Tracking ROI on Marketing Activities in Your CRM Database: Lead Source or Source Campaign?

Many organizations align sales and marketing teams by using their CRM database to define lead processes, leads generated from marketing, and revenue won by marketing campaigns. They build out views and dashboards for both teams to work off real-time metrics. Part of the process involves agreeing on whether to use a source campaign or a lead source. Both fields are generally available on different CRM platforms, e.g., Microsoft Dynamics 365, Salesforce, and Zoho CRM.  

Lead source is typically only found on the lead and is a simple dropdown field. The options are typically general lead generation activities and sources like tradeshows, websites, and networking. The options are not specific and not relational. By using the lead source, you can query your leads by where you received them, and it gives you a high-level idea of which lead generation tool is providing the most and the highest quality leads.  

The drawback to using lead source is that it can’t give you detailed information on specific tradeshows and events without creating a long list of options that can become quickly outdated. It also can’t track details related to these marketing activities and events. A better option for more comprehensive insight is source campaigns. 

Source campaign is a lookup field that is typically used on the lead and the opportunity. The field looks up the name of campaigns currently in your database. Campaigns are another CRM module where you can store information on your marketing activities like costs, leads generated, revenue generated, and planning activities. You can update the source campaign list easily by deactivating campaigns that are no longer active.  

 The campaign's name can be specific to the trade shows you attended or advertisements you currently have running to give you detailed reporting. The campaign type can give you more general information similar to the lead source dropdown, such as if the campaign is a tradeshow or referral program. The campaign module can be further customized to automate planning and follow-up activities for a specific campaign. Overall, using a source campaign gives your organization more options to work on your marketing data than a simple dropdown field, like lead source. 

Therefore, if you want to ensure you get the data you need for in-depth analytics, we always suggest requiring a source campaign on both your leads and your opportunities to identify where / how they were generated. You and your team will look like rock starts for having the data you need to justify your efforts and support your marketing ROI calculations as well as new marketing investments. 

If you are interested in learning more about lead sources and source campaigns for your CRM database, please contact us for a free consultation on how you can get needed marketing analytics from your CRM. Call 800-880-1960 or email info@toplineresults.com.