HubSpot Attribution Reporting Models Explained

Every CEO wants to see what's bringing in revenue. And, every marketer wants a way to prove their worth. So, you need attribution reporting. But what do all those different attribution models actually mean? Let's break it down here.

What is a marketing attribution report, anyway?

Well, according to HubSpot...

Marketing Attribution Reports pull all the relevant interactions from your buyers' journey together using pre-built models that can definitively answer which channels and content are helping you meet your marketing goals.

Basically, they are a way to quickly see what's working to drive contacts and revenue.

What are the different attribution models in HubSpot?

You can model the data in a number of different ways—each one helpful for different scenarios.

For revenue reports here's what is available in HubSpot:

First interaction attribution

This model gives all credit to the first interaction that led to a closed won deal.

• When to use "first interaction" attribution:
  Use this model when you want to know what first grabs people's attention — like what makes them visit your website for the first time.

Last interaction attribution

This model gives all credit to the last interaction that led to a closed won deal.

• When to use "last interaction" attribution:
  Use this model to understand what finally convinces someone to buy something or sign up — like the last thing they clicked before booking that call that led to the sale.

Linear attribution

This model looks at all interactions that led to a closed won deal. Then gives equal credit to each interaction.

• When to use "linear" attribution:
  Use this model when you want to value everything equally, from the first click to the last — helpful to understand the average contribution across all your marketing efforts. 

U-shaped attribution

This model gives 40% of credit to the first interaction and 40% to the interaction that created a contact. Then it gives the remaining 20% evenly across all interactions between the first interaction and contact creation.

• When to use "U-shaped" attribution:
  Use this when you're measuring your long-term nurturing efforts separately. This will quickly show you what got them in the database and what got them to buy, but not all the ongoing demand-gen efforts in between.

W-shaped attribution

This model gives 30% of credit to the first interaction, 30% to the interaction that created the contact, and 30% to the last interaction that created the deal. Then it gives the remaining 10% evenly across all interactions between first interaction and deal creation.

• When to use first interaction attribution:
  Use this if you've built a content journey for your buyers that includes some really significant interaction points along the way like key downloads and webinars.
  
  PRO TIP: This is a great model to use when analyzing your Digital Utopia Blueprint content experiences.

Full-path attribution

This model gives 22.5% of credit to the first interaction, 22.5% to the interaction that created the contact, 22.5% to the last interaction that created the deal, and 22.5% to the interaction that closed the deal. Then it gives the remaining 10% evenly across all other interactions.

• When to use first interaction attribution:
  Use this if you're interested in seeing the main points of conversion affecting lifecycle journey changes along the buyer's journey.
  
  PRO TIP: Be sure to have your lifecycle stages properly defined and governed in HubSpot. Use the technical lifecycle journey mapping tool to do this.

Time-decay attribution

This model gives more credit to the most recent interactions. The credit for interactions decays the longer it takes for a deal to become closed-won.

• When to use first interaction attribution:
  Use this when you have a really long considered sales cycle (8 months or more) and you want to see what's most influential towards the end when they're really starting to heat up towards a sale.

Giving attribution reports meaning

Attribution reporting is only helpful if you're actively publishing a lot of content and running a lot of ads.

If you're not doing that you're probably not generating much demand for your sales team to follow up on. You may be getting contacts in your database, but they're probably going cold and never turning into an actual sales opportunity.

If you want your attribution reports to mean something try building a full B2B content experience using the Digital Utopia Blueprint...