Overview
Person source architecture in Marketo Engage is a key foundational framework that allows your Marketing Operations team to create the building blocks for data reporting including first, last, and multi-touch attribution.
Marketing attribution enables Marketers to identify which tactics contribute to key business outcomes, providing them with the intelligence to optimize their Marketing investment, double-down on successful tactics, and scale back on unsuccessful ones.
How it Works
The Etumos Person Source Framework operates by extracting UTM parameters, typically integrated into a company’s UTM framework, from hidden form fields. These UTM parameters are then utilized to compute and imprint every interaction associated with a person’s source, accomplished through the implementation of a centralized operational program.
Non-UTM Sources can also be captured within the framework by utilizing field data such as:
- Referrer
- Original Source Type
- Data value changes in fields
- Custom data capture for sources
- Organic traffic
- Populated from SFDC
There are three categories of data being accrued: first touch, last touch, and every touch. The “first touch” is never overwritten, the “last touch” is overwritten every time, and “every touch” concatenates every touch into a single field.
There are three hierarchical levels for viewing person source:
- Person Source Category: This provides all-up marketing and sales reporting, a high- level view useful for CxO-level reporting.
- Person Source: This provides marketing strategic initiative-level reporting, useful for Director-level reporting.
- Person Source Detail: This generally provides operational metrics which are generally less helpful on a macro level, and more useful at a micro level. Useful for Specialist-level reporting.
Reporting on the Data
Reporting on Person Source data will be dependent on the tools you have in your tech stack. Based on your audience and the types of reports you’d like to pull, you may want to build reports in Marketo Engage, or within your CRM or BI tool.
Marketo Engage
If you are reporting out of Marketo Engage within your Marketing team, you may want to pull people performance reports grouped by Person Source Category, First Source, or Person Source detail.
CRM
If your reporting audience is outside of just your marketing team, you can build similar reports and dashboards in your CRM as fields should live in both systems.
BI Tools
Connecting your Marketo Engage and CRM data to a BI stack will allow you to stitch together your end-to-end marketing attribution story, including volumes, conversions, and velocities as leads move through your funnel.
Conclusion
The goal of the Etumos Person Source framework is to provide supporting evidence to the hypothesis that Marketing engagement impacts business value.
With our framework, the data collected should help inform your stakeholders and make key marketing decisions:
- CMO – Understand how marketing activities are impacting pipeline and revenue in order to determine budget allocation for the upcoming fiscal year or quarter
- Director of Marketing – Optimize the channel mix to maximize lead generation by understanding which digital and offline channels are driving the highest volume of MQLs and SQLs
- Marketing Manager – Understand where to invest time and money in campaigns by having insight into things such as the number of leads created by channel.
Have a question? Let’s talk! Contact us if you need help showcasing how your marketing efforts impact your business!
