Case Study: Accurate HubSpot-Shopify Attribution Leads to Improved Marketing Campaigns and Decisions

This post is part of a series in which we explore problems that our customers have fixed using Insycle. Each post outlines the challenge and shows the solution step by step

The Problem: Attribution Data Wasn’t Being Captured Correctly For Returning Customers In HubSpot

Taylor Company, an eCommerce client of Amilliat, a marketing technology consultancy, had a unique problem that was impacting their ability to accurately track and attribute revenue to their marketing activities inside of HubSpot.

The issue that they encountered was in HubSpot when contacts had multiple deals associated with them. In the B2B world, this typically occurs in the form of renewals, cross-sells or upsells. In B2C, a new deal often needs to be created every time that a customer places an order on the website, which is the situation that Taylor Company was in.

The total amount from multiple deals is attributed across all influencing campaigns with differentiation in the buyer journey by deal. There is one continous journey. The journey, however, looks different for every deal associated with the contact—particularly in an eCommerce application.

This means that the customer journey data needs to be associated with the deal that it ultimately influences, in order to accurately attribute your marketing efforts.  

Taylor Company wanted to ensure that when they ran a campaign for the upcoming Black Friday holiday, this touchpoint should be counted towards the next deal and not towards previously won deals for the eCommerce company. A new journey has been started for a new purchase and they needed the data to reflect that. This allowed them to build accurate reports for influenced pipeline and revenue.

This issue that Taylor Company encountered was that, out of the box, HubSpot rolls up contact data, indiscriminately, to every deal tied to the contact. In order to ensure that certain data in attribution only applies to the correct deal, Taylor company needed to extend HubSpot’s association functionality to control what deal you want to roll up the contact’s latest attribution data.

How a Lack of Attribution Impacts Shopify Companies

Eroded Marketing Effectiveness: Without precise attribution data, companies struggle to understand which marketing efforts are truly effective. This leads to misallocated resources and campaigns that do not resonate with the target audience. Over time, this can significantly erode the effectiveness of marketing strategies, resulting in wasted expenditure and missed opportunities for growth.

Impaired Decision Making: The absence of accurate attribution data impairs strategic decision-making. Companies rely on this data to gauge customer behavior, preferences, and the customer journey. Without it, decisions are based on incomplete information, which can lead to suboptimal strategies and a misunderstanding of market dynamics.

Decreased ROI on Marketing Spend: One of the most immediate impacts of poor attribution is a decrease in marketing campaigns' return on investment. Companies are unable to pinpoint which channels or tactics are generating revenue, leading to inefficient spending and a lower overall return on marketing investments.

Customer Experience Impacts: Effective attribution enables companies to create more personalized customer experiences. A lack of this data means companies cannot tailor their interactions as effectively, leading to generic and less impactful customer experiences. This can result in decreased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Operational Inefficiencies: Without clear attribution, sales and marketing teams may find themselves working at cross purposes or duplicating efforts. This lack of coordination can lead to operational inefficiencies, increased costs, and a decrease in overall team productivity.

Difficulty in Proving Marketing's Value: Finally, without clear attribution, marketing departments struggle to demonstrate their value to the broader organization. This can lead to reduced budgets, decreased influence in strategic decisions, and a lack of understanding of the role marketing plays in driving business success.

The Solution: Associate Contacts to New Orders and Share Marketing Activity Data Between Them

Moh Shabib, Founder and Principal Consultant at Amilliat, worked closely with the team at Taylor Company to understand their predicament and devise a solution in HubSpot to ensure that marketing activities were correctly attributed to related purchases within HubSpot.

Moh used Insycle to extend HubSpot’s baseline association functionality and ensure that marketing activities were attributed ot the correct campaign, for accurate marketing attribution.

This solution included multiple steps:

1) Match Contacts to their most recent deal

First, Moh used Insycle to ensure that contacts could be matched to their most recent deal using the contact’s Last Order Number field and the deal’s Order Number field as a unique identifier field. Matching values in unique identifier fields creates a one-to-one relationship that can be used to share data between two records.

Setup association type in Insycle for contact to deal using matching field values

2) Use custom contact properties to collect activity data by channel

Then, Moh created custom contact properties that act as placeholders for attribution data that come from HubSpot’s system-generated properties: Latest source, Drill-down 1, and Drill-down 2—fields where recent activity for contacts was tracked.

The custom fields tracked all of the relevant marketing channels and campaigns that Taylor Company wanted to attribute revenue to.

• Campaigns
• Email marketing
• Organic Search
• Paid Search
• Organic Social
• Paid Social
• Direct traffic
• Offline
• Other

Moh implemented a HubSpot Workflow for Taylor Company that captured referral data from UTM parameters from each tracked touchpoint and fed them to custom fields.

Hubspot workflow that continues to collect attribution data until an association is made between the latest won deal

Let’s zoom in a bit so you can see what is happening in each of the different branches.

A Zoomed-in view of the Workflow for eCommerce attribution in HubSpot

3) Transfer touchpoint data from contacts to deals

Then, to ensure that both contacts and deals had relevant touchpoint data, Moh used Insycle’s Associate app to transfer touchpoint and activity data from contacts to deals. He did this by replicating the contact fields for the deal object, then copying the data.

Setup Copy Rules in Insycle that transfer attribution data from contact to the associated deal

4) Automate activity data collection for Deals

With templates built to associate contacts to deals then transfer the activity and touchpoint data from the contact object to the deal object, Moh was able to automate this process for Taylor Company using Insycle’s Recipes, which integrate directly with HubSpot Workflows.

Now, everytime that a new order was made, contacts would be automatically associated with deals and all relevant marketing activity data would be shared between the two records. Then, unnecessary data would be cleared from the contact once it was safely stored on the associated deal to make room a next deal

Hubspot workflow that uses Insycle Recipe action step to make the association to the relevant deal to transfer attribution data

5) Unlocking marketing attribution reports

Marketers often report on metrics like impressions, opens, clicks, visits, and registrations. Numbers that you find in the tools you use to serve ads, send emails, update websites, or run webinars. In a vacuum, they all measure performance—but not how they impact pipeline or revenue.

Attribution done correctly should allow you to measure every single marketing dollar you spend. By channel, campaign, content and even by employee.

Then, you can analyze channels and campaigns, independently, to better understand where your marketing budget is best spent—which is exactly what Amilliat was able to deliver to Taylor Company.

Result: Accurate Attribution Means Better Shopify Marketing Campaigns and Decisions

Using Insycle’s powerful HubSpot Workflow integration, Moh Shabib of Amilliat was able to ensure that Taylor Company was able to accurately associate contacts with the orders (deals) they placed, share marketing activity info between the contact and deal, and accurately attribute marketing spend to the orders it facilitated.

As a result, Taylor Company has reliable insights into their marketing activities and how those activities are impacting their bottom line.