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How Do I Know If a Campaign Is Good or Bad?

Camela Thompson Updated by Camela Thompson

What Makes a Campaign “Good” or “Bad”?

Campaigns do a broad array of things, so we’ll look at multiple metrics and CaliberMind products to determine whether a campaign is good or bad. In the past, I’ve used a multi-metric approach to great success for tradeshows and other costly in-person events. I now use this method to defend community partnerships and other co-branded plays that have a decent investment attached to them.

The spreadsheet contained the campaign name in column A, and then we populated the following:

  • Date of Campaign
  • Campaign Cost
  • Number of qualified leads
  • “Sourced" opportunities
  • Multi-Touch Pipeline
  • Multi-Touch Bookings
  • ROI (MTA Bookings)
  • Qualitative Feedback from Sales

Field marketers pointed out that some events looked terrible when it came to lead generation, but the salespeople raved about them. The spreadsheet helped us separate the events that felt good (suitable venue, fun conversations) but didn’t perform well. That enabled us to repeat and focus on the most beneficial campaigns and brainstorm new events to replace the bad.

An example would look something like this:

example spreadsheet grading events
This method does not represent awareness plays well.
We’re presenting an opportunity to use multiple models as a proxy for campaign effectiveness. It’s important to note that adding dollars from multiple models will multiply pipeline results far beyond what actually happened. We’re not reporting the dollars as a precise result. Instead, we look at the results as benchmarks to determine whether something appears to have “worked” well.

I still use the above method for more expensive tactics. For digital advertising, I use a multi-touch attribution model to determine return on ad spend (more on that here) and then use funnel pressure and trigger reports to determine if the campaigns had an early funnel impact that isn’t translating into pipeline yet. This also helps me see whether I’m attracting the right audience and will ever see ROI. 

For early awareness plays, the impact is more intangible. For example, we can watch early indicators like engagement for increased website traffic volume and other content consumption when branding changes or PR occurs. 

While we’ve given you a comprehensive outline of where to look for different kinds of campaigns, you can judge them by as many or as few factors as you’d like–just remember that awareness plays and sales engagement plays are likely to be hard to defend if you’re only looking at lead volume and sourcing (last touch) data.

Using Attribution to Understand Campaign Impact

Different models answer different questions (which we go into more detail here). 

Keep in mind that if you’re using multiple models, adding the data points will lead to over-reporting pipeline and bookings.
Campaign Influence / Pipeline & Bookings

We suggest using a single multi-touch model that looks at both pre- and post-opportunity data (either even-weighted or chain-based) to estimate total influenced (both pre-opportunity and post-opportunity) dollars. Using these models, we can separate which campaigns are good at getting people to engage with sales (pre-opportunity) from those that are good at getting people to re-engage or stay engaged with sales (post-opportunity).

Our webinars are a tool for sales to keep in-flight opportunities engaged. Some topics are appealing enough to lure people in. We’d likely repeat ROC (RevOps Co-Op) related events and certification courses. We’d also repeat the back-to-basics boot camp format.

webinar performance by pipeline
ROI Estimates

Our ROI reports in Insights look at the campaign spend data you have entered in your CRM or are listed against each campaign in your advertising platform. Then, we calculate how much bookings the associated touch is responsible for using whichever model you select. We recommend a model that views pre- and post-opportunity touches to demonstrate the full impact of events that tend to keep deals propelling forward (like webinars and in-person events).

Check out this article for more on what a good or bad ROI result looks like.

Demand Generation Statistics

Instead of assigning dollars to evaluate opportunities sourced and accounts sourced, we suggest starting single-touch models and representing the campaign’s impact. In this case, we recommend a middle touch model or the last thing that happened before opportunity creation (as CaliberMind defines it).

If you have the Funnels product, this is an ideal time to use it!
Lead Generation Statistics

Instead of assigning dollars to evaluate opportunities sourced and accounts sourced, we suggest starting single-touch models and representing the campaign’s impact. For example, a First-Touch model can be impactful if you want to understand which campaigns are the best at building awareness. 

If you have the Funnels product, this is an ideal time to use it!

Using Funnels to Understand Campaign Impact

While attribution, by definition, is the value of the opportunity split across critical touchpoints, funnels divide touchpoints by which stage of the funnel the account is in, allowing for more granular impact analysis. In addition, because opportunities don’t need to be associated with a journey to track the earliest stages, it’s also a great way to see early indicators that a campaign is developing traction with your ideal customer profile.

To understand return on investment, we recommend using attribution models as outlined above.
Trigger Events

Trigger events show which events or campaigns were THE THING to tip someone over in the stage you’re analyzing. These are a great way to think of “sourcing” by stage.

In the example below, I will analyze the Marketing Qualified Account stage to see which campaigns are the most successful at getting prospects to engage with our brand.

  1. Go to Insights and click on the Funnels Trigger Events dashboard:
funnel trigger dashboard screenshot
  1. Set the time period you want to analyze (1), select the stage you want to analyze (2), and modify the time increment (months, quarters, weeks) granularity for the chart (3):
trigger dashboard settings
  1. Next, click on the Campaign Tab:
  1. The campaigns will be sorted by the frequency or number of accounts that hit the stage by performing the action.
MQA campaign examples
Just seeing system events? We recommend you work with your customer success representative to recreate the logic you use to timestamp your stage rather than using the stage stamp field to trigger a stage. If you use a field to denote a stage change rather than an action (like filling out a form or attending a meeting), you will not get much value from the trigger reports. Instead, we recommend using the pressure event dashboard when you can’t avoid a stage stamp. For example, the pressure dashboard will analyze which touches are the most impactful for stages associated with opportunity stage changes.

Let’s look at our Inbound stage to see how different campaigns impact different stages of the funnel.

  1. On the Trigger Events dashboard, select your first stage of the funnel:
trigger event stage selector
  1. See how the campaigns differ from our previous list:
list of inbound campaigns

For more on Trigger Events and how to use them, click here.

Pressure Events

Pressure events help us see which activities are influential between stages. For example, this allows us to see content consumption or SDR email campaigns that help keep someone engaged even though they may not meet the threshold for tipping the person or account into the next stage.

This report is helpful for understanding which events help keep buyers engaged once an opportunity is created.

  1. Go to the Pressure Events dashboard.
pressure events dashboard menu
  1. Set the period you want to analyze (1), select the stage you want to analyze (2), and the end stage or “success criteria” (3). The end stage applies a quality gauge for accounts and emphasizes the successful journeys versus those that ended early.
If you’re trying to understand recent campaign early indicators, selecting a late stage in the funnel may not make sense because the data hasn’t matured or had time to reach that stage. Knowing your average stage durations is important when picking end stages.
  1. Review which campaign types and campaigns are the most influential for that stage for accounts that progressed to the end stage.
pressure campaigns and campaign types

For more on Pressure dashboards, click here.

Using Surge Scoring (Engagement) Data to See Early Impact

It’s never a good idea to wait for a deal to be booked before judging whether a campaign is doing well (or not). It takes too long! The earliest indicators we offer live in the funnel (early stages) and in surge scoring.

  1. To evaluate a campaign, go to the Engagement Overview in Insights:

engagement overview menu
  1. Add a filter for Campaign Source to narrow your list down to the system you’re interested in. In this case, we’ll select LinkedIn:
campaign system filter in engagement overview
  1. In this example, you can see we had a serious increase in budget dedicated to LinkedIn to run some tests:
linkedin budget increase
  1. We’ll look at job level, department, and industry to see whether we targeted the right audience. Let’s start with job level:
Linkedin job level targeting

Many of our ads targeted senior executives in the marketing department. Do you think our targeting worked?

When using our earliest indicators, we suggest using engagement or surge scoring data to understand whether your target audience matches your expectations and whether the increase in additional spend is proportionate to the rise in engaged accounts.

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