One of the most common questions marketers ask when getting started on attribution reporting is which model they should use?
The answer depends on the goals of your team and the supporting analysis that’s expected of you. The important thing to remember is that there isn’t a one size fits all for attribution reporting: when in doubt use multiple models.
With this in mind:
Which attribution model have you been using or experimenting with to measure the success at your business?
If you haven’t quite started with attribution, what are you trying to measure or track using attribution reports?
Great question @JorieMunroe ! I recommend using the time decay model when you want to understand which touchpoints/sources are best at driving ‘conversions.’ In HubSpot, we have three out-of-the-box multi-touch attribution report types for Marketing Hub Enterprise customers:
Contact create - what is creating contacts in your CRM?
Deal create - what is generating new deals?
Revenue - what is closing deals?
For each of these, time decay will tell you which assets are best at reaching each of these respective milestones. For organizations that have multiple email nurturing campaigns, multiple ad campaigns, multiple landing pages, etc. that are driving toward the same result, I recommend comparing each of these asset types against one another and using the time decay model to do an apples-to-apples comparison. Is Email A better at driving conversions than Email B? What about MOFU landing page A vs MOFU landing page B?
Our team plays with different models at different times and for various reasons. The most significant attribution model for our clients is the last touch model. I say that because the budgets we manage for our clients are substantial, and the most important metric to our college and university clients is the cost per student start.