Attribution models
Rule-based frameworks for distributing credit across touchpoints — from single-touch to multi-touch and impact-weighted approaches.
Multi-Touch Attribution
An attribution methodology that distributes credit for pipeline or revenue across multiple touchpoints in the buyer journey, rather than assigning it all to a single interaction. Models range from simple rule-based approaches to advanced AI-driven systems.
Read more →First-Touch Attribution
An attribution model that assigns 100% of the credit for a deal or opportunity to the very first interaction a prospect has with your brand. Simple to implement but often misleading in complex B2B sales cycles.
Read more →Last-Touch Attribution
An attribution model that assigns 100% of the credit for a deal or conversion event to the final interaction before a conversion event. Like first-touch, it oversimplifies multi-stakeholder B2B journeys.
Read more →U-Shaped Attribution Model
A position-based multi-touch model that gives the greatest credit to the first and last touchpoints in a journey (typically 40% each), with the remaining credit split evenly across middle interactions.
Read more →W-Shaped Attribution Model
A multi-touch attribution model that assigns heavy credit to three funnel milestones — first touch, lead creation, and opportunity creation — with lighter credit spread across nurturing touchpoints in between.
Read more →Linear Attribution
A multi-touch attribution model that distributes credit equally across every recorded touchpoint in the buyer journey. Simple and transparent, but treats a brief page view the same as a high-intent executive meeting.
Read more →Impact-Weighted Attribution Model
An attribution approach that assigns credit to touchpoints based on their actual impact on deal outcomes, rather than using arbitrary rules like first-touch or last-touch. Impact-weighted models use statistical methods to determine which activities truly moved the needle.
Read more →Attribution strategy
How teams connect marketing and GTM activity to pipeline, revenue, and buying behavior — including what systems can and cannot see.
B2B Marketing Attribution
The practice of connecting B2B marketing activities to pipeline, revenue, and deal velocity — across buying committees, long sales cycles, and channels your analytics only partially capture.
Read more →Revenue Attribution
The practice of assigning credit for pipeline and closed-won revenue to the touchpoints that influenced a deal. It looks beyond first/last touch for the primary deal contact and considers the full buying journey across marketing, sales, and partners.
Read more →Pipeline Attribution
A measurement approach that connects marketing and GTM touchpoints to open opportunities — crediting what created or influenced pipeline, not just what happened immediately before a deal closed.
Read more →Go-to-Market Attribution
A cross-functional attribution view that assigns credit across marketing, sales, partnerships, and customer success touchpoints that influence revenue outcomes — not just marketing-sourced leads.
Read more →Closed-Deal Attribution
Attribution measured at the closed-won (or closed-lost) event — distributing credit for booked revenue across the touchpoints that preceded the signature, rather than stopping at MQL or opportunity creation.
Read more →Forensic Attribution
A methodology that reconstructs the full customer journey from raw signals across multiple data sources, rather than relying solely on pre-captured CRM data. Forensic attribution infers missing touchpoints and builds a complete picture of what actually influenced a deal.
Read more →Dark Funnel
The collection of buyer activities and influences that happen outside the reach of traditional tracking and analytics tools. This includes word-of-mouth referrals, private community discussions, podcast mentions, peer conversations, and other channels where intent is formed but never captured in your CRM.
Read more →Self-Reported Attribution
A qualitative attribution method where prospects are asked directly how they heard about your company, typically through a form field like 'How did you hear about us?' It captures signals from the dark funnel that system-based tracking cannot see, but is subject to recall bias and inconsistency.
Read more →Zero-Sum Attribution
An attribution approach where every dollar of pipeline or revenue must be assigned to exactly one source or channel, so that all credit 'squares' to the total. While intuitive, zero-sum models force teams into competition over credit and often misrepresent how B2B deals actually close.
Read more →Campaign Influence
A measurement framework that connects marketing campaigns to the pipeline and revenue they helped generate, regardless of whether the campaign was the original source of the lead. Campaign influence models track which campaign members later appeared on opportunities.
Read more →Sourced Pipeline
Pipeline that is directly attributed to a specific team, channel, or campaign as the originating source of the opportunity. In most B2B organizations, sourced pipeline is distinguished from influenced pipeline.
Read more →Influence Window
The configurable time period used to determine whether a marketing or sales touchpoint is considered relevant to a given opportunity. Also called a lookback window, this parameter is one of the most consequential settings in any attribution system.
Read more →Buyer journey & accounts
Account-level narratives, buying groups, and the touchpoints that shape complex B2B decisions.
Account Story
A chronological, context-rich narrative of every interaction and touchpoint associated with an account, from first engagement through close (and beyond). Unlike a simple activity log, an account story connects the dots across teams and tools.
Read more →Account Journey
The account-level path a buying committee takes from initial problem awareness through evaluation and purchase — including touchpoints from every stakeholder, not just the contact who filled out a form.
Read more →Buying Group
The collection of individuals at a target account who are involved in a purchasing decision. In B2B, deals are rarely driven by a single person — buying groups typically include champions, influencers, decision-makers, and gatekeepers across multiple departments.
Read more →Touchpoint
Any interaction between a prospect/customer and your organization — including website visits, emails, meetings, events, content downloads, ads, and more. Comprehensive touchpoint recovery is essential for accurate attribution.
Read more →Identity Resolution
The process of matching and merging fragmented person records across multiple GTM systems into a single, unified profile — so the same human isn't counted as three different leads across Salesforce, HubSpot, and Gong.
Read more →GTM metrics
Core revenue and efficiency metrics that attribution and pipeline reporting depend on.
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
The total cost of acquiring a new customer, including all sales and marketing expenses. In B2B, CAC calculations must account for long sales cycles, multi-touch attribution, and the involvement of multiple teams.
Read more →CAC Payback Period
The number of months it takes for a customer to generate enough gross margin to cover the cost of acquiring them. This metric is critical for understanding unit economics and making informed investment decisions.
Read more →Pipeline Velocity
A composite metric that measures how quickly qualified opportunities move through the sales pipeline and convert to revenue. It factors in opportunity count, average deal size, win rate, and sales cycle length.
Read more →Platform & GTM engineering
How GTM teams turn analysis into durable tools: built on live data, versioned, and shared across the org.