What is Campaign Attribution?
Campaign attribution is the process of determining which marketing campaigns or activities are responsible for driving customer and prospect actions. It helps us analyze our activities and give credit to the first and last touchpoints. This allows us to understand the effectiveness of our marketing efforts and optimize our strategies. By identifying the most valuable campaigns, we can allocate resources efficiently and focus on the channels that have the highest impact on our goals.
Our attribution model looks at first-touch and last-touch attribution:
First-touch attribution
Initial campaign or activity with our marketing efforts.
Only populated for leads/contacts acquired after implementing our campaign attribution model in May 2022.
Once set, this information will not change.
Last-touch attribution
Campaign or activity the contact did before becoming an MQL.
Once set, the information will only change if the contact re-MQLs.
Our Campaign Attribution is captured using various tools and techniques, such as utm tracking codes, Pardot forms, marketing automation, etc.
What are the components of our attribution model?
We have 8 sets of fields we use in our attribution model that are visible on the Opportunity, Lead, and Contact records in Salesforce.
Source Fields
The Source fields are Source, Source Detail, Campaign (Attribution), and GTM ID. These fields are linked to assets, events, webinars, and other similar entities. These items (except the GTM ID) will remain consistent regardless of how someone arrives at the asset, whether through an email or a social post. This means a specific webinar will always have the same Source, Source Detail, and Campaign (Attribution) regardless of the referral source.
They are set in the following ways:
Completion actions on Pardot forms
Automations in SFDC
Through a list import process
The GTM ID can be set as a completion action on the form or as a parameter in the URL.
Field | Definition | How is it set? |
|---|---|---|
Source | Department (Marketing, Sales, etc.) | Completion action on a Pardot form or form handler, or through a list import. |
Source Detail | Asset Type (Webinar - Live, Research Brief, Demo Request) | Completion action on a Pardot form or form handler, or through a list import. |
Campaign (Attribution) | Title of Asset or Parent Campaign | Completion action on a Pardot form or form handler, or through a list import. |
GTM ID (Go to Market) | Go to Market ID | Completion action on a Pardot form or form handler, or through a list import, or as a parameter on the url. |
UTMs
UTMs (Urchin Tracking Module) are five URL parameters used for effectively tracking marketing campaigns. These bits of tracking code allow us to collect information about our visitors. We can view this information in Google Analytics or as information collected in our attribution model.
When UTMs are present on a URL, code on the website allows us to capture the information in hidden fields on the form.
UTMs are also used in cases where a URL may not be present, such as a list upload.
UTM Parameters and Definitions
UTM | Definition |
|---|---|
utm_source | What site or program sent the traffic to the link (LinkedIn, Pardot email, BigMarker, etc.) Examples:
|
utm_medium | Tactic or item that sent them to the link (the email, ad, etc.) Examples:
|
utm_campaign | Campaign associated with the link |
utm_content | Used to split ads that drive to the same URL for A/B Testing or to test buttons in an email |
utm_term | Optional for search phrases |