Marketing Attribution in Zoho CRM tracks the various touchpoints a customer interacts with before converting, and lets you assign credit for the resulting revenue to the campaigns that genuinely influenced that outcome, rather than crediting whichever touchpoint happened to come last.

The six attribution models

• First Touch. Gives all the credit to the very first touchpoint that introduced the customer to your business, such as the webinar they originally signed up for.
• Last Touch. Gives all the credit to the final touchpoint immediately before conversion.
• Linear. Distributes credit evenly across every touchpoint in the customer's journey.
• U-Shaped (Position-Based). Gives 40 percent of the credit to the first touchpoint, 40 percent to the last, and splits the remaining 20 percent evenly across everything in between, recognising both initial awareness and the final closing interaction.
• Time Decay. Gives progressively more credit to touchpoints closer to the point of conversion.
• W-Shaped. Extends the U-Shaped idea by also giving meaningful credit to a middle touchpoint, typically the point a Lead converts to an opportunity, splitting credit across three key moments rather than two.

Choosing a model

Which model fits best depends on your sales cycle length, the complexity of what you sell, and how many touchpoints are typically involved. A short, single-channel sales cycle might be well served by Last Touch, while a long, multi-channel B2B cycle usually benefits from a model like U-Shaped or W-Shaped that credits more than just the final interaction. Zoho recommends experimenting with two or more models and comparing the resulting ROI distribution before settling on one.

Where to view attribution reports

Once your attribution model is set, view the results under the Analytics tab, Marketing Attribution. On an individual Campaign record, the Contributing Deals figure shows how many Deals contributed to that campaign's attributed revenue.