The Dawn of Campaign Measurement

Matt Starita
Matt Starita Posts: 12 6senser
in RevCity

Raise your hand if you’re a marketer who struggles to clearly show performance—and justify digital advertising spend. 
 
Okay, hands down. We’ve all been there.  

6sense can help you tell this story in a way you probably didn’t think was possible by using Audience Workflows (AWF). But let’s build a little suspense before the big reveal. 

For years marketers have relied on vanity metrics like CTR and form fills to prove campaign effectiveness because those are the metrics that Leadership historically leans on. Paid Media (I’m talking more traditional banner ads – not LinkedIn or Paid Search) are often misaligned to another fundamental performance metric, Lead Generation. But this philosophy assumes a direct, linear path from ad > click > form fill > lead. In B2B, that path is rarely that clean. 

Paid Media is an incredible driver of brand awareness and education. Our primary goal here is to get our audience to our website and engage with us. Often, the message resonates—but the click never happens. Instead, buyers later find their way to your website through other paths like a direct visit or paid search ad. When that happens, those channels get the credit—even though paid media influenced the outcome. I call this Attribution Cannibalization” 

Your next question is, “well, what can we do about it?”  

The honest answer? Not a whole lot, because B2B advertising doesn’t quite work the same as B2C advertising. But what we can do is find new ways to tell our story and highlight the genuinely important metrics that your Executives and Board of Directors really care about – meetings booked, pipeline, deal velocity and revenue. 

This is where I reveal that Audience Workflows changes the game.  
 
AWF allows you to add audiences directly to Salesforce Campaigns—something most marketing teams already use and rely on for reporting and dashboards. From there, you can clearly connect paid media exposure to real business outcomes.  

There are several ways you can use it to help showcase how your campaigns are contributing to meetings, pipeline, buying stage movement, deal velocity and closed won revenue. 

Here are the steps when configuring your SFDC campaign in a workflow that includes AWF managing your Paid Media campaign 

  1. Create two SFDC campaigns designated for a paid media campaign 
    1. SFDC campaign for Leads 
    2. SFDC campaign for Contacts 
  2. Create your Account segment for targeting via paid media 
  3. Create your AWF and select the segment you would like to use for your account audience selection 
  4. Add your Push to 6sense Advertising Campaign node and configure 
  5. Add a decision node to track engagement on the campaign 
    1. Engaged YES should include the condition, ‘Engaged Accounts (6sense Campaigns) and select the specific campaign 
    2. Select ‘If conditions are not met’, choose do nothing 
  6. For those accounts who satisfy Engaged Yes, select Action Node, and select two Add to SFDC Campaign nodes and for each that you previously created (Contacts/Leads) 
    1. Configure and select applicable SFDC campaign and the proper record type (leads or contacts) and configure your conditions (which personas should be included in the appropriate SFDC campaign) 
  7. Save, Preview and Launch your workflow 
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Alternatively, you may already have a Paid Media campaign running and you don’t want to pivot to AWF. If that’s the case, consider his approach: 

  1. Create two SFDC campaign designated for a paid media campaign 
    1. SFDC campaign for Leads 
    2. SFDC campaign for Contacts 
  2. Create your Account segment and use the segment filter ‘Engaged Accounts (6sense Campaigns) and select the specific campaign) 
  3. Create your AWF and select the segment you would like to use for your account audience selection 
  4. Select Action Node, and select two Add to SFDC Campaign nodes and for each that you previously created (Contacts/Leads) 
    1. Configure and select applicable SFDC campaign and the proper record type (leads or contacts) and configure your conditions (which personas should be included in the appropriate SFDC campaign) 
  5. Save, Preview and Launch your workflow 
image-62033bae5d3d28-8efb.png

One thing to note is that in today’s iteration of AWF, the node is specific to Contacts/Leads as Campaign Members, so you’d have to add SFDC personas from these accounts to populate your SFDC campaign (this does not suggest that the specific people added to the campaign are those who actually engaged from it). When you’re building your dashboard or report, leverage the Account Name to simplify and focus the view. In an upcoming 6sense Product Release, the ability to ‘Add Accounts as Campaign Members’ will become available. 

SFDC Campaigns are commonly used across marketing organizations and after presenting this approach to several customers recently, their eyes got wide with excitement. The best part of what's outlined above is that you can apply this type of approach to not only measure your 6sense paid media efforts, but also as a layer to show how other channels, contact/data enrichment, etc. all have a larger impact than you may think to your core performance metrics by using AWF + SFDC Campaigns.

From here, use your imagination on what dashboards and reports you can build, but focus on how these campaigns contribute, but aren’t solely responsible, for Lead Generation, meetings booked with these accounts, pipeline generation, closed won revenue, etc. Your Executives, the Board and the 6sense team will appreciate it. 

If what I have shared resonates and you've applied SFDC Campaigns to your workflows for reporting and measurement, I'd love to see and hear what you've built. Please share in the comments what you have come up with!

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