Why Data Cloud is a Dream for Salesforce Marketing Attribution

Firstly, you aren’t the first and you won’t be the last to wonder about the best tool for bringing multi-touch marketing attribution to Salesforce. Integrating Marketing Cloud and Sales Cloud is just a small part of the puzzle, and complex customer journeys require sophisticated attribution.

Enter Salesforce Data Cloud. This single software provides a way to bring all of your marketing data together, uncover which channels drive conversions, and track performance without investing in overly complex attribution tools or struggling with messy spreadsheets.

There’s no better way to show how Data Cloud delivers excellent marketing attribution than with an example. We’ll look at how a small travel agency uses Salesforce Data Cloud to build a straightforward, multi-touch attribution model and optimise ROI across web, email, and advertising.

Before we do that, let’s make sure we’re on the same page about what multi-touch attribution truly means. 

Multi-touch marketing attribution - or cross-channel attribution - is a way of analysing and assigning value to each interaction a customer has with your brand before they convert, whether that’s making a purchase, filling in a form, or signing up for a service. 

Instead of crediting a single touchpoint (like the first ad clicked or the last email opened), multi-touch attribution recognises that most conversions involve multiple engagements across channels. 

Successful multi-channel attribution helps marketers understand how different campaigns work together to influence the customer journey and allocate budget based on the true contribution of each channel. No more guessing and doing your best to justify the place of blogs, ads, or eBooks within your marketing automation strategy.

In Salesforce, attribution models can be built using Data Cloud to reveal meaningful insights without relying on external tools.

Understanding what drives conversions isn’t just about curiosity. Attribution helps marketers spend smarter, adjust messaging, and justify budgets. But pulling that insight together is where it gets complicated.

Each platform, such as Google Ads, email, and your website, collects data and all of this data lives in silos. Stitching it together manually is time-consuming, and third-party attribution tools often come with a steep price tag and learning curve.

Salesforce Data Cloud strikes a helpful balance. It brings data from every channel into one place, gives you a full picture of the customer journey, and delivers the insights you want, with no need for a data science team or expensive third-party software.

Meet ‘WanderEasy’,  a travel agency selling package holidays online. They run Google Ads for destinations like ‘Caribbean getaways’, send regular promo emails, and rely on their website for bookings. But despite steady conversions, they can’t confidently say which marketing efforts are paying off.

They’ve got all the data - ad impressions, email clicks, web visits - but it’s scattered across systems. That’s where Salesforce Data Cloud comes in.

Using Data Cloud, WanderEasy builds a clear multi-touch attribution model that uses unified data from all of their marketing touchpoints and tracks how customers move across channels before booking. Their goal? Understand where their £1,000 monthly marketing budget works hardest and get more value without guessing.

Here’s how WanderEasy (or any business) can leverage Data Cloud for cross-channel attribution using Batch Data Transforms and Calculated Insights.

1. Bring marketing data together

Start by pulling the data from various marketing channels into Data Cloud. WanderEasy connects three sources: 

• Google Ads (clicks, impressions)

• Marketing Cloud Engagement (opens, clicks)

• Their website (visits, bookings) 

These land in Data Cloud as ‘Data Lake Objects’ (DLO) - think of them as buckets holding raw stats. From ads, they grab click dates and campaign names; from email, open rates and send times; from the web, visit timestamps and booking confirmations. Each source shares a key field, such as a customer email or a tracking ID, to tie them together later.

2. Join data with Batch Data Transforms

Next, WanderEasy uses Batch Data Transforms to merge the datasets. These scheduled processes combine the DLOs into a new, unified view, something like a customer timeline.

They join them where emails match, creating a timeline of touchpoints per customer. For John Doe, it might show:

• March 1: Ad click 

• March 3: Email open

• March 4: Website visit

• March 5: Booking confirmed 

The output is a new DLO - let’s call it ‘Customer Journeys’ - that neatly lines up each interaction by person and time.

3. Map data to a unified view

To run a proper analysis, you need structure. So the ‘Customer Journeys’ DLO is mapped to a Unified Data Model Object (DMO). This step defines how fields like ‘ad source’, ‘booking value’, and ‘touchpoint type’ should be formatted and understood across the system. For example, ad clicks should be numbers, booking value should be currency, etc.

John’s row now links his £500 booking to every step he took, and this structure enables advanced analysis later using tools like Calculated Insights.

4. Use Calculated Insights for attribution analysis

Now for the insights. Calculated Insights lets you build attribution logic directly within Data Cloud. For WanderEasy, that includes rules like:

• Count the number of interactions before a booking

• Identify the last touchpoint before conversion

• Sum booking values per channel or channel combo

In this case, they count touchpoints before bookings (e.g. “2+ interactions”), flag the last channel (e.g. “web”), and sum booking values per channel combo (e.g. “ads + email = $2,000”). These pop out as new fields.

WanderEasy can now see that 60% of bookers clicked an ad first, but 80% of high-value trips ($1,000+) came from email.

5. Check ROI and optimise spend

With attribution insights in hand, it’s easy to compare cost versus return.

WanderEasy spends:

• £500 on ads → £2,000 in bookings (4:1 ROI)

• £300 on email → £2,500 in bookings (8:1 ROI)

They discover that while ads bring in traffic, emails play a bigger role in closing deals. The website, meanwhile, acts as the final step for most converters. This clarity helps them shift budget, adjust targeting, and test smarter next time.

The result: Clarity without chaos

WanderEasy now understands the full journey from ad to email to booking, and they didn’t need a standalone attribution platform on top of their Salesforce stack to get there.

After a month of accurate attribution, WanderEasy’s marketing tweaks pay off, delivering:

• 20% increase in bookings with the same budget

• £100 saved by pausing low-ROI ads

• Clear reporting that shows the value of each channel

If you’re new to attribution in Salesforce Data Cloud, here’s how to keep it manageable:

• Start small: Focus on two to three channels at first.

• Clean your data: Ensure your IDs match across platforms.

• Keep it focused: Pick one attribution question, such as first touch versus last touch.

• Run a pilot: One month of data is often enough to spot trends.

Once you’re confident with the basics of Salesforce attribution using Data Cloud, there’s plenty of room to grow. You can do sophisticated stuff to take your marketing to the next level. For example:

• Add new data sources like social ads or even in-store interactions.

• Use Streaming Data Transforms for real-time tracking.

• Push attribution insights into Marketing Cloud for personalised journeys.

All this allows you to use real-time journey data to adjust your communication and drive more leads, sales, and revenue.

Even the best Data Cloud setup can hit snags, so many choose to work with specialists like MarCloud. If you’re happy to go it alone, here are a few common errors to avoid:

• Unmatched IDs: If email addresses or IDs don’t line up, your joins won’t work.

• Overcomplication: Don’t try to track everything from day one.

• Vague rules: Attribution logic only works if your definitions are clear.

Unsure whether your account has some of these issues? MarCloud offers Data Cloud audits to help uncover problems with your technical setup and data management, plus highlight opportunities to better use Marketing Cloud and Data Cloud together. Contact us to arrange.

If you’re wondering ‘What is the best tool for bringing multi-touch attribution to Salesforce?’, the answer might already be in your tech stack. You just need the right approach and perhaps a helping hand.

Ready to connect your channels, unify your data, and uncover what works? Get in touch with MarCloud. We’re your expert Salesforce partner, here to make attribution easy and effective so you can see greater ROI.