Brooke Hattie · Mar 26, 2025 · Case Studies
About this engagement
Our client's attribution model was giving credit to outdated or incorrect sources. Marketing spend went to the wrong places, high-performing campaigns were undervalued, and sales and marketing argued over who was driving revenue.
They brought us in for a clear, reliable way to track attribution, without relying on error-prone manual inputs.
Our partnership enabled the following results:
The Challenge
The company used a first-touch model that credited every opportunity to the original source of the lead, even years later. It rewarded outdated marketing instead of the most recent touchpoints that actually moved deals.
Attribution wasn't automated either. AEs and SDRs picked the source of each new opportunity by hand, which made the data inconsistent and often wrong, and fueled disputes between sales and marketing over who generated pipeline. Marketing that played a major role in revenue was undervalued, budgets were misallocated, and the teams drifted apart. The company needed an accurate, automated way to see which channels truly drive revenue.
The Solution
We replaced the first-touch model with a structured, logic-based one that credits the most recent relevant touchpoint, and automated it in Salesforce so nobody has to pick a source by hand.
At a high level, here is what changed:
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| First-touch attribution, crediting sources years old | → | A waterfall model that credits the most recent relevant touchpoint |
| Sources picked by hand by AEs and SDRs | → | The last marketing touch in six months, pulled into Salesforce automatically |
| Disputes over who sourced what | → | Real-time attribution dashboards both teams share |
And now, here is how we got there.
An audit of attribution in Salesforce
We reviewed the attribution setup in Salesforce for inconsistencies, manual gaps and misattributed revenue. Opportunities were being credited to outdated lead sources because of the first-touch model and the manual selection by AEs and SDRs.
A waterfall attribution model
The new model assigns credit in a fixed order:
- Channel. If the channel team created the opportunity, credit goes to channel.
- Marketing. If a contact responded to a marketing campaign within six months, credit goes to marketing.
- SDR. If an SDR created the opportunity, it is assigned to them, unless marketing had a recent engagement.
- AE. If none of these apply, credit goes to the AE.
Automation, tested in parallel
A new last campaign responded date field in Salesforce attributes each opportunity to the most recent marketing engagement automatically. We ran the new and old models side by side to find discrepancies, refine the automation and confirm the results before the full rollout.
Reporting for both teams
Dashboards give sales and marketing the same real-time view of attribution, which improves how they align and decide.
The Results
More than $4M in pipeline was reattributed, so marketing work that had gone unrecognized is now credited and the true revenue drivers are clear. Marketing can allocate budget to the channels with the highest return, with confidence.
With the manual source selection gone, errors are down and hours a week of attribution corrections are saved. New opportunities follow one consistent, automated model, and sales and marketing argue less about sourcing and plan better together.
Request a free consultation to see how we can help you better understand where to spend your marketing budget based on data.