What is Attribution Reporting.
Attribution Reporting Models
How Does Goldilocks Determine the Marketing Channel?
What is Marketing Attribution?
Marketing Attribution helps you understand which of your marketing efforts are contributing to the outcomes you desire. Attribution reporting helps to clarify what’s working in your marketing vs. what is taking up resources but failing to deliver results.
Marketing Attribution Helps Answer Questions
Attribution reports are designed to help you answer key questions about your marketing efforts. For example:
- How are our paying customers initially finding out about us?
- Which advertising efforts lead to opportunities?
- Which assets entice more people to provide their email addresses?
- How many leads were created due to our Facebook ads last quarter?
Attribution by Sales Milestone
In the questions listed above, notice that each is tied to a desirable outcome
- Initially finding out about us
- Opportunities created
- Providing email addresses
- Leads created
In Goldilocks, these desirable outcomes are called Sales Milestones.
Goldilocks provides attribution reports for the following Sales Milestones:
- Contact Creation (first and last-touch attribution)
- Lead Creation (coming soon)
- Opportunity Creation (first touch for now, last-touch coming soon)
- Opportunity Won (first touch for now, last-touch coming soon)
FAQ
We got you! Click here to jump to a section called What is a Touch. .
Sales Milestones are major steps in the sales process. Goldilocks provides attribution reporting to help you understand which of your marketing efforts are helping to move prospects through your sales funnel.
Goldilocks recognizes the following Sales Milestones:
Contact Creation
A contact is created when Goldilocks first learns personally identifiable information about that contact: first name, last name, or email address.
Contacts may be created in several ways:
- Form submission
- Sync from CRM
- Contact import via .csv upload
- Manually creating a contact in Goldilocks
- API Call
- Webinar registration
Lead Creation (coming soon)
Leads are created in your CRM, likely by your sales team.
These leads are synced to Goldilocks automatically along with all the information that is needed to provide attribution reporting
- Which contacts are tied to that lead
- When was the lead created
Opportunity Creation
Opportunities are created in your CRM, likely by your sales team.
These opportunities are synced to Goldilocks automatically along with all the information that is needed to provide attribution
reporting
- Which contacts are tied to that opportunity
- When was the opportunity created
- What is the opportunity’s current status
- When was the opportunity close
- Opportunity Won
Wonder no more! Click here to find out What a Marketing Channel is.
Great question! Click here to see How Goldilocks Determines a Marketing Channel.
You asked, we answered! Click here to jump to the section How Goldilocks determines a Source.
You can control how Goldilocks categories your marketing touches by Marketing Channel and Source by leveraging UTM tags.
This table shows you how Goldilocks leverages UTM tags to determine marketing channel and source. Simply consult the table when deciding on your UTM tagging scheme to ensure that marketing touches are categorized correctly.
Video: Attribution Dashboard Overview
Check out our live overview of the Attribution Dashboard!
Attribution Models
First Touch
In a first touch attribution model, credit for the Sales Milestone is allotted to the first touch attributed to the Contact who achieved the milestone.
Last Touch
In a last-touch attribution model, credit for the Sales Milestone is allotted to the last touch that occurred before the sales milestone was achieved.
Multi-Touch
There are several varieties of multi-touch attribution models. Goldilocks will add support for popular multi-touch attribution models in the future.
What is a Touch?
A touch occurs when a prospect engages with your marketing efforts.
Goldilocks creates touches of the following types:
Touch Types
- Visit to a website tracked by Goldilocks (available now)
- Click through from an online ad (coming soon)
- Click through from a trackable email (coming soon)
- Form Submission (coming soon)
- PDF View (coming soon)
- Video View (coming soon)
Goldilocks creates these touches in near real-time as your prospects interact with your marketing content and communications.
Every Touch Has a Marketing Channel and a Potentially a Source
As touches are created, Goldilocks determines
- Which Marketing Channel did the touch occur in
- What was the Source of the touch
A few simple examples will help illustrate the concept of marketing channels and sources.
Example 1
Your prospect clicks a link in a Facebook ad and arrives at a Net-Results Landing Page. Goldilocks will create the following Marketing Touch:
- Type: Visit
- Marketing Channel: Paid Social
- Source: Facebook
Example 2
Your prospect clicks a link in your Instagram Bio. Goldilocks will create the following Marketing Touch:
- Type: Visit
- Marketing Channel: Organic Social
- Source: Instagram
Example 3
Your prospect clicks a Google Ad and arrives at a Net-Results Landing Page. Goldilocks will create the following Marketing Touch:
- Type: Visit
- Marketing Channel: Paid Search
- Source: Google
Video: What is a Touch?
Want to see this in action? Check out our video on Attribution Dashboard // What is a Touch.
Marketing Channels
Goldilocks will categorize each touch into one of the following Marketing Channels. Please read on to find detailed information about how Goldilocks determines the Marketing Channel for each touch.
- Organic Search
- Paid Search
- Organic Social
- Paid Social
- Email Marketing
- Display Ad
- Referral
- Video Hosting Platform
- Virtual Event
- Physical Event
- Outbound Call
- Inbound Call
- Direct Mail
- Affiliate
- Other Campaigns
- Direct Traffic
- Internal Traffic
- Unknown
Sources
The sources of your marketing touches may be highly variable depending on the marketing channel the touch occurred in.
For the Paid Social channel, the available sources are pre-determined and include the popular social media platforms that you might expect. Some examples are included in the list below.
Partial Listing of Recognized Social Media Platforms
- Snapchat
- TikTok
The same is true for some other Marketing Channels like Organic Search, Paid Search, and Video Hosting Platforms: these platforms are recognized by Goldilocks and set as the source for applicable Marketing Touches.
This is not the case when the Marketing Channel is Referral.
A referral is a link to your website from any other website. By definition, any website can link to your site, so Goldilocks does not have a predetermined set of potential referrers. Rather, Goldilocks examines each visit and adds new sources as needed.
Video: Marketing Channels & Sources
Want to dig a bit deeper? Check out our Video on Marketing Channels & Sources.
How Does Goldilocks Determine the Marketing Channel?
If you have installed the Net-Results Tracking Beacon on your website(s), Goldilocks examines each page view to determine the Marketing Channel and Source for that website visit, and creates a Marketing Touch.
The determination of Marketing Channel and Source is governed by the rules below. The rules are applied in the order they appear in the table below. When a Marketing Touch qualifies for one of these rules, the Marketing Channel is set, and no further rules are evaluated for that touch.
You should use these rules as you develop your UTM tagging scheme to ensure that Marketing Touches are created correctly.
| Order | Rule | Marketing Channel |
| 1 | UTM Medium = “social” & UTM Source matches a recognized social media platform | Organic Social |
| 2 | UTM Medium = “social” & the referring URL matches a recognized social media platform | Organic Social |
| 3 | UTM Source contains any of: “adword”, “cpc”, “cpm”, “ppc”, or “paid” | Paid Search |
| 4 | Google Click ID (gclid) present in query string | Paid Search |
| 5 | Microsoft Click ID (msclkid) present in query string | Paid Search |
| 6 | Facebook Click ID (fbclid) present in query string And UTM Source contains any of: “cpm”, “cpc”, “cpm”, or “paid” Or UTM Medium contains any of: “cpm”, “cpc”, “cpm”, or “paid” Or UTM Campaign is not empty | Paid Social |
| 7 | Facebook Click ID (fbclid) present in query string And none of the secondary conditions from rule #7 are met | Organic Social |
| 8 | Twitter Click ID (twclid) present in query string(this rule is under review as twclid may indicate organic social as well) | Paid Social |
| 9 | UTM Medium or UTM Source contains “display” | Display Ad |
| 10 | Referring domain contains “googlesyndication”or “doubleclick” | Display Ad |
| 11 | UTM Source matches paidsocial (not case sensitive) Or UTM Medium contains paidsocial (not case sensitive) | Paid Social |
| 12 | UTM Medium contains any of “cpm”, “cpc”, “ppc”, or “paid” And the UTM Source matches a recognized social media platform | Paid Social |
| 13 | UTM Medium contains any of “cpm”, “cpc”, “ppc”, or “paid” And the referring domain belongs to a recognized social media platform | Paid Social |
| 14 | UTM Campaign, UTM Source, or UTM Medium contains the word “email”(not case sensitive) | Email Marketing |
| 15 | UTM Campaign, UTM Source, or UTM Medium contains the word “Google” (not case sensitive) | Paid Search |
| 16 | UTM Campaign, UTM Source, or UTM Medium contains any of “adword”, “cpm”, “cpc”, “ppc”, or “paid” | Paid Search |
| 17 | UTM Source matches a recognized social media platform | Organic Social |
| 18 | The domain associated with a recognized social media platform is present in the referring domain name | Organic Social |
| 19 | The domain associated with a recognized social media platform is present in the referring domain name | Video Hosting Platform |
| 20 | UTM Campaign, UTM Source, or UTM Medium is not empty and none of the rules preceding this rule have been satisfied | Other Campaigns |
| 21 | The domain associated with a recognized email service provider is present in the referring domain name | Direct Traffic |
| 22 | The domain associated with a recognized search engine is present in the referring domain name | Organic Search |
| 23 | The referring domain matches any of your domains that are currently being tracked via the Net-Results tracking beacon | Internal Traffic |
| 24 | The query string contains any of affiliate, Event, or aff_id | Affiliate |
| 25 | The referrer is a valid IP address | Internal Traffic |
| 26 | A referring domain is present and has is not among the recognized search engines or the recognized social media platforms | Referral |
| 27 | No referring domain is present | Direct Traffic |
Recognized Social Media Platforms
- Delicious
- Digg
- Fark
- Flickr
- HootSuite
- Live Journal
- Ning
- Plurk
- Quora
- Snapchat
- StumbleUpon
- Technorati
- TikTok
- Tumblr
- Twitch
Recognized Video Platforms
- Vidyard
- Vimeo
- Wistia
- Youtube
Recognized Email Platforms
- Gmail
- Yahoo Mail
- Hotmail
Recognized Search Engines
- Ask.com
- Baidu
- Bing
- Brave
- DogPile
- DuckDuckGo
- Ecosia
- Xfinity
- Yahoo
- Yandex
- You.com