Are you Attribution ready? (the checklist)
There’s a huge gap between wanting attribution and being ready for attribution.
The need for greater transparency and accountability in B2B marketing has brought ever-growing numbers of businesses to the doors of attribution.
Yet knowing that you have a need for attribution and being in a position to implement attribution swiftly - to reap all the benefits - are two distinct issues.
That’s why, Drew Smith, CEO at Attributa, has pieced together an Attribution Readiness Checklist that ensures companies have everything in place for getting up and running with attribution.
In this post, I’m covering the main takeaways from Drew’s conversation with Dreamdata’s Laura Erdem, which you can catch in full here —>
When do businesses typically start looking for attribution?
Who owns attribution?
The benefits of the Attribution Readiness Checklist
The Attribution Readiness Checklist (jump straight to the checklist —>)
Consistent use of UTM parameters
CRM Campaigns to capture engagement taking place offsite
Create Mirrored Databases to avoid duplication across tools - and impact the accuracy of the attribution modelling
Keep to standard Fields and Objects as much as possible (avoid over-customisation)
Designate an owner/ admin for the attribution platform
TL;DR
Data is the cornerstone of attribution, Good data = good attribution, and conversely, bad data = bad attribution. And So to get attribution ready, you need to enforce Marketing Automation and CRM data
The Attribution Readiness Checklist works both as 1) a pre-check for those looking to start attribution and 2) a check-up for those where their current attribution platform doesn’t appear to be working properly.
See Drew’s bio —>
When do businesses start looking for attribution?
The story is the same virtually for every client Drew has dealt with - and indeed every customer we at Dreamdata have had.
Businesses start their attribution journey when stakeholders (be that leadership or the marketing team itself) start asking questions around how marketing influences pipeline.
“Then the way the conversation always starts going is well we have to move past just Lead Source. ‘Lead source is great but we have a lot of marketing activities and we have a lot of marketing investment that doesn't drive lead sources.’
so the only way to really understand how those are influencing pipeline is by getting into multi-touch attribution.”
Economic conditions are pushing more teams towards attribution
Even in a positive economic climate we find that “a lot of times it's driven by having a CFO that starts asking those questions”.
But now when we add the uncertainties in the market, we find even greater pressure on teams to get transparency into their activities.
“we're all talking about heading into a recession and when you head into a recession organizations start getting very concerned about where they're spending their money right?
Am I spending my money on the right things am I wasting money where am I wasting money and so those are the those are the types of things that always generate this kind of momentum and this push towards marketing attribution”
Who owns Attribution?
In most organisations, the attribution journey follows a snowball trajectory. And while marketing/ ops typically hold the reins throughout, there is impressive cross-team adoption - including Sales, B/SDRs, and CS.
“Usually the attribution conversation starts in the marketing organization…
and then the marketing organization starts going down this journey and they start figuring out ‘hey here's how marketing's influencing things’...
and then usually what ends up happening is marketing shares a report with sales and sales says ‘this is really cool like we want in on this’ or start asking the question like ‘hey why is sales not included in this?’”
This is when the solution transforms from marketing attribution to revenue attribution.
“A lot of times it's not just marketing and sales because you'll also have the Sales Development or Business Development organization and then if you're looking at existing business cross-sell, upsell, renewals. Now you start looking at like a customer success organization and account management organization that need to get factored in.”
Concerns about being attribution ready
Once organisations are on the path of attribution - seeking a solution - it’s not long before they’re asking questions about what your existing tools and data are capable of.
“And most organisations start seeing the limitations and the gaps in the tools and the data that they currently have and they need to start filling those gaps.”
It’s at this point that many look to attribution vendors like Dreamdata.
And it is here that Drew’s Attribution Readiness Checklist comes to the fore.
How to get value from attribution ASAP: The Attribution Readiness Checklist
Dew lists two target audiences for the checklist:
1. Organisation looking to get started with attribution
“number one almost every organization I talk to has some level of concern about whether or not they're ready for attribution. ‘I don't know if our data is ready’, ‘I don't know if our processes are ready’, ‘I don't know if we're ready’...”
2. Organisations doing attribution that weren’t attribution ready
“I also talk to a lot of organizations that have been on attribution for a while and it's not working.
And it's because they weren't ready.
They have stuff that's not compatible with attribution and so we need to kind of unwind that stuff that's not ready and build up that foundational process that you need and that foundational data so that the attribution platform they have in place already can work better.”
You can find the Checklist here →
Step 1 - Consistent use of UTM parameters ✅
Drew starts his Attribution Readiness Checklist with UTMs.
UTMs (Urchin Tracking Module) are an easy, yet crucial, tool for accurately attributing your marketing efforts.
Drew tells us the key is not necessarily sophisticated use of UTMs but rather consistency and standardisation.
By adhering to a consistent and standardised process, you can ensure that your attribution platform is able to accurately track your campaigns, even if you don't always follow the rules to the letter.
And the best part? UTMs are easy to implement, so there's no excuse not to use them.
The last thing you want is to risk sabotaging your attribution.
Step 2 - CRM Campaigns to capture engagement taking place offsite ✅
UTMs are important for categorizing online engagement, but they can't track everything that happens off the website.
CRM campaigns are important for tracking engagement that occurs off the website.
It's important to have a standardized process in place. This includes:
Ensuring that you are using CRM campaigns.
Using CRM campaigns consistently.
Having clear and defined campaign types.
Having a limited number of campaign member statuses and using them consistently.
Having a strategy in place for the "responded" check box in Salesforce, and being consistent in how it is used.
By following these guidelines and maintaining consistency, you can effectively use CRM campaigns to track engagement that occurs off the website and inform your attribution efforts.
Consistency is key in using CRM campaigns for attribution. Even if you're not following all the rules, being consistent can still allow for some value to be gained from attribution.
“Simplicity scales complexity fails so stay simple we want only the few campaign member statuses that are absolutely necessary and then we want to use them the same way every single time
if you have 75 different campaign member statuses for one campaign type guess what's going to be really difficult to do attribution if you have seven it's gonna be a lot easier”
Step 3 - Create Mirrored Databases to avoid duplication across tools - and impact the accuracy of the attribution modelling ✅
A mirrored database ensures that records are synced between marketing automation and CRM platforms, avoiding inconsistency in creation dates and campaign membership.
Drew tells us this is especially important for situations where you want to track marketing engagement and a record exists in one platform but not the other.
Not having a mirrored database can lead to duplicate records, which can cause problems for attribution platforms moving forward.
Duplicate records can occur when a record exists in one platform but not the other, and manual creation in another platform leads to multiple records for the same individual. This can cause issues for attribution efforts.
And, which will require manual cleaning to rectify.
Example:
“So and the way it works is this so you've got your marketing automation platform and you've got a record sitting in there that we met at a trade show but we didn't sync that record over to the CRM.
Sales finds out that we met this person at the trade show they go prospect them on LinkedIn and they manually create the record in Salesforce and now you have a record that exists in Marketing Automation and a different record that exists in Salesforce.
How is attribution going to to work when you've got this mess this tangled mess of people?”
Step 4 - Keep to standard Fields and Objects as much as possible (avoid over-customisation) ✅
The fourth step is looking into your fields and objects in your CRM.
Once again, Drew reminds us that ‘simplicity scales’, so you must ensure to be using standard fields as much as possible in the CRM - and by extension avoid using custom fields where possible.
Too many businesses unnecessarily start using custom fields that are essentially just replacing standard fields.
While it isn’t a huge issue for your CRM use, when it comes to syncing the data with your attribution tool, the more standard, the better - as it’ll be easier to plug-and-play.
Drew highlighted that you need to have “a really compelling use case for custom fields”.
Example:
“I worked with a client years ago that wanted to do marketing attribution and for some reason they had a Salesforce consultant that had influenced them to use a custom object as opposed to the standard opportunity object.
It was doing the same thing it had the same functionality there was nothing different other than there was a sales force consultant that you know wanted to ensure that they had repeat business so they over-engineered things made it very complicated for no reason at all.
And I had to tell this client you can't use attribution because you can't or you're not going to be able to orient an attribution tool to a custom object as opposed to the opportunity object so if you want to use attribution you have to unwind that and move back to the standard opportunity object.”
Step 5 - Designate an owner/ admin for the attribution platform ✅
It is crucial to have a designated owner or admin for your attribution platform to ensure that it is being used effectively and accurately.
Without someone to oversee it, the platform can become disconnected from your marketing efforts and lose its usefulness.
In particular, it is important to:
Regularly review and update your attribution strategies to ensure that they align with your marketing efforts and to make sure that the platform is tracking all of your channels and tactics properly.
Keep the platform itself up to date with any changes in your marketing campaigns, UTMs, and CRM campaign statuses, to ensure that the platform remains accurate and effective.
“I work with a lot of clients that are on attribution and the attribution platform isn't working for them and ultimately almost every single time I work with those clients you see that they didn't have a designated owner or admin so they basically had a driverless car… and as we all know driverless cars right now still don't work real well. So you gotta have hands on the steering wheel and a foot on the pedal.”
If you’re thinking about being Attribution ready, make sure to download the Attribution Readiness Checklist.
Drew Smith bio:
Drew Smith, currently CEO of Attributa (an attribution consultancy), brings with him the experience of consulting 70+ businesses of all sizes on all things attribution. From implementation to analysis, Drew has ‘done it all’ on the attribution front.
