Best Practices for Activities Attribution

Overview

The Marketo Measure Activities Attribution feature allows customers to create touchpoints from Activity records in your CRM. This method of creating touchpoints is flexible in that it allows you to create rules based on Task or Event fields to inform Marketo Measure which Activity records it should produce touchpoints from, and subsequently receive attribution credit.

The most common use case for this feature is to craft rules which incorporate Sales interactions into your Buyer touchpoint data. Activities Attribution makes it possible for you to align your Sales and Marketing data into one journey.

For many Salesforce instances, the Activity object can house a variety of record types, so it is important that your Activity rules are specific and tailored to the records you’re trying to translate into touchpoints. The following best practices will help to ensure that you are creating meaningful and valuable touchpoints via your Activities attribution.

Best Practice

Whether you’re defining Activity rules for the first time or just reviewing Activity rules that have been previously setup, keep the following best practices in mind.

• Start simple
  • Identify a few key types of Activities you want to incorporate into your Marketo Measure data, then add more types as you become comfortable with how these touchpoints are being attributed
  • As mentioned, the primary use case of this feature is to create touchpoints that track the efficacy of your Sales Development team, specifically Outbound Phone Calls and Outbound Emails

• Don’t use formula fields to define your rules
• Create rules that are specific and precise
  • You want the threshold for the creation of an Activity touchpoint to be the same (or similar) to a form fill or campaign membership, i.e. (Replies to an Outbound Email or Completed Phone Conversations)
• Always validate new rules in Salesforce before saving and processing
  • Replicating your Activity rule(s) in a “Tasks & Events” report type will give you a clear understanding of exactly how many touchpoints will be created from said rule
• Work with your Sales Opp team
  • Bringing in the team who works closest with your Activity records or sales enablement tool will ensure you’re using the correct fields to define your rules

Best Practice for Maintenance

Reviewing your Activity Attribution rules at least twice a year will ensure that your Activity touchpoints are accurate and up to date. You want to make sure these rules are not creating unwanted touchpoints that are diluting your Buyer Attribution data. A review of how your rules are defined will help you and your team feel confident in your Activities Attribution and its role in your Marketo Measure data.

Other reasons to that might trigger a review your Activity rules include…

• Turnover in your marketing team
• Changes to fields that are used to define your activity records
• Changes or updates to your sales enablement tool(s)