When looking at a revenue attribution report, a deal or contact attributed to a source doesn't look to actually have an interaction with that channel, for example, paid search.
When trying to make sense of revenue attribution, sometimes it can look like there are discrepancies in how sources are allocated.
The first thing to make sure is that you're aligning the interaction with the type of attribution model you're running.
First, a reminder, here's how HubSpot defines their attribution terms:
Attribution models
Different attribution models split revenue credits to interactions differently.
- First interaction: attributes 100% of the deal revenue credits to the contact's first interaction in the conversion path.
- Last interaction: attributes 100% of the deal revenue credits to the contact's last interaction in the conversion path.
- Full-path:
- Attributes 22.5% of the deal revenue credits to first interaction, lead creation, deal creation, and last interaction each.
- Attributes the remaining 10% of the deal revenue credits to all other interactions equally (i.e., middle interactions).
- Linear: attributes the deal revenue credits equally to each interaction in the conversion path.
- U-shaped:
- Attributes 40% of the deal revenue credits to the first interaction and lead conversion interactions each.
- Attributes the remaining 20% of the deal revenue credits to all other interactions equally.
- W-shaped:
- Attributes 30% of the deal revenue credits to the first interaction, lead conversion interaction, and deal creation interaction each.
- Attributes the remaining 10% of the deal revenue credits to all other interactions equally.
Interactions
The models attribute revenue credit to interactions, and will apportion higher credit to key conversion points in the customer journey. The key conversion points are:
- First interaction: the customer's first interaction recorded in HubSpot. This is usually their first visit to your website.
- Lead creation: the customer's last interaction before they were converted to a contact in HubSpot.
- Deal creation: the customer's last interaction before a deal was associated to them.
- Closed-won: the customer's last interaction before the deal associated to them moved to a closed-won stage.
Any interactions that occur between these key conversion points are called middle interactions.
That being said, depending on when certain integrations and add-ons are turned on in your account, for example, ads. You may have to drill deeper into the contact timeline to see how HubSpot has determined the source of interaction.
To do this, track backward on the contact timeline.
First, find the deal activity that generated the revenue.
Second, find the most recent activity prior: a page view, a marketing email, a sales email etc. Review the analytics attributes associated with the analytics timeline leading up to the deal closure.
In the screenshots above, for example, you'll see that the interaction was a pageview. During that session, there were multiple pageviews. Tracking back to the original pageview that started the session, hovering over the link, or opening it includes a URL parameter appending it.
In this case, a Google Click Id (Gclid) which HubSpot analytics picked up as paid search, but it didn't trigger ads activity, likely because the ads add-on wasn't connected in this particular account at the time of the interaction.