Revenue attribution has become more important than ever in today’s business environment. Because of the constant and sometimes volatile shifts in our economy, companies need to make better decisions as quickly as they can.
For CMOs, this means being able to show the return on marketing investment to stakeholders in order to communicate the effectiveness and value your team brings to the business. Part of doing so is understanding—and being able to articulate—influenced versus attributed revenue.
What Is Marketing Revenue Attribution?
Marketing revenue attribution is the process of assigning value to the different marketing touchpoints that lead to sales and revenue.
There are a number of attribution models to choose from. Some common models include:
- First interaction: Attributes all of the credit to the first touchpoint in the buyer’s journey
- Last interaction: Attributes all of the credit to the last touchpoint
- Linear: Attributes credit equally to each interaction in the buyer’s journey
- U-shaped: Attributes 40 percent of the credit to the first interaction, 40 percent to the last interaction, and the remaining 20 percent evenly across all other interactions
- W-shaped: Attributes 30 percent of the revenue to the first interaction, 30 percent to the one that created the deal, 30 percent to the last touchpoint, and the remaining 10 percent to all interactions in between
- Time decay: Attributes revenue more heavily to more recent interactions; credit is distributed using a seven-day half-life
- Full path: Attributes 22.5 percent of the deal revenue to the first interaction, 22.5 percent to lead creation, 22.5 percent to deal creation, 22.5 percent to the last interaction, and the remaining 10 percent to all other interactions equally
- J-shaped: Attributes 20 percent of the revenue to the first interaction, 60 percent to the conversion, and the remaining 20 percent across the other interactions
Choosing the right attribution model depends on your team’s goals and how granular you want your reporting to be.
Influenced vs. Attributed Revenue
Two important components of revenue attribution are influenced revenue and attributed revenue. Both are used to show which marketing activities are impacting revenue, but they each provide different insights for your marketing revenue attribution.
Influenced revenue takes into account all of the interactions or engagements made throughout the buyer's journey. Attributed revenue, in contrast, focuses on identifying the source the revenue can be traced back to.
Influenced revenue gives you a fuller picture of the activities that affect potential customers as they interact with your company. This includes the emails they open or click, content they download, pages they view, and so on. Multi-touch attribution models such as linear, U-shaped, W-shaped, and full path incorporate this idea of influenced revenue by assigning a percentage of credit to all interactions in the conversion path.
Attributed revenue takes a more narrow view, which is why this number could appear to be significantly lower than influenced revenue. First interaction and last interaction attribution models are examples of attributed revenue because all of the credit is attributed to either the first or last interaction in the buyer’s journey.
Think of it less as “influenced versus attribute revenue” and more like “influenced and attributed revenue.” Each has its own purpose in your overall revenue attribution process—but how do these two concepts translate in HubSpot reporting?
Revenue Reporting in HubSpot
Though the influenced revenue metric no longer exists in HubSpot, you can view other revenue metrics and build attribution reports depending on your Marketing Hub subscription level.
Influenced Revenue in HubSpot
At one point in time, HubSpot users could see influenced revenue in a specific campaign, blog, webpage, and landing page performance tab. Today, for Marketing Enterprise users, that metric has been replaced with the attributed revenue metric (more on that below). Marketing Hub Professional users can view a revenue report that displays the following:
- Revenue: The total revenue from closed won deals associated to the campaign
- Deals with revenue: The number of associated closed won deals
- Contacts with revenue: The number of associated contacts with closed won deals that interacted with assets from the campaign
Along with those metrics, Marketing Hub Professional users can access the contact create attribution reports and most attribution models, except W-shaped.
Attributed Revenue and Attribution Reporting in HubSpot
Marketing Enterprise users can view and analyze attributed revenue for specific campaigns, blog posts, webpages, and landing pages. In addition to the metrics and reports available to Marketing Hub Professional, Enterprise users can access deal creation and revenue attribution reports and have access to all attribution models.
Before using these reports, you’ll want to become familiar with the important conversion points, interaction sources, and interaction types. Doing so will help you customize your attribution reports to fit the needs of your business and your team.
Revenue Attribution for Future Impact
As a marketer, a need to prove your worth to key stakeholders comes with the territory. By having a better understanding of revenue attribution, you're more equipped to communicate your team’s ability to drive revenue growth.
For a more in-depth look at how to improve your attribution reporting, check out The Ultimate Guide to Perfecting Your Marketing Attribution Reporting.
