4. Only one person on each opportunity is active for funnel tracking, to ensure your stage counts and conversion rates are accurate and reliable.

Please continue with the next video in this series for a typical funnel definition, how to view your funnels, and more. Thanks for watching.