How do I set up attribution in HubSpot?

Attribution marketing is a technique that allows marketers to understand how customers interact with their brand across channels. It’s also known as omnichannel or multichannel attribution because it takes into account multiple points of interaction (or "touch").

In this article we explain what HubSpot's Attribution platform does, how you can use it for your business goals, and whether there are any integrations available.

Does HubSpot have attribution?

Yes! HubSpot has an attribution tool built-in called Attribute Insights. This feature enables you to create custom reports on customer behavior based on user activity within your website, emails, landing pages, social media profiles, etc. You'll be able to view a detailed analysis of visitor journeys, which will help you determine where they've come from, who referred them, and why they converted.

You can access this by clicking on Analytics & Attribution at the top menu bar under Tools. In the Customer Experience section, click on Attributes. From here, select Attribute Insights. A pop-up window will open containing two tabs—Customer Journey and Visitor Behaviors. The Customer Journey tab shows information about attributes such as impressions, actions taken, new signups, purchases made, and so on while the Visitor Behavior tab displays data on things like bounce rate, time spent on site, page views per session, average order value, number of sessions, and others.

The goal of using these tools is to figure out exactly what makes visitors convert, and then replicate those results in other areas of your organization. With this knowledge, you can make better decisions when deciding what products to promote next, target specific segments, optimize campaigns, and much more. For example, if someone signed up but didn't purchase anything immediately after signing up, perhaps they weren't ready to buy right away. Or maybe they forgot about the subscription before closing the checkout process.

To learn even more about HubSpot's Attribution capabilities, check out our guide. If you need some ideas on how to get started with attribution analytics, try setting up email capture forms, or consider integrating Google AdWords with HubSpot.

What is attribution HubSpot?

HubSpot's Attribution platform helps companies measure the impact of digital assets (such as webpages, videos, blog posts, ads, ecommerce stores, etc.) on overall sales. By understanding how certain pieces of content affected different parts of the journey, you can analyze online performance and improve future strategies.

For instance, say you want to see how many people viewed each product image on your webpage compared to how many actually purchased something. Using HubSpot's Attribution platform you could look at the raw numbers, or you could dig deeper by breaking down conversion rates and identifying the most popular images. Then, you might decide to rework your design to include more eye catching photos, or change the text around them, since they're performing worse than expected.

Another way to think about HubSpot's attribution solution is to imagine having all consumer behaviors contained inside one funnel. That means if someone goes through steps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 — and ultimately comes back to complete step 15 — you know you reached them via direct mail advertising, search engine optimization, display ads, mobile app downloads, referral links, social media engagement, social sharing, video viewing, newsletter subscriptions, live event attendance, and offline events. Now imagine being able to break those down further to see just how effective each piece was.

That's precisely what HubSpot provides: granular breakdowns of visitor flows over various stages of your pipeline. Once you build an attribution model, you receive a full overview that includes metrics on traffic source, stage of the path, conversions, and more. All of this information is grouped together so you don't have to spend hours sorting through hundreds of spreadsheets trying to find trends.

Additionally, HubSpot offers the ability to connect several third party solutions including Adobe Marketing Cloud, Salesforce Chatter, Mailchimp, Magento Commerce, Marketo, Netsuite CRM, Oracle ERP, Paypal Pro, PayPal Standard, Zoho Campaigns, and Zapier. However, not every company utilizes all of these services, so depending on your setup, you may only be able to link a subset of them.

It should go without saying, but HubSpot's Attribution service isn't free. Pricing starts at $99/month. There are a few ways to pay: either monthly ($9.95) or annually ($89.95). The latter works well if you don't anticipate needing more credits during the year. What's great about HubSpot is its flexibility. Depending on your needs, you can choose between paying monthly or annual fees. And you always have options to upgrade your plan whenever necessary.

As mentioned earlier, HubSpot's Attribution platform contains additional features apart from just tracking clicks and conversions. One notable perk is that it integrates seamlessly with existing systems. So instead of spending money building another system (i.e., a Pardot competitor), HubSpot already organizes everything neatly for you. Another nice thing about HubSpot's Attribution software is that it doesn't require users to download any apps or plug-ins. Instead, it resides entirely on the cloud.

Lastly, HubSpot also offers a customizable experience. You can adjust the colors, fonts, designs, layouts, font sizes, and much more, according to your preference.

Does HubSpot have multi touch attribution?

Not quite yet. HubSpot currently supports single touch attribution (meaning you track conversions from one point of contact). But in the near future, HubSpot plans to introduce multi touch attribution capability. Multi touch attribution would enable businesses to take advantage of repeat visits, referrals, and returning customers. Essentially, it would allow you to identify return customers and potential buyers later in the buyer cycle rather than just focusing on first timers.

What is revenue attribution HubSpot?

Revenue Attribution is similar to Attributions in terms of functionality. Except Revenue Attribution measures the financial benefit resulting from a particular action, whereas Attributions focuses solely on measuring behavioral changes among consumers.

When used correctly, both solutions provide valuable insights into how consumers respond to your brands' offerings. Plus, HubSpot's Attributions and Revenue Attribution platforms work hand-in-hand to give you a holistic picture of your audience. Together, they form a powerful combination for analyzing customer success.

Marketing Attribution is an important part of any business strategy. It helps to measure your success by telling you how effective certain campaigns were at driving sales or conversions. But setting it up can be complicated if you don't know what you're doing. Here are some tips on how to get started with Marketing Attribution.

HubSpot's attribution solution offers several ways to help companies create detailed reports that show exactly which channels drove customers through their doors — from email promotions to social media activity. The tool also includes easy-to-understand charts showing conversion rates between different interaction points like emails, web forms, phone calls, etc., so marketers will have all they need to make informed decisions about future advertising spending. And when used together, these tools allow businesses to better understand where their leads came from, who influenced them most, and ultimately drive results with increased spend efficiency.

In this article we'll discuss how to set up the attribution report builder and explain its terminology. We’ll go over each step required to build out attribution reporting, as well as touch upon examples illustrating why using attribution analytics makes sense for every type of company. Let’s dive right into the first steps!

How do you set up marketing attribution?

There are three key components needed to set up attribution reporting: (1) Source Types, (2) Content Types, and (3) Interactions Types. All three must be defined before creating a new campaign in order to populate data later. There may be instances where one source type could contribute multiple assets or lead to multiple interactions but still only needs to be assigned once. For example, if someone visits your website via Facebook Pixels then clicks on a specific ad within your site, both actions would count towards the same "interaction" even though there are two separate sources. This means you should only assign “Source Type 1″ (or whatever you named it) to either action depending on what happened.

Here are the steps involved to set up marketing attribution:

Select Create Campaign from the top navigation bar. You’ll see options such as AdWords, Email Marketing, Social Media Advertising, Video Ads, Display Network Ads, Search Engine Optimization, and others. Select whichever matches best with your current ads. If you currently run Google AdWords, select that option. Otherwise, choose your other preferred method. Once selected, click Continue.

The next screen asks you to name your campaign and select goals. Name yours appropriately based off of your goal(s). Then continue onto the dashboard.

Click Build Report under Sources. On the resulting page, scroll down until you find Terms & Conditions, then select New Term. Click +Add Field. Choose Column/Field Label " Text/String field, enter Attribute Name, then click Add Field again. Repeat this process for each attribute you want to add to your report. When naming attributes, try to keep them organized by channel. So, if you plan to track customer service calls, consider calling them Customer Service Calls. Don’t forget to click Save after adding each term. Now repeat Steps 3-6 above for each additional column/field you wish to include in your report.

Once done, hit Generate Report at the bottom left corner of the screen. Your report will automatically open in Excel. From here you can edit your fields, save changes, print, download, etc. Just remember not to delete anything because those columns are crucial to building accurate reports. Also note that if you ever change your mind about which terms to include in your final report, simply return to this section and remove the ones you no longer want to track.

Now that you've got everything in place, let's talk about how you actually use attribution analysis to inform marketing strategies.

How do I start a marketing attribution?

One way to view marketing attribution is as a funnel. Think of the funnel as the life cycle of a potential customer starting from awareness to engagement to loyalty. Each stage represents a point where a person becomes aware of something interesting enough to take notice, then subsequently interacts with that thing. In our case, that might mean visiting your website, filling out a form, signing up for your newsletter, clicking on a link, downloading a file, making a call, buying a product, etc. We refer to each of these stages as an interaction.

Below is a diagram outlining the relationship between funnel elements:

When piecing together your report, think of yourself as looking inside of the funnel, seeing how many people passed through each phase during a given period. Imagine you had a funnel filled with water flowing downwards and outwards. As you look further down the pipe, the flow slows down because fewer people are moving through the system at once. By understanding where your traffic originates from, you can pinpoint where the bottleneck occurs. Knowing this allows you to come up with solutions to address the issue, whether it involves improving SEO tactics or increasing marketing budgets.

If you'd prefer to visualize this visually, imagine a clockwise circle representing visitors coming from various places like search engines, social networks, referral links, etc. Inside the center of the circle are nodes representing individual users. Nodes closer to the outer edge represent individuals who interacted with your brand less frequently. These are commonly known as long tails while short tailed refers to users who interact with your brand often throughout the funnel. Both groups provide valuable information regarding your target audience and overall reach. Long tailed audiences tend to engage deeper with your brand than short tailed users, giving you insight into things like lifetime value, average time spent with your products, etc.

So now that you know how to create reports, what kind of insights can you expect from them? How does knowing which users became loyal fans really affect day-to-day operations? Below are just a few examples showcasing the impact attribution has on your organization.

How do you use attribution in marketing?

As mentioned previously, marketing attribution provides essential visibility into your efforts. Understanding where your leads originate from, who influences them most, and which devices served them best gives you ample opportunity to improve efficiency across departments. With attribution reporting, you can easily identify trends within your user base and focus resources accordingly. You can also leverage advanced metrics to discover patterns between different segments and test theories behind their behavior.

For example, say you wanted to increase revenue among younger users. One theory states that teens respond favorably to targeted direct mailings rather than email promotions. To test this idea, you could send out postcards instead of regular letters to youth audiences. Armed with data comparing the effectiveness of these two mediums, you could adjust your budget allocation according to results. Or perhaps you found that women convert much harder than men when exposed to video demos. Using attribution data, you could determine which demographic group should receive more training videos in the near future.

Attribution analytics are especially helpful for small businesses lacking resources dedicated solely to tracking performance. Instead of hiring employees full-time to handle all aspects of digital marketing, you can utilize HubSpot's powerful platform to manage online activities without breaking the bank.

What happens when you miss attribution opportunities?

You guessed it—you lose money! According to research conducted by the National Retail Federation, almost half of consumers said they abandoned shopping carts due to poor checkout experiences. Customers blame slow load times, confusing billing statements, broken websites, and lack of security for abandoning purchases halfway. While retail stores aren't typically considered tech startups, it stands to reason that if shoppers abandon items during checkouts, it affects profitability directly. Therefore, missing out on attributions costs retailers millions in lost profits everyday. Luckily, HubSpot's integration allows companies to gather relevant data and present it in digestible formats that showcase real ROI.

Additionally, HubSpot's cross-device management capabilities give brands access to comprehensive views of consumer behaviors. This lets them analyze multi-channel marketing strategies holistically, leading to improved decision-making processes.

Finally, HubSpot's suite of analytical tools are available on desktop computers, tablets, smartphones, and smartwatches. Data collected from mobile applications doesn't require extra work to integrate. Plus, thanks to HubSpot's API technology, third party developers can seamlessly plug in their own apps too, maximizing flexibility and scalability.

How do you set up attribution?

HubSpot's attribution report builder consists of four tabs: Assets, Conversions, Demographics, and Insights. Assets displays a list of all assets associated with your account including pages viewed, number of sessions, unique device IDs, etc. Conversions shows statistics related to completed journeys, ecommerce transactions, bounces, cart abandonment, etc. Demographic details include age, gender, region, languages spoken, vertical market, education level, occupation, income bracket, marital status, household size, home ownership rate, etc. Lastly, Insight tab contains graphs visualizing major metrics tracked in previous sections.

To ensure accuracy, the report builder requires participants input basic demographics such as location, industry, etc. However, beyond this simple verification, you can customize your report to pull more precise numbers. Customizations range from filtering specific data sets to choosing specific date ranges. Additionally, customization settings depend largely on the nature of your business. Some industries may benefit greatly from being able to filter data per department, whereas others may need finer control over time frames.

As marketers, we know that it's important to measure results. But how can you track what happens after someone clicks on your ad or visits your website—and attribute them correctly? HubSpot’s Attribution platform helps advertisers determine exactly which pieces of content drove conversions. It allows companies to learn about their customers' actions both online and offline so they can make informed decisions.

In this article, we'll explain how to create an attribution model in HubSpot, as well as some basic questions to help get started.

What is an attribution model?

When creating an attribution model, it's essential to understand what each metric represents before building any reports. For example, let's consider two different metrics: number of purchases made from a particular source (e-commerce) and total time spent interacting with specific content (web). The first one looks at sales revenue while the second one focuses on traffic generated by a campaign.

The most effective way to build an attribution model is to use data visualization tools like Tableau Public. Once you have all relevant information available, you should be able to identify patterns between variables. This will give you insight into what drives certain behaviors or activities within your business. Then you can begin reporting upon these findings.

We've created a guide outlining the steps required when setting up an attribution model using Excel here. You may also want to check out our tips for creating professional looking charts with Excel.

What is an attribution model HubSpot answers?

Once you're ready to start building your own custom models, there are several things you need to keep in mind. First, choose an industry standard that works best for your company. HubSpot has its proprietary attribution engine but offers partners access to multiple third party engines such as Google Analytics and Adobe Omniture.

To select a suitable industry standard, refer to KISSmetrics' list of recommended attribution vendors. These platforms offer rich analytics through dashboards, graphs, and detailed insights. They include everything from social media engagement analysis to e-commerce tracking, mobile app usage statistics, and even web conversion rate measurements.

Next, decide whether you want to work only with digital channels or combine both digital and non-digital impressions. If you opt for the latter option, you might run into issues because many non-digital assets don't support user identification. Finally, once you've selected a vendor, find out if they provide training resources.

What is an attribution model HubSpot?

HubSpot's Attribution Platform provides over 40 customizable templates. Each template includes pre-defined dimensions, metrics, and calculations based on industry standards. Partners receive 24/7 technical support via email, phone, chat, video calls, and webinars. Additionally, their team of experts can assist with customization, integration, and QA testing.

You can either upload existing data files or import new datasets directly into the system. Or you can simply connect to systems like AdWords, Salesforce CRM, Facebook Ads Manager, YouTube Studio, etc., to see real-time performance. There is no limit to the amount of users who can log in simultaneously.

All data uploaded to HubSpot Attribution comes under HIPAA compliance rules. In addition, HubSpot complies with COPPA guidelines.

What is an attribution model answer?

Now that you know what an attribution model is, let's move onto getting started! To recap, attribution models are used to assess consumer behavior across various mediums. As mentioned earlier, there are three main elements involved in determining attribution success:

Source type — What kind of content was it and where did it come from (i.e., organic search vs paid)?

Content type — Was it educational or promotional material? Did it contain images, videos, links, text, or other elements?

Action type — How much interaction did people take with the piece? Were they just curious, clicked a link, left comments, took action, submitted forms, etc.?

If you haven't already done so, download the free eBook "Your Complete Guide to Marketing Attribution" [PDF]. This resource covers every aspect of analyzing data, including considerations around privacy and security.

Here's how to create an attribution model in HubSpot. We've chosen a very simple scenario to demonstrate the process. Let's say you want to analyze the impact of blog posts published on your website. Here's what you would normally do...

1. Go to Content Library & then click Create New Report.

2. Enter the name of your report. Give your report a description. Select the target audience. Choose the desired date range. And finally, pick the data type you wish to view.

3. Now go to Data Sources section. Click +Add External Dataset button.

4. On next screen, enter external URL containing the dataset you wish to add. Note that you cannot add internal datasets right now. However, you can always switch to Internal Data Source later on.

5. Next step is defining dimensions. Since we're working with blogs, we're going to assign category dimension. Under Categories column headings, type whatever terms you'd like to filter by.

6. After choosing appropriate categories, drag those down to Dimension dropdown menu. Repeat for remaining columns. Don't forget to save changes.

7. Now it's time to define metrics. By default, HubSpot picks five metrics automatically. But since we're interested in blog articles specifically, we'll modify those settings accordingly. So, under Metric Type column heading, change Display Name to Number Of Impressions. Also, remove All Values field, since we won't be adding values manually.

8. Lastly, we'll establish calculation fields. Drag Calculations buttons below your metrics. Remember to customize formulas according to your needs. When finished, hit Save Changes.

9. That's it! Your attribution report is complete. Just browse to Reports area and open it.

There are plenty of ways to tweak and fine tune your model further. For instance, you could try expanding your views beyond raw numbers. Instead of viewing unique visitors, you could look at average pageviews per visitor. Similarly, instead of focusing solely on top performing pages, you could compare all pages with equal bounce rates.

By doing so, you will gain deeper understanding of how visitors interact with your site, especially if you want to improve SEO efforts.

Let us know if you have any additional questions regarding attribution modeling in HubSpot. Otherwise, feel free to leave feedback on our Help Center.