Reporting Training: Influence and Attribution

Influence Models & Campaign Attribution

Learn more about the models behind your reports: What they are, how they work, and when to use each of the two main types.

Video Transcript

Welcome! In this unit, we will look at the Full Circle Campaign Attribution tool, the basic options you can select when configuring attribution models, and how to read the resulting data.

To begin, let us define 2 of the major objectives in tracking attribution:

For Planning, we can use the attribution data to understand when certain campaign types are most influential to our pipeline and revenue. For instance, do they perform best earlier or later in the sales cycle?

For Evaluating, what is the impact of Marketing’s campaigns? Are certain campaigns yielding better deal sizes, faster conversion rates, velocity rates and/or higher revenue? And how are campaigns performing relative to one another?

We will look at the reports and dashboards that allow you to gain insights (1:00) by looking at all this data in aggregate later in this training, but here, let’s look at the attribution models and how they are configured.

Just a brief note to clarify nomenclature: We have previously used the word Influence to refer to this functionality, and we will use the words influence and attribution synonymously throughout our documentation; however, the product name is Campaign Attribution.

This slide shows what the configuration page looks like.

Campaign Attribution allows for the use of up to 3 active models concurrently, but you can set up more models and swap out which ones are active vs. inactive if you want to experiment with some different ways of looking at attribution. In our example shown here, we have 6 models configured, but only 3 are active.

You’ll also want to be aware that the campaign influence product is not updated in real time with every change that occurs, but instead runs on a schedule that you can set. (2:00) Most orgs set the attribution models to run when the activity levels within Salesforce are at their lowest point. On the same configuration page, you can view the schedule by which your records are updated.

Attribution records are created for every Campaign Member considered influential based on model settings. The opportunity dollar amount is then split across each of the influential touches based on weights given in each model.

We’re looking at an excerpt of a Campaign Influence Detail record here, as it may help you understand the data you are seeing in the reports. Typically you would not open or use these records directly. Here, it’s clear that each model has its own set of data that is then displayed in reports and dashboards, so it’s important to pay attention to which model’s data you are using when building and viewing reports.

Back to setting up attribution models. There are two basic types of attribution model: Account based and opportunity based. (3:00) In the account based model structure, we track all of the campaign member responses for every contact on the account for each opportunity. The advantage to this method is that you will essentially cast a wider net of influence, and understand how the account as a whole has been interacting with your campaigns.

In the opportunity-based model structure, Full Circle tracks only campaign member responses that are associated with the contacts given contact roles on the opportunity. Campaigns associated with any other contacts on the account are ignored. The advantage to this method is that you are drilling down to the activities of those contacts directly involved with the opportunity. When you have large accounts with hundreds of contacts, an opportunity model will give you a much more accurate picture of attribution. Using this type of model, you can also include contacts not on the account (for instance, partners or contractors) so their campaign activities will accumulate attribution as well.

(4:00) Both types of models are configured with a specific timeframe, for example attribution can be restricted to responses that occurred within 180 days of the date the opportunity was created, or while the opportunity was open. The time frame is selected based on your average sales cycle. If your typical sales cycle takes 9 months from beginning to closed won opportunity, Full Circle would then recommend choosing a 270 day timeframe.

There are also other configurations you can select that we go into detail about in our Support and Resources section, such as currency field and exclusions, and popular types of models, such as even spread vs. weighted models, first touch or last touch weighted models, and why you might choose one of those.

For the majority of our customers we recommend starting with an account-based even spread model, where each touch is given equal weight, as it makes a good baseline for understanding your overall attribution, and a first touch model that gives all or most credit to the campaign that brought the person into your Salesforce database. (5:00) From there, you can expand into more complex models as you’re ready.

Your deployment team will provide you with a deck that shows how your active models are configured, and changes are easy to make; however, remember you won’t see the results in the reporting until after the campaign attribution database has rebuilt per the schedule or manual update.

The final tool to look at around attribution is the Deal Explorer. This feature lets you click a button on any opportunity to get a closer look at the specific influence for that opportunity. While the reports and dashboards show trends, sometimes it’s useful for a large complex opportunity to understand what campaigns influence each deal in greater detail.

The Deal Explorer can be configured to show further detail as well. By changing a setting in the Administration panel, you will be able to see each campaign member response associated with an opportunity and how many points that response was assigned for the opportunity, (6:00) as well as point dollar values and campaign totals.

Unlike the attribution database, which runs on a schedule, The deal explorer calculates attribution in real time.

At the end of this training series, in our Support and Resources section, we’ll point you to a few more places to learn about the campaign attribution models and reporting in more detail.

Thank you for watching, and please join us in our next section, where we look at the key concepts for reporting.