With Brad Couture, Senior Manager, Marketing Operations at CS2 Marketing
Brad Couture from CS2 Marketing speaks about his process for creating multi-layered lead source tracking, streamlining campaign operations, and common misconceptions about Marketing Ops.
Brad Couture is the Senior Manager, Marketing Operations at CS2 Marketing. At the time of recording, he was the Marketing Operations Architect at Tulip. He is a first generation college grad raised by two blue collar parents, who is passionate about growth, development, and anything Martech.
What is your process behind building multi-layered lead source tracking in Marketo or other automation software systems?
I built the process because Marketo’s tracking munchkin wasn’t as robust as Hubspot’s tracking cookie. It has all this data, but it just takes a little bit more legwork to get it to the surface.
The first layer of this multi-layered concept is the program or campaign that's responsible for actually generating the lead in question. Then there are a couple more layers underneath that.
“Lead source” has a varying definition across organizations and our organization. We like to think of lead source as the type of lead, right? It answers the question of, “What kind of lead is this? Is it a content lead? Is it a demo request? Webinar?”
Next, we’ve got the first touch channel. This really refers to where this lead came from. This really refers to where this lead came from. Think about paid search, paid social, organic search, that kind of stuff.
Then we really just have a drill down into that first touch channel. Think about if you've got a lead that is paid social. What network is it? That's going to be the drill down field. Is that channel LinkedIn? Is it Facebook? Another network? Then we also use the last touch and first touch UTM parameters to give us more context. Is it a paid search lead? If so, what paid search campaign was it? All of these together paint a really nice picture.
I really liked the fact that we have broken this out into multiple different fields, rather than trying to combine this all into one where you have paid search, the ad network and then the kind of lead. This allows for more granular filtering. It's much easier and cleaner to view this kind of data if it's split into different fields.
How do you organize first touch channels and child campaigns?
In Salesforce, we have set up a flow to grab those last touch UTM parameters and stamp them on the campaign member object. Let's say if we're running a webinar and we're promoting it on email and on paid social, because of those UTM parameters that are on a campaign member object, we're actually able to get that source reporting underneath one campaign.
I've seen folks do it with the parent and child campaigns, or stamping the UTM parameters from the leader contact object over the campaign member object. You can do it both ways.
What are some common misconceptions about Marketing Ops?
A lot of times there is a misconception, especially in small companies that the marketing ops hire is the admin for the automation tools being used. If you join a company early on as a marketing ops professional, you have to do some self-advocating for yourself within your organization. Bring more of that clarity as to what your role is and what your expertise is.
Demonstrate what value you can bring to the table. As Marketing Ops people, we're so close to the data and the executional side of marketing. We have a lot of value that we can bring to the table when it comes to strategic decisions.
