One of the unsolved conundrums in marketing ROI lead tracking is, what REALLY led to the sale? Was it the trade show visit, the response to the email newsletter, a webcast – or did the salesperson’s two-year nurturing of the prospect finally pay off with an order?
The savvy b-to-b marketer knows it’s truthfully the combination of all of those, that no single event can be considered in isolation as the only factor leading to the sale. But marketing ROI calculations can’t work when you give credit to “all of the above.”
In fact, most marketers are throwing up their hands and giving credit to the “last marketing touchpoint,” an admittedly inexact and flawed decision, but one that’s being used by 44 percent, more marketers than any other method. The data comes from a survey on Lead Generation Marketing ROI published by emarketer.com:
44% — Credit the last marketing touchpoint as the lead source
21% — Split the credit for the lead across multiple touchpoints reaching that contact prior to converting to a lead
11% — Measure the incremental leads from a single marketing touchpoint across different response channels using techniques such as marketing testing
3% — Use modeling to identify the incremental leads
20% — Do not track leads to specific marketing touchpoints
