Introduction to "Counters"
A "Counter" is basically just a score which counts up or counts down 1 (or more) points, every time something happens.
You can look at "Counters" in 2 ways:
Measuring something with the lead / contact / account in mind. For example:
How many times did a lead look at Product X related blog content?
How many times did contacts at my account visit our RFP page?
Measuring something with the content / event / campaign etc. in mind. For example:
How many times was my overview video watched, by won accounts?
Which emails were clicked more often, by qualified leads?
Have a look at below profile:
"Pilot score" measures # of job portal visits for us to identify possible talent
The blue scores are counters, counting up each time we have an engagement with specific marketing content or channels
The green scores are traditional scores using "Easy Mode", measuring sales-readiness on product specific levels from 0 - 100
In many situations, there are a lot of insights and value to be gained in counting how many times an action occurred, whether on the person level (leads, contacts, subscribers, etc) or on the account level.
In combination with Google Tag Manager custom events, you can count many things, down to page visits with keywords in them, funnel drop out stages, total time spent on your website over time, and more.
What are common uses cases for "Counters"?
Counters provide for endless great answers to common business questions. It's a fantastic analytics tool - particularly in the context of Salesforce reporting and Marketing Cloud journeys, and in combination with Google Tag Manager triggers.
Attribution & ROI
How many times did a lead/contact click on a (specific) paid ad/campaign?
Which ads are most clicked amongst by qualified leads?
How many times are won accounts clicking on a social messages?
How many times did a lead/contact/account click on an email? (Example below)
Which of our videos are most watched by accounts who we won?
Measuring specific behavior
How many times did a lead/contact/account go through a funnel, before becoming a customer?
Did someone attempt to complete a funnel more than 2 times? (Issue?)
Who are the leads who are logging most into my application/portal? (Example below)
Identifying issues
Is someone visiting the help section around errors multiple times?
Is someone visiting the "cancellation" section around errors multiple times?
Is someone hitting a 404 page repeatedly?
Industry specific examples
SaaS
How many times did a user log in during a trial?
What are my top users?
How many times did they perform a key action? (i.e. adding a user)
Human resources / recruitment
What departments is a job applicant most interested in based on his job portal visits?
Which leads are repeatedly visiting our job portal?
Financial services
What type of health insurance section is visited more often?
What are level of interests in "professional services" across our content?
Which leads are repeatedly visiting our job portal?
Real Estate:
In which cities is a lead looking to buy an apartment, based on the URL's?
Is there more interest in appartments, or houses?
Pharma:
How many times do accounts log into our HCP portal?
What symptoms are most read on our blog, by accounts who purchased last year?
E-Commerce:
Did someone repeatedly click on a "check-out" button?
Did someone add more than 3 products to the check-out cart, but didn't purchase?
How to set up a "Counter"?
A "Counter" is basically just a score which counts up or counts down 1 (or more) points, every time something happens.
1) Define your use case
Think about the question you're looking to answer. What do you need to count, in order to be able to get the right answer? Consider that inside Salesforce you have full access to your score (counter) in the context of leads, contacts, accounts, or opportunities.
2) Identify the right "data" that should count up a score
Is it a keyword in a page, or a custom event? Is it a UTM parameter? Is it an action on my web page, that I possibly want to trigger via a new Google Tag Manager trigger?
3) Create your Counter score
Most often, for counters, it makes sense that you simply add 1 point each time a rule is correct. Here are a few examples:
Example "Counter" scores:
Measuring number of email clicks across all marketing emails
Measuring number of logins:
Measuring job applicant score:
Measuring # of video views:
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