1. Marketing Attribution Overview

1.1 What is Marketing Attribution?

• Marketing attribution analysis applies statistical methods and logic rules to assess the contribution value of different marketing touchpoints within a user’s journey to a conversion goal over a specific time window.
• ShareCRM’s Marketing Attribution product analyzes how Campaigns contribute to Opportunities and Sales Orders. It intelligently tracks customers’ marketing journeys and supports multiple attribution models — First-touch, Last-touch, Linear, and U-shaped. Multi-touch attribution measures each Campaign’s influence and contribution to Leads converting into won business, helping marketers evaluate marketing ROI more comprehensively and accurately.

1.2 Why use Marketing Attribution?

• Traffic sources and channel dynamics constantly change while customer acquisition costs rise. Marketers must reduce costs and find higher-quality conversion channels. Marketing’s role has shifted toward performance: marketing teams now bear more KPIs tied to sales results and Opportunity contribution.
• Marketers, especially CMOs, need low-cost, high-efficiency acquisition strategies. They must trace the main revenue paths and identify the optimal mix of marketing channels.

1.3 Use Cases for Marketing Attribution

• How do you identify high-quality online advertising channels so you can allocate limited budget to the most cost-effective channels?
  • Quantifiable marketing impact: track each channel’s funnel performance and conversion contributions (for example, how many Opportunities/Sales Orders it generates). This lets you calculate each channel’s ROI and cost-effectiveness to optimize spend allocation.
• The company sets an annual new-sales target of $100 million, and the marketing department is responsible for 20% of that target with sub-targets for Online Ads, Content Marketing, and Offline Events. How do you evaluate the marketing department’s and its teams’ performance?
  • Traceable Opportunity and Order attribution: evaluate whether channels and marketing teams meet KPIs and calculate contribution for fair performance-based allocation.

2. Marketing Attribution Operations

2.1 Create a Marketing Attribution Trigger Rule

• Entry: CRM Admin > Business Rules Management > Campaign Management > Marketing Attribution
• Version control: This feature requires a separate purchase.
• Each tenant may configure only one rule set.

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1. Basic Information - Attribution rule name: enter as needed - Attribution rule description: enter as needed

2. When to trigger the attribution model - Trigger object and trigger node: define the target conversion event — the behavior used as the final evaluation metric.

Trigger table:

• Trigger data conditions: pull fields from the selected trigger object and fill in as needed, or select all.

1. Choose an attribution model - An attribution model is a rule or set of rules that determine how credit for sales and conversions is distributed across touchpoints in the conversion path.

Attribution models table:

1. Automatic association settings - Which trigger point on the trigger object will serve as the starting point: defines the node used as the conversion start to allocate credit among touchpoints. - Example: If you choose Opportunity Won as the attribution trigger, the starting point can be Create or Won. In other cases, only Create can be chosen. - Lookback window: also called the attribution window. From the conversion time, set a lookback period; only Campaigns occurring within this window are included in attribution. - Scope of Campaigns to consider: pull Campaign object fields and fill in as needed, or select all. - A Campaign “impacts” the conversion if its start or end date falls within the lookback window AND it meets the data filter criteria. - Attribution paths: channels through which Campaigns that influenced the conversion can be automatically associated. The system automatically finds related Campaigns using these five paths: - Sales Order/Opportunity → Account → Campaign Member → Campaign - Sales Order/Opportunity → Account → Contact → Campaign Member → Campaign - Sales Order/Opportunity → Account → Leads (lead conversion record) → Campaign Member → Campaign - Sales Order/Opportunity → Account → Contact → Leads (lead conversion record) → Campaign Member → Campaign - Opportunity → Primary Lead → Campaign Member → Campaign (special case)

picture coming soon: Caption: As shown, Campaign B’s start date, Campaign C’s start and end dates, and Campaign D’s end date fall within the lookback window, so these three Campaigns participate in attribution. Campaign A and Campaign E do not fall within the window, so they are excluded.

2.2 How Marketing Attribution Works

picture coming soon: Caption: The attribution model depends on the Campaign object, Opportunity/Sales Order objects, and Campaign Contribution linking objects.

The system traces Campaign Members associated with the Account linked to the target conversion object (Opportunity or Sales Order) and records all Campaigns the user interacted with. When the conversion event occurs, the model scans for Campaigns that meet the conditions and, based on the selected attribution model and allocation rules, automatically creates Campaign Contribution records via API.

picture coming soon: Caption: Campaign object: records the number of Opportunities influenced by each Campaign.

picture coming soon: Caption: Opportunity 2.0 or Sales Order object: calculates each Opportunity’s or Sales Order’s Campaign contribution shares.

3. Case Study

Case: Mr. Wang is tasked with purchasing a CRM product for his company. He participates in multiple Campaigns through different marketing channels and notes ShareCRM.

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Attribution rule: - Target conversion event: Sales Order creation, using Create as the starting point, with a 90-day lookback for Campaigns that impacted the conversion. - Example: If the Sales Order was created on 2021-04-13, look back 90 days to find Campaigns associated with the Account for that Order. The effective attribution window is 2021-01-13 to 2021-04-13.

Simulated attribution results under different models:

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