You made a sale — congrats! But do you know exactly which part of the customer journey sealed the deal? Instead of sifting through mountains of data, marketing attribution gives you the clarity to understand what’s driving results and where to focus your efforts next.
Even better, it helps refine your overall strategy, ensuring every channel and touchpoint works together to boost conversions and grow your business.
In this guide, we’ll break down everything you need to know about marketing attribution, including:
• What Is Marketing Attribution?
• What Makes a Good Attribution Report
• Why Every Business Needs Marketing Attribution
• The Different Marketing Attribution Models
• How To Choose the Right Attribution Model
• A Guide to Using Marketing Attribution Reports
• Marketing Attribution Best Practices
• How To Determine Your Company’s Attribution Reporting Maturity
• Best Marketing Attribution Software and Tools
• Marketing Attribution FAQs
Let’s get started by unpacking that marketing attribution is in the first place.
What Is Marketing Attribution?
When it comes to optimizing strategies and maximizing return on investment (ROI), it’s important to understand which channels drive conversions. Marketing attribution is a reporting strategy that allows brands to track the content and marketing channels, leading to conversions and sales. It helps reveal how each touchpoint along the buyer’s journey contributes to the final decision.
In marketing, we call this customer journey mapping, where you visualize every interaction a customer has with your brand, from initial awareness to the point of purchase.
To put marketing attribution into context, imagine a customer booking a vacation package from a travel agency with an app and a website. The customer completes their purchase on the app, but before that, they research destinations on the website and view customer reviews on their social media pages.
This purchase was also influenced by other marketing channels, including:
• Email newsletters
• Social media ads
• Influencer recommendations
Marketing attribution reveals which patterns and actions impacted the final sale so your team can identify strategies for improving marketing performance.
This type of data-driven marketing helps businesses allocate their budget effectively, prove marketing ROI and make data-driven decisions on where to focus future efforts while identifying areas for improvement.
Learn more about customer journey mapping and how it can take your reporting to the next level: How to Create a Customer Journey Map
What Makes a Good Attribution Report
An attribution report is essentially a summary of your customer journey and campaign data. However, it’s only as valuable as the quality of the data it presents.
A good attribution report should answer questions like:
• Which channels are introducing customers to your brand?
• Which campaign drives the most signups or demo form submissions?
• What content or ads are customers engaging with between showing interest and purchasing?
• Which interactions and touchpoints are stakeholders engaging with throughout the buyer’s journey?
• Which channels generate, nurture and convert the most leads?
Overall, marketing attribution provides a clear, actionable report of your customer journey. It offers a timeline of touchpoints at both the user and account levels, along with key metrics like impressions, clicks and spending.
Why Every Business Needs Marketing Attribution
Knowledge is power in marketing — the more insights you gain from past results, the better you can plan for the future. More than that, marketing attribution allows businesses to:
Personalize Marketing Efforts
An estimated 71% of consumers expect brands to deliver personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen (McKinsey). When you understand the factors behind each conversion, you’re better equipped to tailor your marketing efforts to meet customer expectations.
Increase Marketing ROI
Marketing attribution uses conversion tracking and marketing analytics to identify which channels drive the highest marketing ROI. This enables businesses to make well-informed decisions based on solid, quantifiable data.
Improve Product Development
Attribution reports aid product development by offering insights into patterns, trends and customer behavior. They also support customer journey mapping by identifying product assumptions and analyzing data using marketing analytics tools.
Validate Marketing Budget
If a client or stakeholder questions why you’re allocating resources to specific marketing channels, attribution data provides the necessary evidence to demonstrate how each channel contributes to your marketing success.
The Different Marketing Attribution Models
Now that you understand the benefits of attribution reporting for your marketing performance, let’s break down the most common attribution models.
1. First-Touch Attribution
First-touch attribution credits the very first interaction a customer has with your brand. This could be their first visit to your website, initial engagement with your social media or first exposure to your content.
So, if someone discovers your business through a social media ad and later makes a purchase, that initial ad gets all the sales credit.
This model is useful for understanding which channels are best at generating initial interest and bringing new customers into your funnel. However, it doesn’t provide visibility into subsequent interactions that may have contributed to the conversion.
2. Last-Touch Attribution
This model credits a purchase or conversion to the customer’s final interaction with your brand. It focuses on conversion tracking, highlighting which final touchpoint is most effective at nurturing leads. However, the downside to this model is that it can overlook the earlier interactions that also played a role in closing the deal.
3. Multi-Touch Attribution
Instead of focusing solely on the first or last touchpoint, the multi-touch attribution model spreads credit across all customer interactions with your brand before converting. You’ll get a complete view of how each touchpoint contributes to the final sale.
Here are two of the most-used multi-touch attribution models:
a. U-Shaped Multi-Touch Attribution
Also known as position-based attribution, this attribution model allocates 80% of the credit to the primary and final interactions with the brand, with the remaining 20% assigned to the actions in between that contributed to the conversion.
For example, if a customer interacted with:
• A Facebook ad
• A LinkedIn post
• A Google text ad
• An email offer right before making a purchase
The Facebook ad and the email offer would each receive 40% of the credit, while the LinkedIn post and the Google text ad would each get 10%.
b. W-Shaped Multi-Touch Attribution
This model divides credit equally among three key touchpoints: 30% for the first interaction, 30% for the lead creation and 30% for the qualified lead stage. The remaining 10% is allocated to all other interactions contributing to the conversion.
Because it’s spread evenly across milestones, this approach helps you see how each part of your campaign contributes to conversions.
c. Linear Attribution
With linear attribution, every interaction gets the same credit for the conversion, but it doesn’t account for how each interaction might have influenced the customer’s decision differently.
It’s best to use the linear attribution model when all touchpoints are equally important for achieving your overall goal.
4. Lead-Conversion Touch Attribution
The lead-conversion touch model focuses on the exact moment that turns a lead into a customer. It helps identify which channels effectively generate leads so you can optimize those channels for better marketing performance.
However, it overlooks earlier touchpoints, which can lead to an incomplete view of how all interactions contributed to the conversion.
5. Time Decay Attribution
This model gives more credit to interactions closer to the conversion. The further back in the customer journey an interaction occurs, the less credit it receives.
If a customer first sees your brand through a blog post, clicks on a display ad and finally purchases after receiving a targeted email, the email gets the most credit for the conversion while the blog post gets the least.
6. Custom Attribution
The custom attribution model offers the most flexibility because it allows you to assign weight to each touchpoint based on your marketing needs. Although it provides accuracy and customization, it is also the most complicated to set up and is best for marketing teams with the resources and knowledge to use it properly.
How To Choose the Right Attribution Model
Selecting the best attribution model involves aligning your strategy with your brand’s needs. Consider these factors:
• Sales Cycle Duration: Choose a model that matches the length of your sales cycle to ensure it accurately reflects your customer journey.
• Customer Journey Mapping: Analyze how touchpoints are spread across your marketing funnel and which channels are used.
• Campaign Objective: Match the attribution models with your marketing goals and the types of campaigns you run.
• Data Availability: Ensure you have the data to support the chosen model and make accurate attributions.
Each brand is unique, so choose a model that aligns best with your marketing strategy and objectives. Testing different models and adjusting based on results can help refine your approach for optimal performance.
A Guide to Using Marketing Attribution Report
If you’re new to creating attribution reports, this guide will help you leverage this data-driven marketing approach to improve your lead and conversion strategies.
1. Choose the Right Time Frame
Selecting the right time frame for your attribution analysis ensures you get accurate, relevant insights. Some businesses review data weekly or monthly, while others rely on reports for major business decisions. Always align the time frame with your sales cycle.
For example, if your sales cycle is annual, analyzing only a few months of data might miss important trends like holiday sales spikes. If your cycle lasts a few months, too much data could mix in outdated information and skew data on recent customer behavior.
If you’re unsure about the length of your sales cycle, tools like visual analytics dashboards can help you spot trends and guide your analysis.
2. Understand Consumer Behavior
Understanding how your audience interacts with your brand is important for improving digital marketing strategies. Attribution reports help you see which touchpoints, from blogs to social media ads, drive the most engagement.
This way, you’re investing your resources in data-driven marketing that you know works.
Advanced marketers also use these reports to:
• Identify where customers drop off in the buyer’s journey
• Remove ineffective content
• Identify blockers or gaps in the customer experience
• Spot trends and changes in audience behavior
• Optimize touch points to save time and resources
3. Select Suitable Data Collection Tools
To gather meaningful data, choose tools that align with your business goals and the specific questions you need to answer. For example, Google Analytics is excellent for website analytics, but you may need additional tools to track post-signup interactions.
Some platforms also offer data-driven or algorithm-based attribution, which is best suited for businesses with longer or more complex customer journeys. The goal is to find tools that provide insights into your customers’ conversion paths.
4. Pick the Best Attribution Model
Attribution models are not one-size-fits-all, so finding the right one often involves trial and error. In any case, your choice of model should always align with your marketing goals.
If your main focus is raising brand awareness, a first-touch attribution model will tell you which initial interactions draw visitors to your site. Conversely, if you’re working on customer retention, the multi-touch attribution model will give you insight into how different touchpoints work together to engage customers and drive repeat purchases.
Testing different models will help you determine which best supports your objectives and delivers the insights you need.
5. Analyze the Data
Once you’ve selected an attribution model, analyze the data to ensure it’s answering your key questions. A strong attribution report should cover baseline investment and conversion metrics across the funnel.
Here are a few metrics to focus on:
• Traffic Sources: Identify which channels drive the most traffic (e.g., social media, paid ads, email)
• Conversion Tracking: Determine which touchpoints contribute most to conversions (e.g., ad, landing page, email)
• Engagement: Track which content keeps customers engaged throughout their journey.
• Customer Journey: Map the sequence of touchpoints to see how customers move through the funnel.
• Lead Generation: Look at metrics like the number of leads generated from each channel.
• Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs): Analyze which interactions lead to high-quality, sales-ready leads.
• Revenue Impact: Evaluate how specific touchpoints contribute to revenue generation and overall business performance.
• Return on Investment (ROI): Measure the ROI of each channel or campaign to ensure effective resource allocation.
When it comes to ensuring the accuracy of data collected, here’s what Jimi Gibson, VP of Brand Communications at Thrive, said:
“There are many tools and reports available for looking at campaign performance. The most reliable approach is to go to the origin of the data. Sometimes, external tools have a margin of error. We rely on the feed from each platform and ensure tagging, and the connection between the platform and the client’s site is solid. Sometimes, the cleanest data is on the platform itself if we are tracking a click. If the conversion happens on the client’s site or through a call, we start the attribution at the source of the conversion.”
6. Streamline Reporting
Marketing attribution can be overwhelming for stakeholders, so it’s best to present data in a way that’s easy for stakeholders to understand. Here are some tips to simplify your reporting:
• Use Visuals: Add charts and graphs to make the data easy to understand quickly.
• Highlight Key Metrics: Focus on the most important numbers, such as conversions and traffic sources, so that stakeholders can see the big picture.
• Provide Simple Takeaways: Summarize the main insights and suggest next steps, like which channels perform best.
• Tailor for Your Audience: Adjust the report’s detail based on whether it’s for top executives or the marketing team.
7. Implement Changes Based on Insights
Since customer behaviors and market conditions are always evolving, your attribution methods should also adapt. Monitor campaign performance regularly and tweak your strategies to stay on track and drive better results.
If you notice gaps between your business goals and what’s showing up in your attribution reports, take a step back and review your strategy. Conduct market research or get additional training to bridge any knowledge gaps.
Then, make clear recommendations, try new approaches and update your content and marketing strategies based on what you’ve learned.
5 Marketing Attribution Best Practices
As you know by now, there’s a lot to consider when doing a marketing attribution analysis, so it’s important to follow best practices to keep your process in check:
1. Use an Omnichannel Approach
Adopt an omnichannel attribution strategy to understand the full impact of all your marketing. Since customers interact with your brand online and offline, you can’t perform effective marketing attribution without tracking both channels.
2. Analyze Different Lead Types
Include interactions from both new and existing leads in your analysis. This helps you understand how each type contributes to conversions and lets you improve strategies for attracting and retaining customers.
3. Use Automation Tools
Automation tools can take over repetitive marketing tasks like sending email campaigns or scheduling social media posts, allowing your team to manage a higher volume of outreach without adding more staff.
Plus, the added data from automated outreach can help refine your attribution models and marketing strategy.
Here’s a helpful article on marketing automation that you don’t want to miss: The Definitive Guide to eCommerce Marketing Automation
4. Connect Marketing Efforts to Business Goals
Link your marketing activities to specific business goals, such as increasing revenue, to give more significance to your attribution data. This will allow you to identify which marketing tactics impact your overall objectives most and make gaining support for new initiatives easier.
If you’re running an Amazon store, this Amazon attribution article will help you customize reports for the platform: What Is Amazon Attribution and How Advertisers Can Use It
5. Share Attribution Insights With Stakeholders
Attribution makes it easier to communicate the impact of your campaigns to other departments. These reports provide data for pitching new strategies, justifying budgets and demonstrating how marketing drives conversions.
How To Determine Your Company’s Attribution Reporting Maturity
While attribution reporting is crucial for marketing initiatives, not all companies are equally equipped to capture the same data. Your company’s reporting maturity depends on the sophistication of your attribution software, processes and data collection methods.
Here’s how you can assess your company’s attribution reporting maturity level:
Low Maturity
If your company is just starting with marketing attribution, it likely falls into the low-maturity category. At this stage, you’re using basic tools like Google Analytics and standard reports to track results.
You may be able to link closed customers back to your marketing analytics platform, but you probably aren’t capturing many of the sales touchpoints that happen along the way.
Moderate Maturity
At a moderate maturity level, companies track online and offline interactions using tracking systems and client relationship management (CRM) systems. You’ve moved beyond basic reporting and may be monitoring critical touchpoints.
However, there are still gaps, especially with offline data or integration issues between sales and marketing tools.
High Maturity
Teams with high reporting maturity have a comprehensive view of both online and offline interactions. Your marketing and sales teams are aligned, tracking the right actions and working toward shared goals. This means everyone is tracking the right actions and working toward shared goals.
Overly Complicated
More tracking isn’t always better. Some companies, especially larger ones with siloed teams, may have an overload of disorganized or ineffective tracking codes. This can lead to messy data that doesn’t feed into clear, actionable reports.
Not sure where your company stands? Get clarity with professional analytics services to assess and enhance your attribution reporting capabilities.
Best Marketing Attribution Software and Tools
Once you know your company’s attribution reporting maturity, selecting the right tools becomes much easier. Below is a list of top marketing attribution software to help optimize your strategy:
1. HubSpot Attribution
HubSpot is well-known for its sales and marketing automation but is also great for attribution. Its Analytics tools connect your CRM and marketing data so you can easily track touchpoints and identify which channels drive revenue.
As part of the HubSpot Enterprise plan, you’ll have access to custom attribution reports, real-time toggling between models and integrations with over 1,200 apps. Pre-built reports and custom dashboards simplify tracking performance and sharing updates with stakeholders.
Key Features:
• CRM Integration: Tracks customer interactions across sales and marketing.
• Granular Attribution Reports: Create custom attribution reports with real-time model switching, offering insights into contact and revenue attribution.
• App Integration: Access data from 1,200+ app integrations.
• Custom Dashboards: Build and share performance insights easily using customizable, drag-and-drop dashboards.
HubSpot Attribution is available as part of the HubSpot Enterprise plan, starting at $2,400 monthly.
2. Ruler Analytics
Ruler Analytics is a close-looped marketing attribution tool that helps you track your entire customer journey, from initial engagement to conversion. It captures key data like UTM variables, marketing sources and Click IDs and integrates them with your CRM to enrich lead and opportunity data. This allows you to see how your marketing impacts pipeline generation.
When a lead converts to a deal, Ruler sends the revenue data back to its dashboard, giving you accurate ROI tracking. It also offers marketing mix modeling, which attributes revenue to non-click interactions like TV or radio ads.
Key Features:
• Marketing Attribution: Tracks revenue back to marketing sources and touchpoints.
• Marketing Mix Modeling: Measures the impact of non-click interactions.
• Data-Driven Attribution: Understands how various activities affect conversions.
• Predictive Analysis: Forecasts future outcomes using machine learning.
Pricing starts at $149 monthly, with a 10% discount for annual payments.
3. Google Analytics
Google Analytics (GA) is a widely used tool that primarily focuses on attribution models at the top of your marketing funnel. It helps track the channels driving traffic to your site and generates detailed reports on marketing attribution. However, GA has limitations when tracking conversions further down the funnel.
To create attribution reports, you’ll need to set up an attribution project and conversion goals for each channel. It’s important to note that GA’s models exclude direct website visits from attribution, which could limit visibility into some customer behaviors.
Moreover, GA doesn’t connect easily to specific contacts, personas or lifecycle stages without additional tools like HubSpot.
Google’s attribution models are available for free to all Google Analytics users. For businesses needing more advanced features, a Google Analytics 360 subscription offers additional capabilities.
To learn more about the latest features of Google Analytics, check out this article: What Is Google Analytics 4 and Why You Should Use It
4. Branch
Branch is a cross-channel attribution and mobile linking platform that tracks customer touchpoints and connects them to conversions across multiple platforms. It allows you to see how your marketing efforts contribute to success, regardless of the channel or platform.
Key Features:
• Predictive Modeling: Uses historical data to predict accurate attribution, even without a universal ID, addressing challenges like Apple’s IDFA restrictions.
• Comprehensive Tracking: Tracks referral, ad attribution, email, web and social media campaigns.
• Cross-Platform Analysis: Offers cohort analysis to compare attribution across multiple marketing channels.
• Data Segmentation: Displays data on dashboards segmented by device, platform, campaign and more, helping you dive deeper into your attribution results.
• Detailed Dashboards: Segment data by device, platform, channel and conversion events for more detailed analysis.
Branch offers a free 30-day trial and a self-serve platform for users with up to 10,000 monthly active users (MAU). After that, it’s $5 per month for every additional 1,000 MAUs.
For larger businesses with more complex needs, Branch provides a custom-priced Enterprise platform, ideal for advanced mobile adopters and enterprises looking to expand their mobile presence.
4. SegmentStream
SegmentStream uses AI Visitor Scoring and GeoLift Incrementality Tests to assess the true impact of every marketing activity, even when it doesn’t lead to a direct conversion. This makes it particularly useful for businesses with complex user journeys and long consideration periods.
Additionally, SegmentStream accurately measures the value of upper-funnel advertising, such as ad impressions, which are often undervalued by other tools.
Key Features:
• AI Visitor Scoring: Assesses the value of marketing activities even when they don’t result in direct conversions.
• GeoLift Incrementality Tests: Measures the real impact of each marketing channel.
• Upper-Funnel Attribution: Tracks the influence of ad impressions that don’t lead to direct website clicks.
• Budget Recommendations: Provides actionable insights for optimal ad spend allocation.
5. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is a customer experience automation platform with robust attribution reporting features. It helps you identify which traffic sources and touchpoints lead to conversions.
The platform tracks conversions in contact records, detailing the specific touchpoints influencing each conversion. Its Segment Builder allows you to pinpoint which traffic source (such as an ad or campaign) brought a converting contact to your site.
ActiveCampaign is especially useful for setting up automated triggers and assigning attributed values to conversions. For example, if one out of 10 form submissions results in a $500 sale, you can assign a $50 conversion value to each submission.
Key Features:
• Attribution Reporting: Track both paid and organic traffic sources leading to conversions.
• Contact Records: Automatically updated with conversion history and touchpoints.
• Segment Builder: Identifies traffic sources that brought converting contacts to your site.
• Paid Touchpoint Tracking: Tracks paid sources like Facebook Ads and Google AdWords.
• Organic Touchpoint Tracking: Monitors organic interactions like product reviews, guest blog posts and social media activity.
6. Dreamdata
Dreamdata is a B2B revenue attribution platform that consolidates, cleans and analyzes all revenue-related data to provide clear, actionable insights on what drives revenue. It offers detailed analytics and visualized timelines of customer journeys, allowing you to track every account in your pipeline.
With customizable multi-touch attribution models, Dreamdata identifies which channels and campaigns generate revenue at each pipeline stage. The platform integrates seamlessly with Google and LinkedIn Offline Conversions, enabling marketers to send data back to ad platforms for improved optimization.
Key Features:
• Revenue Attribution: Consolidates and analyzes all revenue-related data for clear insights.
• Customer Journey Analytics: Visualizes every customer’s journey with interactive timelines.
• Multi-Touch Attribution: Offers customizable models to track revenue generation across pipeline stages.
• Ad Platform Integration: Automatically integrates with Google and LinkedIn Offline Conversions.
• Go-to-Market Data Warehouse: Automates data consolidation for B2B marketing optimization.
With customizable multi-touch attribution models, Dreamdata identifies which channels and campaigns generate revenue at each pipeline stage. It also integrates smoothly with Google and LinkedIn Offline Conversions, enabling marketers to feed data to ad platforms for improved optimization.
Key Features:
• Machine-Learning Powered: Uses AI to collect and organize attribution data.
• Multi-Touch Attribution: Tracks customer journeys for performance optimization.
• Offline and Online Data: Collects and compares data from both digital and offline sources.
• 50+ Integrations: Includes Zapier integration to connect with additional platforms and tools.
• Data Consolidation: Combines various data streams for complete and unified marketing analysis.
Don’t know where to start? Partnering with a digital marketing agency can simplify the process and ensure your budget is allocated to strategies that truly deliver results.
Create Data-Driven Campaigns and Boost Your Bottomline With Thrive
Effective marketing isn’t based on assumptions — it’s guided by data that shows what truly delivers results. Marketing attribution helps identify which channels and touchpoints lead to conversions so you can focus your resources where they’ll make the biggest impact.
Thrive Internet Marketing Agency leverages advanced attribution tools to deliver actionable insights. These help you understand what’s driving conversions and where to focus your marketing efforts.
“[…] Thrive has worked with thousands of clients across many industries. We have a knack for recognizing trends in data. As a full-service agency, we are not tied to any one approach. We are able to mix and match strategies to deliver the best results,” Gibson said.
Our digital marketing experts are always available to help you track campaign success and make data-driven optimizations that increase conversions and sales. We tailor campaigns based on your exact goals.
“Marketing strategies are based on client goals. It’s easy to get trapped in data without considering what is meaningful to reaching the client’s goals. A form fill, call or purchase are solid indicators of success. Knowing how to interpret assisted conversions can take a little more time and nuance to interpreting the data. A multi-service client often wants to know which service is bringing the highest ROI. Often, the answer requires an educated analysis of the data to appropriately advise the client on where to invest more time and resources,” Gibson said.
Want to know where you stand in terms of marketing performance? Speak to our digital marketing team today.
Marketing Attribution FAQs
HOW DO YOU USE MARKETING ATTRIBUTION?
To get started with attribution reporting, you first need data collection methods for online and offline channels — like tracking email receipts in-store or clicks for social media ads. The more touchpoints you track, the better your insights will be.
Then, you select a marketing attribution model (such as first-touch or multi-touch) and run your data through attribution software. This will give you a clear picture of which channels are driving conversions.
WHAT TYPES OF QUESTIONS CAN MARKETING ATTRIBUTION ANSWER?
Marketing attribution can help answer questions like:
• Which channels are driving the most conversions?
• How many touchpoints are needed for a customer to convert?
• What role does each marketing channel (social media, email, paid ads) play in the customer journey?
• Which campaigns are generating the most leads?
• Are my paid ads more effective than my organic efforts?
• How do offline interactions contribute to online conversions?
• Which touchpoints are influencing high-value customers the most?
WHAT ATTRIBUTION DOES GOOGLE ADS USE?
Google Ads uses a last-click attribution model by default, meaning the last interaction before a conversion gets all the credit. But you can switch to other models like first-click, time decay or data-driven attribution, depending on how you want to analyze your results.
WHAT IS THE ATTRIBUTION WINDOW?
The attribution window is the time frame during which a conversion is attributed to a touchpoint. For example, if someone clicks on an ad and converts within 30 days, that ad would get the credit. Different platforms allow you to adjust this window to track how long it takes for a customer to convert after interacting with your marketing efforts.
HOW CAN I CHOOSE THE RIGHT ATTRIBUTION TOOLS?
Start by evaluating your business goals and marketing channels. Consider the data you need to track — whether online, offline or both — and look for tools that integrate with your existing systems like CRM or ad platforms.
Make sure the tool supports multiple attribution models, offers detailed reporting and can scale with your business as it grows. Lastly, pick a solution that fits your budget and provides the data you need to optimize your marketing strategy.
