Report Configuration for Long Campaign/Sales Cycles

Josh White

Hello! What’s the best way others have found out there to build a campaign segment report for a product that has a long sales cycle (typically 1-2 years), and hence campaign segments that will last 6+ months?

We’ve set up reports to see how accounts in a particular intent-based segment increase their buying stage over time. My confusion lies in how to best set up the baseline and analysis timelines to show how accounts move through the buying stages during a campaign. For example, let’s say we started a campaign for accounts in a segment showing intent for Product X, and that campaign began in November 2022. In order to see how the accounts in that segment for Product X have performed and responded to our various marketing activities over the past 6+ months, is it best to:

• Use the month when a campaign began as the baseline, and then whatever the most recent month is as the analysis stage (i.e. baseline of October 2022 and analysis of May 2023)
• A “range of months to another range,” where the baseline is the 7 months prior to campaign launch and an analysis of the 7 months since the campaign launched (i.e. baseline of April – October 2022 and an analysis of November 2022 – May 2023)
• Something else?

And in regard to the Cohort for a campaign of this length, is it best to use:

• Accounts in the segment as of today?
• All accounts in the segment during the Baseline timeframe?
• All accounts in the segment during the Analysis timeframe?

The reason for my confusion is that no matter which way I set up the report - both with hte Baseline/Analysis timeframe and the Coharts used - I get different results, so I'm curious what others might have done so that we can establish what will be the baseline for all of our segment reporting moving forward. Any assistance will be greatly appreciated.

charlotte.spangler

Personally, I like to go with range of months so you can see how quickly an account moved through stages/ was engaged before the campaign began. With each month of the campaign, you'll have to expand your analysis.

And if the accounts that you're analyzing are changing, I would do analysis in the segments as of today, otherwise you won't capture everything you're trying to analyze. Or I'd do during the analysis timeframe, if accounts move in and out of the segment but you want to track all of them ,