What it is & the business problem it solves
Attribution is the Inspire module that shows how much revenue your email campaigns and CM Campaigns messages generate. For every purchase it looks back at the messages the same customer received or clicked, and credits the purchase to them. You see attributed revenue and number of orders per channel, campaign, mailing and day.
This answers questions such as "which newsletter earned the most last month?" and "how much revenue did our abandoned-cart flow generate?", using your own purchase data rather than click estimates.
How it works
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Inspire collects purchases (from purchase lines in your CDP or CXP) and marketing touches: email delivered and clicked events from Email Campaigns, and message delivered and clicked events from Campaigns.
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Each touch type has its own attribution window — how many days after the touch a purchase can still be credited to it. A window of N days means the purchase happened on the same calendar day as the touch or up to N-1 calendar days later. So window 1 = same day only; window 5 = same day or up to 4 days later. A window of 0 switches that touch type off.
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Last-touch attribution: of all eligible touches before a purchase, the most recent one gets the attributed credit — the full order value.
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Assisted value: every other campaign that touched the customer within its window before the purchase gets assisted credit (counted once per campaign). Assisted credit is the full order value for each assisting campaign, so assisted totals across campaigns can be higher than your actual revenue. Use attributed revenue for totals, assisted revenue to see which campaigns helped.
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Purchases with no eligible touch are not shown.
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Results are delivered to the attribution results that you see in the Campaigns app. Each run processes new data since the previous run; a new module version recalculates up to the last 365 days.
What you can configure
You can configure these settings in the cockpit. Settings marked Expert need expert rights, which CM staff and customer admins can hold; request them via your CM contact person.
|
Setting (cockpit name) |
What it does |
Default |
When to change |
Who can change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Attribution Schedule |
When the calculation runs (cron, Amsterdam time). |
Not scheduled — the module never runs until a schedule is set |
At go-live, e.g. daily at night. |
Standard |
|
Default Currency |
Currency used for purchases that carry no currency. |
EUR |
If your shop sells in another currency (USD, GBP, SEK, NOK, DKK, CHF, PLN, CZK, AUD, CAD, ZAR). |
Standard |
|
Exclude Campaigns |
Turns campaign exclusion on or off. |
Off |
To leave test or internal campaigns out. |
Standard |
|
Excluded Campaign IDs |
Campaign IDs left out of attribution (not case-sensitive). |
None (example placeholders, not active while Exclude Campaigns is off) |
Add test, internal or demo campaigns. |
Expert |
|
Email Delivered Window |
Days after an email was delivered in which a purchase is credited (0–365). |
0 (off) |
Switch on to also credit emails that were delivered but not clicked. |
Standard |
|
Email Clicked Window |
Days after an email click in which a purchase is credited (0–365). |
5 |
Longer for considered purchases, shorter for impulse products. |
Standard |
|
Campaign Delivered Window |
Days after a Campaigns message was delivered (0–365). |
0 (off) |
Switch on to credit delivered messages without a click. |
Standard |
|
Campaign Clicked Window |
Days after a click in a Campaigns message (0–365). |
5 |
As for email clicks. |
Standard |
|
Advanced/expert settings (CPU, memory) |
Computing capacity. |
CPU 1000m, memory 8Gi |
Only for very large volumes. |
Expert |
The Campaign windows apply to all messages that arrive as Campaigns events, whichever channel they were sent on (see Limitations). Windows and campaign exclusions are tuning settings: change them in a preview and publish it. Schedule, currency and resources belong to the module instance. There is one Attribution Analysis instance per profile.
Prerequisites & required CM products
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CDP or CXP with purchase lines on the standard event type. On CDP the standard event types are set up by the Retail & Ecommerce adapter, which is included in onboarding (nothing extra to buy or configure). On CXP the adapter does not apply; the standard event definitions come from Templates.
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CM Campaigns, whose delivered and clicked events flow into your customer data platform with a campaign ID.
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Data module running.
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Attribution account registration by CM before the first run.
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Product Feed and Webtracking are not required for attribution itself.
Packaging tier
Inspire is part of the MMC packages Pro and Enterprise; it is not included in Basic or Advanced. Attribution is available from Pro (so it’s available in Pro and Enterprise).
Data requirements
Technical minimum requirements (what the module needs to work; these are not quality guarantees):
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Purchase lines with order ID, customer, date, amount and (ideally) currency, linked to the same customer profile as the marketing events.
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At least one email and/or Campaigns event (delivered or clicked, with a campaign ID) inside an enabled attribution window before a purchase. Without a match nothing is credited; if a run has no results at all, delivery is skipped and the previous results stay as they were.
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No minimum number of purchases, campaigns or customers is enforced.
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History: the first calculation looks back up to 365 days, limited by the data available in Inspire.
How to check it works
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The cockpit run history shows successful runs once a schedule is set.
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Open the campaign in the Campaigns app and look at the campaign statistics: the latest calculation shows attributed revenue and orders per channel and campaign.
Limitations & common pitfalls
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Channels: email and messages from CM Campaigns. WhatsApp and RCS messages sent through CM Campaigns arrive as Campaigns events, and all Campaigns events are labelled with the SMS channel. In the results they therefore show up under SMS, whatever the actual channel, and use the Campaign windows. There is no separate window or channel for WhatsApp or RCS.
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Web Personalization clicks are not attributed today. This is on the roadmap though.
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Opens and sends of emails cannot be attributed; only delivered and clicked.
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Refunds and cancellations that arrive as negative amounts reduce attributed revenue.
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Only the latest calculation is shown. A new module version recalculates up to 365 days and replaces the previous figures.
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Will not match Google Analytics: Attribution Analysis credits message touches per customer, Google Analytics credits website sessions. Larger windows credit more late purchases but also more purchases that would have happened anyway.
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Assisted revenue can add up to more than total revenue (see above).
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Window 0 means "off", not "same day". Use 1 for same day.
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Attribution only sees the purchases that reach your customer data platform as purchase lines; if your set-up filters orders, those orders are missing.
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Nothing runs until the Attribution Schedule is set, and the first run fails if CM has not registered the account.