GuideThe numbers leadership asks about
Marketing-sourced vs. marketing-influenced revenue
Definition
Two rules for crediting marketing with closed revenue. Sourced counts a deal when marketing created the contact the deal began from; influenced counts a deal when marketing touched anyone on it at any point before close.
How it’s calculated
For sourced, keep the closed-won deals whose originating contact marketing created. For influenced, keep every deal where any attached contact opened a campaign, attended a webinar, downloaded a paper or clicked an ad. The influenced number grows with the volume of activity itself: run enough campaigns and it climbs towards the whole revenue line, at which point it distinguishes nothing. Sourced is the one I tend to use in a board pack. It undercounts: a deal sales opened and marketing warmed earns no credit, and the undercount is the price of a number that survives an audit. Both rest on the CRM: a source on every contact, deals linked to contacts, touches logged when they happen, and the rule written down before the quarter it judges.
What to watch for
Pull influenced revenue as a share of the total; the closer it sits to everything, the less it says. Ask what share of contacts carry an empty or defaulted source field, because every deal behind those lands wherever the report-writer chooses. Compare this quarter’s crediting rule with last quarter’s; a definition that moves between meetings says more about the rule than about marketing. And spot-check a few sourced deals: the marketing-created contact should predate the first sales activity on the deal; where it does not, the credit is misassigned.
The question you ask
“Is that number sourced or influenced, and what counted as a touch?”