A good marketing strategy is only as good as the data behind it. Successful marketers who want to prove ROI on their efforts are almost always interested in better understanding their customers’ path to purchase and the activities that were vital to transforming a website visitor into a brand evangelist.
While HubSpot is highly configurable, it doesn’t have detailed, multi-attribution reporting right out of the box, and some data-driven marketing teams might see that as a limitation to HubSpot’s marketing automation capabilities. As a leading HubSpot technology partner, LyntonWeb’s innovative team designs multi-attribution models and other custom reports for clients regularly.
Here, I’ll share two common solutions that empower marketers with the HubSpot data they need to improve the buyer’s journey for their leads.
Marketing Attribution Reporting
Out of the box, HubSpot provides first attribution reports, or sources reports, to confirm which channels leads and customers originated from. While that is a great start, complex buyer’s journeys often leave marketers wanting to understand which specific marketing efforts influenced a demo request, consultation, and ultimately - a customer conversion. Some teams simply want to know the number of contacts who were “marketing influenced” each month. This solution is less granular and simpler to build.
To find out how many leads are “marketing influenced” each month, begin by creating a custom contact property (single checkbox) called “marketing influenced” or “marketing attributed.” Next, make a list of all activities that marketing uses to influence a contact. Perhaps email, video, eBooks, white papers, and other content assets. Using the workflows tool, build the enrollment criteria to include the completion of each of these activities, such as a form completion on an eBook page, or opening a marketing email. Then, use that workflow to set the “marketing influenced” custom contact property to “yes” and set a date stamp that can be overwritten each time a contact engages with the marketing efforts detailed in your enrollment criteria (by allowing re-enrollment in the workflow).
As you collect data, filter your contacts by those who have the “marketing influenced” property equal to “yes” and then sort by lifecycle stage to see how many marketing-influenced leads became sales-qualified, opportunities, and eventually, customers. Ta-da, you’ve got a simple marketing-attributed lead report!
Multi-Attribution Reporting
True multi-attribution reporting is a bit trickier but can be done. The key is knowing which activities you want to measure, and what lifecycle stage indicates success for your marketing team. Many marketers are responsible for generating a certain number of sales qualified leads each month. Those marketers might have several campaigns running to help move leads into sales qualified status. Each offer within those campaigns might have conversion points that can be measured by a page view, form fill, or email click, for example.
To measure the success of these efforts, filtered lists can be created each month that include the criteria “became an SQL” (in a certain month) and “completed form” on an eBook landing page as part of a certain campaign, for example. There will be several lists, each measuring the success of each component of a campaign. Those lists can be plotted visually to show how many leads were influenced by each marketing activity, eventually becoming sales qualified.
Sure, lists are great ways to pull numbers together but don’t make great visuals in board meetings. HubSpot’s reporting tool can be used to plot data from a list but has some limitations on combining multiple lists or data sources into one report. That’s why LyntonWeb partners with Databox, a leading data visualization company that fully integrates with HubSpot, and dozens of other martech tools. If robust reporting and agility are important to you, Databox is a necessary complement to HubSpot marketing automation.
Are you struggling with building your multi-attribution model for reporting in HubSpot? We’ve got you covered. Contact our team to discuss a custom solution today.
