How to attribute Contacts from 3rd party in-person events to Campaigns?

[RCronan4]

Our organisation struggles to get accurate reports and ROI for 3rd party events. Things like tradeshows. Most of the data we get from these is imported into HubSpot. Sometimes it creates new Contacts, other times it updates existing Contacts.

We have been adding the static import lists to our '3rd Party Event Campaigns' in HubSpot, but deals and revenue doesn't seem to be attributing back to the Campaign.

So, I was thinking to create a set of UTM tags (campaign, source, medium) for each Campaign, add those values into the import file, then run the import (and link the static list as an asset to the relevant Campaign).

Would adding these UTM tags fix the attribution problem and help us get a better picture of event performance and ROI?

[ClarindaBoom]

Hi rCronan4,

Your UTM idea is really interesting - I've never seen this applied via an import before but am actually curious to see if it works - in theory, it does sound like it should. (sorry I'm not much help here)

Regarding the static lists attachment, are you attaching these lists after the deals have been created? This may affect the attribution metrics. 

[RCronan4]

Unfortunately, for 2023, we are importing the data and adding static lists to the Campaigns long after the deals have been created. So I assume that will be the reason for the missing attribution. But for 2024, if we import the data and add the static lists as soon as we get them (within hours/days of the event), will the attribution from those static lists work?

[ClarindaBoom · Accepted solution]

Hi there, yes that should work - from my understanding campaigns only start tracking and attributing data after an asset has been linked to it. For example, if a form is connected to a campaign, submissions that happened before it was associated are not attributed back as well.