Lead Source Best Practice

Ben,

The best practice here is to use Field Blocking on your Lead Source field. This will prevent any one or system from ovewriting the source without an explicit reason.

Go to Admin > Field Management > pull in the field and select Field Blocking

I prefer to use SFDC Campaigns to track recent behavior and engagement. Lead Source is typically the original source  you acquired the lead from. You will also see something similar if a Program "acquired" the lead, meaning that is the first time Marketo saw this lead.

You could then use Sales Insight to write Interesting Moments as Milestones where you say the type=Webinar or Trade Show or something. That will help you and sales see the recency better.

This convo might be interesting to you  https://community.marketo.com/MarketoDiscussionDetail?id=90650000000PVTVAA4

Hi Ben,

Just to offer our appreach...

We have used lead scoring for 18 months and we pass the following core pieces of lead information to our sales teams:
- Lead Source - First Touch (Never overwritten)
- Lead Source - Last Touch (Never overwritten)
- Lead Source Detail - First Touch
- Lead Source Detail - Last Touch
- Source Campaign - Last Touch
- Interesting Moments.

We have both direct Enterprise and Telemarketing Teams who require slightly different lead information and feedback from both teams is that this amount of information is more than adiquate for them.  Which is interesting because Enterprise deals are in the $Millions and Telmarketing starts in the $Hundreds.

Actually, it's really just marketing who want to know first touch and Sales who typically want the last touch.

I hope this helps.

Regards,

Victoria

Thanks everyone - this is a great discussion.

Victoria, what's the difference between your Lead Source - Last touch and Source Campaign - Last touch?

Also, how can you not overwrite the Lead Source - Last Touch - I would imagine that's exactly the field that's constantly overwritten with the last "lead source"? Otherwise, how are you populating the data?

Does you use the first touch and last touch for marketing ROI as well as priving info to Sales?

Hi Grant,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you but I was on leave.

Lead Source for us is the Channel which generated the marketing lead.  Event, eSeminar, Online Paid, Online Organic etc...

I have built template programs by Channel, product and Region,  Each of these are prepopulated with 95% standard data and the Regional teams cloning the programs only have a few items to update.  These programs include a standard flow step which is to only update if Blank for both Lead Source - First Touch and Lead Source Detail - First Touch. 

The following is an example of some flow steps within our eSeminar Channel > Progession > Registered > Smart Campaign > Flow:

Step 4 - Change Data Value	Attribute:  'Lead Source - Last Touch'
	New Value: 'eSeminar'
Step 5 - Change Data Value	Attribute:  'Source Campaign'
	New Value: '{{my.ProgramName}}'
Step 6 - Change Data Value	Attribute:  'Lead Source Detail - Last Touch'
	New Value: 'Registered'
Step 7 - Change Data Value	Choice 1: If 'Lead Source - First Touch' is empty  then:
	Attribute:  'Lead Source - First Touch'
	New Value: '{{lead.Lead Source - Last Touch}}'
	Default Choice:
	-- Do Nothing --
Step 8 - Change Data Value	Choice 1: If 'Lead Source Detail - First Touch' is empty  then:
	Attribute:  'Lead Source Detail - First Touch'
	New Value: '{{lead.Lead Source Detail - Last Touch}}'
	Default Choice:
	-- Do Nothing --
Step 9 - Interesting Moment	Type:  'eSeminar'
	Description: 'Registered to {{my.ProgramName}}'

We don't formally 'block' these fields as we find the templates work to control the data process.

We 'could' use the first touch information, along with Acquaisition information along with RCA - but have not quite goe there yet.

I hope this helps...

Victoria

Thanks for sharing your experience, Victoria!  We are new to Marketo; your approach to lead source "first touch" and "last touch" sounds practical and effective, so we will try it also.