Welcome to the second part of what may or may not be a series on Pardot and Salesforce best practices. In an earlier blog post, Best Practices for Salesforce and Pardot Campaign Set up, we went over how to set up a connected campaign in Pardot and Salesforce and gave you some best practices on naming and measuring campaigns. In this post, we’ll go into detail on the various campaign reporting tools and templates available to you. We’ll also go over campaign attribution models and how to use them to gauge marketing’s true impact on your campaigns.

Salesforce Campaign Attribution Models and Campaign Reporting: Getting the most value

In order to get the most value from Salesforce Campaign Attribution Models and Campaign Reporting we recommend that your organization be using these items:

• Salesforce Opportunities
• Salesforce Campaigns
• Pardot Connected Campaigns
• Consistent use of Contact Roles

Salesforce campaign attribution models

Campaigns are an integral part of Pardot since campaigns are needed to track and report on marketing efforts (attribution reporting), and since most Pardot assets need to be assigned to a campaign. Pardot assets can be assigned to a single campaign, and prospects can be assigned to multiple campaigns in a one-to-many relationship, where one prospect can belong to many campaigns.

Salesforce Influence model

• Campaign Influence 1.0 (AKA Salesforce Influence Model) – the default attribution model, using the “Primary Campaign Source Field”.
  • One-to-one campaign –> opportunity
    • The one-to-one campaign on the opportunity ‘Primary Campaign Source’ field will receive 100% of the credit
      • Based on Contact > Campaign not Contact Role > Opportunity
        • (You can track campaign influence manually by adding it to the Campaign Influence related list. When you add to a campaign manually, you don’t select a specific contact, so names and campaign member statuses aren’t shown).

The Salesforce Influence model is the default Salesforce campaign revenue attribution model, which attributes 100% revenue credit to the primary campaign associated to the opportunity, and 0% to any other campaigns users assign to an opportunity.

The Salesforce influence model shows the number of opportunities and amount of revenue each campaign has influenced.

Salesforce Customizable Campaign Influence model

Customizable Campaign Influence is another more robust campaign revenue attribution model available in Salesforce for more advanced, multi-touch attribution.

Customizable Campaign Influence works by linking contacts to campaigns (via campaign member records) and contacts to opportunities (via Contact Roles).

• Associate Campaigns to Opportunities, using the Contact Role
  • Based on Contact Role > Opportunity not Contact > Campaign
  • Many-to-many campaign <–> opportunity
    • Associate multiple Campaigns to an Opportunity – and multiple Opportunities to a Campaign
• Attribution models determine the revenue share based on influence % pertaining to the Oppty amount, like ‘views’ or ‘lenses’ these models can be changed to see campaign influence in different ways

[optional] set Campaign Influence auto-association rules

The Customizable Campaign Influence models rely on the campaign object, the opportunity object, and a campaign influence junction object. When you enable Customizable Campaign Influence, the standard objects CampaignInfluence and CampaignInfluenceModel are added to your org.

When campaign influence is enabled a new report type is created, “Campaigns with Influenced Opportunities”.

Pardot campaign influence attribution models

Available with Pardot (and Salesforce Performance and Unlimited Edition)

Pardot campaign influence attribution models bring multi-touch campaign attribution models to Salesforce dashboards. Pardot campaign influence attribution essentially shows campaign influence on the opportunity.

Attributing influence to one touchpoint isn’t always accurate, so enabling multiple attribution models makes it easier to track and measure campaign influence with greater accuracy. First touch is set as default primary model unless other settings are configured.

First touch, last touch and even distribution campaign attribution models are supported directly from the opportunity records in Salesforce.

Example of custom Salesforce Marketing Dashboard created by Optimal Business Consulting for one of our clients using standard Campaign Influence reports.

First touch—Assigns 100% of influence and revenue earned to the first campaign a prospect touches. Even if a prospect interacts with other marketing assets or activities, this model attributes all of the influence to the first touch (based on Campaign Member created date). This model relies on the campaign member’s created date and is only available for orgs using Pardot. First touch is set as default ‘Primary Model’ unless other settings are configured.

Even distribution—As implied by the name, assigns an equal percentage of influence and revenue earned to every campaign a prospect touches. This model is only available for orgs using Pardot.

Last touch—Assigns 100% of influence and revenue earned to the last campaign a prospect touches before a deal is closed. No matter what other campaigns the prospect has interacted with, this model attributes all influence to the final touchpoint (based on Campaign Member last modified date). This model relies on the last modified date of the campaign member and is only available for orgs using Pardot.

Remember that for any Campaign Influence to work with Pardot marketing that you must have a process to link contacts or leads in Salesforce to campaigns (via campaign member records) and contacts or leads to opportunities in Salesforce via Contact Roles.

Tableau (B2B Marketing Analytics / B2BMA)

Pardot also offers B2B Marketing Analytics for additional reporting metrics (may be an add-on depending on your plan). If you are fortunate enough to have Tableau (B2B Marketing Analytics) you will have many more options for reporting on marketing attribution touch points and marketing’s contribution to revenue attribution.

Campaign reporting in Salesforce

Here are a few out-of-the-box Salesforce Campaign Influence Reports to consider:

Influenced Pipeline—Provides a snapshot of active opportunities and their campaigns.

Influenced Closed Opportunities—How marketing influenced converted revenue, so called ‘Holy Grail’ of marketing.

Campaigns with Influenced Opportunities—Use the Campaigns with Influenced Opportunities report to view opportunities that are influenced by each of your campaigns. Great for total dollar graphs segmented by the opportunity.

Opportunities with Campaign Influence—Similar to Campaigns with Influenced Opportunities but segmented by campaign. Shows the number of opportunities and amount of revenue each campaign has influenced. Use the Opportunities with Campaign Influence report to view opportunities that are influenced by each of your campaigns. Great for total dollar graphs segmented by the campaign.

Contacts with Campaign Influence—A great way for the sales team to review activities and a great way for the marketing team to find opportunities that don’t have contact roles.

Campaign ROI Analysis Report—The Campaign ROI Analysis Report calculates the ROI and average costs for your campaigns. The ROI is calculated as the net gain (total value opps minus actual cost) divided by the Actual Cost. The ROI result is expressed as a percentage.

Accounts with Campaign Influence—Into account-based marketing? This is a visual roll-up of how your accounts are interacting with marketing campaigns.

Campaign Leads or Campaign Contacts—Use the Campaign Leads or Campaign Contacts reports to list the leads or the contacts associated with your campaigns.

Campaign Call Down or Campaigns with Campaign Members—Use the Campaign Call Down report (single campaign) or the Campaigns with Campaign Members report (multiple campaigns) to show information about leads and contacts.

Campaign Member—Use the Campaign Member report to view the members of campaigns.

Campaign Member Analysis—Run the Campaign Member Analysis report to summarize information about who has responded to campaigns.

Campaign Revenue Report—Use the Campaign Revenue Report to analyze which opportunities have resulted from your campaigns. You can also analyze products and revenue schedules in this report.

Other Useful Salesforce Marketing Reports

There are several native (or slightly customized) Salesforce reports that we recommend.

Lead Lifecycle Report

Contact Lifecycle Report

New Leads Created Last 30 Days Report (custom)

New Leads Created Last 7 Days Report (custom)

New Leads By Month Report (custom)

Modified Leads Last 7 Days Report (custom)

Campaigns by Member Status=Responded

Leads By Marketing Campaign Report

New Activities with Leads Report

New Activities with Contacts Report

• Tableau (B2B Marketing Analytics, or B2BMA) attribution reporting

  • Offers a multi-touch attribution dashboard that shows which marketing efforts are most influential at each stage of the buying cycle. The dashboard provides a variety of reporting options for marketing attribution touch points and marketing’s contribution to revenue attribution.
  • 

Why aren’t my report numbers between Pardot and Salesforce accurate?

If you’ve been using Pardot and Salesforce for any length of time, you may have experienced that your reports don’t seem to reflect accurate numbers.

There are several possible causes for Salesforce and Pardot reports to not seem correct, but syncing issues tend to rank high on the list of possible reasons. Below are things to look for to resolve any Pardot and Salesforce syncing issues:

1. If there are a high number of sync errors causing some prospects to not sync from Pardot to Salesforce, Prospects in Pardot who are not syncing with a lead or contact in Salesforce cannot be seen by these Salesforce engagement metrics and reports.
2. If you have a large number of prospects only in Pardot because they have not been assigned to a Salesforce User, Group, Queue, or Assignment Rule, therefore they aren’t syncing between platforms, then you cannot see the ‘real’ number of interactions reflected in Salesforce until you sync those prospects to Salesforce.
3. The reverse may also be true…the number of prospects may appear lower in Pardot’s Salesforce campaign view compared to the Salesforce campaign report if there are Salesforce leads/contacts in the campaign who have not yet been created as Pardot prospects or those prospects are not syncing from Salesforce to Pardot (Pardot does not have records for those prospects yet so they are not included in Pardot’s Salesforce campaign view).
4. Prospects may not be syncing between Pardot and Salesforce possibly due to lack of Salesforce permissions for the Pardot Connector User.
5. Prospects may not be syncing between Pardot and Salesforce possibly due to lack of permissions for Pardot to access a specific Salesforce custom record type for either the lead and/or contact objects in Salesforce.

Campaign Influence set up steps

Note: This is an abbreviated outline of set up steps, see the official Campaign Influence Implementation Guide from Salesforce for more details.

• Pardot users need to first turn on Connected Campaigns before enabling Campaign Influence.
• Enable Campaign Influence in Salesforce setup
• Wait 5min

• Select Campaign Influence model

  • Campaign Influence

  • Customizable Campaign Influence

    • First-touch: focuses credit (opportunity revenue) on the campaign (touch point) that moved prospects through the awareness stage; i.e. sourced from this campaign (based on Campaign Member created date).
    • Last-touch: focuses credit (opportunity revenue) to the campaign (touch point) that moved prospects through the consideration/negotiation stage; i.e. closed due to this campaign (based on Campaign Member last modified date).
    • Even Distribution: gives equal credit to all the campaigns (touch points) that a prospect interacted with during the buying cycle; i.e. overview of all campaigns that touched an Oppty.
    • The number of custom models you can create may vary by your edition.

• Setup for either model: Standard Campaign Influence or Customizable Campaign Influence

  • Set an auto-association timeframe
  • [optional] Set auto-association rules
  • Go to the User detail page (under the Users section) and scroll down to the Related list called Permission Set License Assignments, edit
    • Select CRM User
  • Create a permission set with the “Campaign Influence” permission. Go to Setup, then Manage Users, then Permission Sets
    • Under the Permission Set License, select Sales User
    • Manage Assignment button and select the names of the users you want to assign
    • Select App Permissions
      • Add Assignments for user access to the app
      • Assign user Profiles
  • Add Campaign Influence data in related lists and reports so that your reps can understand which campaigns impact their opportunity pipeline.
  • Update Oppty object layouts; add the Campaign Influence Object to the Opportunity Page Layout; Campaign Influence Related Lists
    • do the same for Campaigns object
  • [optional] Enable Einstein Campaign Insights; Einstein Attribution is Campaign Influence with the power of machine learning. This tool analyzes your campaigns to spot trends and then allocates campaign influence credit to multiple campaigns; only looks at Campaign Members with a “Responded” status. (Setup > Einstein Pardot > Einstein Campaign Insights; add the Einstein Insights component to your Lightning record page)

Summary

As you can see there are tons of marketing reporting options available from Salesforce when using Salesforce campaign attribution models, Salesforce Campaigns, and Pardot together in a cohesive way.

We suggest you also create UTM, Sales & Marketing Funnel, and Lifecycle Stage reports and dashboards, but we’ll perhaps elaborate on that in another blog post.

There’s really almost no end to what you can do as long as you have decent data collection, so have fun reporting!