HubSpot Reporting: a Totally Epic Deep-Dive Into Measuring Inbound Business Success, feat. Jorie Munroe

Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by siloed departments? Are your lackluster growth strategies demolishing your chances for success? Are you held captive by the evil menace Lord Lack? Lack of time, lack of strategy, and lack of the most important and powerful tool in your superhero tool belt knowledge. Never fear, Hub Heroes. Get ready to don your cape and mask, move into action, and become the Hub hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the League of Extraordinary Inbound Heroes as we help you educate, empower, and execute Hub Heroes. It's time to unite and activate your powers. Before we begin, we need to disclose that Devin is currently employed by HubSpot at the time of this episode. Recording. This podcast is in no way affiliated with or produced by HubSpot. And the thoughts and opinions expressed by Devin during the show are that of his own and in no way represent those of his employer.

Hold up, hold up. Listen, I know you're gonna jump in there, get started, but what we have to do, we have to say, hey, what those. Those legal jargons you just heard? That's also for Jory, because Joy's here.

It is also me.

Yes, yes, Liz, go ahead. Because she has her own thoughts. I'm. I'm pretty sure she has her own thoughts.

All I was going to say is, first of all, welcome to yet another scintillating, tantalizing, exciting episode of Hub Heroes. Right, Right. Nothing gets me more hyped than legal jargon. Nothing gets me more ready to frickin rock than some serious safe harbor language. What do you think, Jori? What do you think?

You know, I wouldn't say it's like my top five interests, but I'm glad that you love it. I'm like, I'm glad that this is your thing, because I'm glad that it's someone's thing.

See, that's like the positive version of someone being like, I'm so sorry you feel that way. And I'm like, wait, that's not an apology. Hold on a second.

That's what I would have went with. I would have went.

Someone needs. Someone needs to have. Find it interesting. It's fine.

George. So early to be escorting yourself into the penalty box so early.

Listen, we haven't had a poem or a limerick in a while. I'm gonna do my best. This episode, to make it so that you have to create one.

What you do. This is what. This is what. What some people call manifesting. Cuz you say it and then it happens. If you don't say it. It doesn't happen now. Guess what's going to happen today?

It probably won't happen.

Just for you. Just for you. A poem.

If you make a data poem, I will personally buy you a coffee at Inbound Challenge.

Excite. Okie dokie.

Like, literally, coffee favors for you. For poet.

She has no idea what she's asking.

I am ready. Let's do it.

She has no idea what she's asked for. But anyway, wait, let's talk about the fact that. Hi. Obviously not one of our usual voices. Jory, introduce yourself today.

Yeah, totally. I'm Jorie Monroe and I am a HubSpot Academy professor. So if you've seen any, you know, like, reporting content, ads, content, conversion content, maybe you've seen me on my screen. That makes us already best friends. Love that for us. I also am the host of HubSpot's Another Bite podcast. So, like, if you're like, I don't know, this voice is kind of familiar. Maybe you saw me there there or heard me there. But yeah, all things. All things reporting, all things data. I'm ready to nerd out today. So, hi, hello. And let's get started.

Yeah, in fact, you kind of teed us up really nicely there. Gee, I wonder why a HubSpot reporting guru would be here. Could it be, I don't know, to talk about reporting?

But wouldn't it be funny if it was like. So we're going to talk about this unrelated sales topic.

Talk about how we preserve lemons.

Wait, I thought. I thought today was the projects tool. It's not the episode on the projects tool today.

George, I know you're joking, but I did have that momentary heart attack. So thank you so much for that. As the person who is responsible for doing the outlining. It's fine. Everything's great. No, we're here to talk about reporting. And to be honest, we've talked about reporting in the not so distant past. So if you haven't gone back and heard that episode, I do it. I recommend taking Do It Now a walk down memory lane. Not like right now, though, because you're listening to us and we're amazing. But we are back with Tori today of HubSpot because this topic is so stinking important. You see, one of the things that makes HubSpot so freaking powerful extends far beyond the tools that we talk about on many of these episodes. Right? Like last week, we were talking about sequences and templates and snippets. We've talked about workflows. We've talked about campaigns. But here's the deal, folks. If you're not tapping into HubSpot's robust reporting capabilities, what are you even doing? And, and I'm not, I don't want to pull any punches there because, like, if you're not measuring it, you're not managing it. Now, to be fair, I want to be fair. For the vast majority of the hubspotters who are listening out there, we know you aren't actively ignoring HubSpot's report.

Well, well, some people might. Some people might be. Actually, I'm just going to throw that out there.

That's why. Okay. For a meaningful, a meaningful percentage of you, you're not actively ignoring it. For those of you who are ignoring it, you're in the right place. George will scold you later after the show. But here's the thing, though. I think even with the best of intentions, it is very easy to get overwhelmed with what HubSpot offers from a data and reporting perspective. Because, like, once you pop the hood on the big orange sprocket, I don't know about y', all, but sometimes I'm like, attribution reporting. Yes. This is delightful, Mother. Like, I don't know, I don't know what to do. So I want to change that. I want to change that today, right here, right now. How's that sound?

I love that. Immediately. Yes.

Wonderful. Devin, how are you feeling about you so into it? Yes. All right, let's start big picture, then let's dig in. Before we even touch the tool, before we even start talking about custom report builders and attribution and all of that good stuff, what would you say are the must have mindsets folks need to have? Jori for hubstop reporting that can make them break their ability to actually tap into what their reporting tools have to offer.

Definitely. So this is, this is an interesting question. Just because I feel like you're not alone. If you're like, I'll do everything else before I do my reporting. Like, I will constantly put it at the bottom of my list. Like, I feel like that's a pretty normal behavior. Right. But I feel like the biggest blocker, the biggest mindset change that needs to happen before, like, really starting to flex that reporting muscle is like, you need to realize that you don't need to be good with numbers, you don't need to be a statistician or a mathematician to be a really effective reporter and to have a really robust reporting like strategy. So I see that as something that particularly marketers, but sometimes sales reps Fall into is just like they. They kind of self defeat before they've even tried, right? And I think honestly, like, the best analytics folks are actually at their core storytellers, right? Because at the end of the day, like, you can build as many charts, you can build as many graphs, you can build the most complex dashboards. But if you can't contextualize what you're seeing, if you can't create a narrative that is effective and, like, resonates with your audience, so that's like your stakeholders that could be your boss, then essentially, like, your reports are going to be as useful as, like, digital widgets on a dashboard, right? So it's like you need to be able. You need to be able to turn not only like, data into insight or like data into information, but like information into insight, right? And that comes with being able to effectively summarize what you're seeing, but then, yeah, like, put it into the context of what's happening in your business, why that matters, like, at all. And then what you should be doing next, so taking all of that insight and turning it into action. And you cannot do that without storytelling. You cannot do that without resonating with people.

George, I am watching it. Anybody who's watching us live, by the way, while we're recording this can see, see, like, George got like.

He was like, yes.

He was like, all right, this is my hype squad. George. I gotta be perfectly honest, the moment she said storytelling, it was like somebody just like, it was another Fast and furious movie all over again.

Yeah, it's so dope. Because here's the thing, and I want to just say too, I'm gonna add in another mindset. The mindset of that. It's not confusing, okay? Like, a lot of people just be like, HubSpot is confusing. HubSpot is confusing. Reporting is confusing. No, no, no, no. Sid. Indian style. Light some candles, light some sage, and say after me. HubSpot reporting is easy. HubSpot reporting is easy.

Manifest.

Just manifest it. You're going to understand this stuff. But when Jory went into storytelling, my mind, I always go into, like, if you start with a question and you allow the answer to flow, AKA the story. And when Jory was talking about data, that then equals insights, I was like, yes, you. Yes. Because I was literally talking to somebody yesterday, and they were like, listen, I've got this person who has all the reports in the world, and they're like, we just need help understanding what the reports mean. I literally said to this person, what they need is a Data translator. They need somebody who knows the best practices. They know they need somebody who knows what the answer actually equals. Meaning what Jory was talking about was data equals insight. Ladies and gentlemen, what needs to happen around reporting is insight needs to equal, equal action. But the only way the insight can equal action is you understand that 60 bounce rate is good. Anything over 60 is bad. What's the two to three things that you can do to fix a bounce rate? Add a video, add an audio player, make it actually like you know, the search engine results like meta description matches the pages are going to the social post matches the pages are going to like there's specificity in context. Like you have to know the end means to reverse engineer the actions that you get from the insights on the data you're reporting. That's all I'm going to say. I was really hyped that Jory was going in that direction. That's all. That's all.

I think that Jory absolutely nailed it. That's one of the things that I always pull out a soapbox on when it comes to reporting and data is that you have to be able to tell a story with it. The other thing about the mindset is that you don't need every single report, you don't need every single number. It is so easy to lose the forest for the trees and just get lost in data. And what you should be doing is understanding the purpose behind all of these reports that you're creating is to have actionable insights and not just look at this thing that did this thing and oh wow. Or I'm going to focus on this one number and I'm going to try and look at this number and this number is going to be, you know, the, the, the, the litmus test for everything. And I'm comparing it like no, that, that's not the case. What you should be doing is using your data to let you know whether or not your plan is working. And if your plan's not working, you should be able to use the data to help guide you to why you.

Know what, you were spitting so much fire there. My dog, Nugget. Agreed. So way to go.

Appreciate it, Nugget. Appreciate it.

Now I, I do have a quick follow up question here because one of the things I'm sure we've all heard, particularly on the storytelling angle, is that you can literally use numbers to tell stories about anything. You can manifest, if you will, any story you want about the numbers. And I'll be honest, coming from the agency world, that was kind of always, like the joke, right? Like, you're giving, you're giving reporting to clients and you're picking and cherry picking numbers that tell the story you want to tell. So how do you find that line between telling the right stories and telling and kind of leading into that trope of like, marketers will just find data about anything.

Oh, I know, you know, I know, I know Jory's gonna go, but I know, I know.

Be a good human.

There we go.

And I think to a certain extent that happens when you have the story before you have the data, right? Like, so I think that, like, you need to approach your reporting without confirmation bias. Like, you're not. You need to be able to like, translate what the numbers are actually saying first and then use that to create your story. Rather be. Rather than being like, well, I know we spent our marketing budget really importantly and then using it to like, confirm. So I think it's, it's also using this, these steps sequentially, right? Like not going into it, trying to like, extrapolate what you're already trying to confirm, but like really saying, okay, like, here's what happened, here's why it happened. And potentially even using like a five whys framework to unpack the trends that you're seeing and then using that to present after you've gathered your data.

Completely agree there. Because one of the things that comes to mind at least when I think about mindsets with reporting, because, yes, your girl Liz actually has an opinion on this one. When I think about mindsets with reporting, particularly when it comes to storytelling, I think you have to get out of the mindset of, I need the data to support the notion of tell the story of, I should keep my job like that. That has to be put on the back burner. You have to go at it from the perspective of sometimes the story you're telling is, guys, guess what? Good news, we caught this early. This isn't working. And when you think about it from that perspective, that's where you kind of develop your, your, your reputation as someone who is a strategic brain, a strategic partner in whatever department or company or team that you're in. If you're showing up every day going, hey, I am watching this data to iterate to help us improve, to help us scale, to help us grow to be a human. Because I don't have a fancy button who understands that. Guess what, guys? Sometimes we make mistakes, sometimes we gamble and we lose. But good news, we caught it early.

Like, we'll never do that again, right? Yeah, exactly.

So glad we learned a thousand ways not to make a light bulb. Right. So, George, I see you on the mic.

I got to jump in because I have a simple brain. Right. For some reason, it just simplifies things. And when I hear you guys talking, where my brain goes is, instead of trying to cement what you want to be true, be curious about the reality that you live in. Right. Because that's a major mindset difference. There's a wide canyon between those two. But also, I got to circle back around and go sideways, Jory, because you just, like, skirt past this, like, the 5Y framework. And I, as, like, a listener and somebody is. Who here is like, five? Why? What?

Yeah, definitely. So I think, like, the crux of it, you could definitely. There's, like, definitely multiple articles that are probably going to be a little bit more eloquent than me, but essentially, like, it's the theory that if you ask why something is happening, like, five levels deep, you'll get to the crux of the issue. Right. So it's like, so say your traffic isn't performing. Right? Like, you notice sessions are down. Okay. Why is that happening? Oh, interesting. So this month, our paid didn't perform as much. Okay, second, why. Why is that happening? Oh, like, we. We ran campaign A, and it's on product A, so why didn't that perform? Okay, third Y level, you know, and you keep asking why? To the trends that you're seeing, to the outliers, to that you're seeing, to any spikes that you're seeing. And much like you said, George, you start to get curious, and then you use why as sort of your North Star to really understand what your data is telling you. So it's like a simple kind of reminder to be curious, but then also to really get to the heart of why something might be happening that is abnormal or doesn't align with your typical performance. So it can be, like, a popular framework to use, especially because you think about your data, and it's. It's an ocean of so many different insights. You could go so many different angles, and it kind of gives you that. That rope to guide you through it, which can be helpful if you're feeling overwhelmed.

Yeah. By the way, if you're in a therapy chair, it's about the seventh why that you start bawling and, like, losing your brain. I'm just gonna let everybody know. That's about what happens.

You can use it in your life, too, not just your reporting.

So, speaking of therapy and deep internalized trauma, let's talk about the custom Report Builder. Shall we? Sure. Awesome. So what do people get right about it? What do people get wrong about it?

Yep. Yep. So bold choice, starting with the custom report builder. Just going to put that out there. Love that. So I think about the custom report builder as sort of like your nucleus of data in HubSpot, right? So it's like going to be where you join the most data together, look at the most data, can flexibly filter as much as possible. So surprisingly, I actually recently did some research with a product team to be like, okay, I want to get a technical answer on what people get right. And it was actually a little surprising because counterintuitively, at least to me, who creates education about the customer report builder, joining is something that most people get right. So most people are very well equipped to understand their data sources, the properties that things are living on in their own HubSpot account, and then honestly how the HubSpot report builder puts them together. So like the too long didn't read of the HubSpot report Builder and I think it's in certain resources, but it's really helpful to keep in mind is that HubSpot Report Builders, it joins data sources together using a concept that if you use SQL or SQL at all might be familiar. And it's this concept of a left join. So say you have like Table 1 and Table 2. If you join those together with a left join, it's going to include all of the data from table 1 and then all of the associated tables data from table 2. So it's not going to grab all of the information from Table 2, but it will get associated information. So in general, that explains why when you start to add more data sources, you start to sort of narrow down the type of data that you're actually gathering in because essentially this filtering of data is happening across your data sources the more you add them in. So surprisingly, that's actually the concept that people get down. Right, like, and I think there's a couple reasons for that. I think we've, we've started to really dive into the education of like how this joining works. I think also the team's been like getting really good about previewing the data that's being brought into reports. So you have like the table below that like data joining screen, you have like the preview on the, the right side if you're in the custom report builder. So surprisingly, I mean, that might have been a little too in the weeds for what you were asking, but like in recent months, like that's what people are absolutely nailing is like understanding where their data is coming from.

We love getting nerdy here. We love getting in the weeds. That is where we do our best work. George, what are your thoughts?

Oh, man. So was it what they're getting wrong or what they're getting right? Remind me what they're getting wrong. Oh, both. So both at the same time. Wow. Let's see if my brain will.

Well, you know what I wanted to. Well, here's the thing. Sometimes you get really excited. We've had instances in the past, George, we where you're like, I understand you asked this question. I would like to answer the opposite. So I just decided to front load and give you a boat.

So my, my worry is, and kind of piggybacking off of what Jory was talking about is they understand where it is and what it is and how it joins. But my biggest worry is that we're talking about a slice of HubSpot users, not all HubSpot users, meaning that might be the marketers, but you might have somebody in operations who doesn't understand that, somebody in sales that doesn't understand that. So my worry is that companies aren't realizing the importance of data sets and being able to simplify the complex for those humans that aren't actually at the level in which the marketers might be with the reporting. So that's one thing that I don't have hard, fast data. But I'm curious if there is a disconnect in us using that to empower our teams. Because we love to empower our teams, whether it's sales, service, operations. Like we're just big fans of that at the hub heroes right now. The thing that I again, I'm going to go in this vein that I have to talk about because I think it's so stinking important is I don't think that people are starting their reporting with a question. And the reason I'm going to double down on this is because they'll say I want to report on this property. And to your Jory's earlier thing, why. Right. And what do you want it to be connected with? Like. But. And the reason I bring this up is because if you look at sample reports in the custom report builder, what are all of those reports? They're questions.

They are freaking an example of a question because that immediately my brain went hurt. What kind of question?

Yeah, so if you go into HubSpot and you go to reports and you go to the custom report builder and you then go into sample reports, what you're going to see is that the tool has been set up to ask you as a human being, as a human, how many of my customers have paid over time? Who owns the contacts created this month? What are the original sources of my most recently created contacts? How many marketing I could continue on. But what it doesn't say is here's the report for your custom property you built last week. Here's the report for this default property HubSpot built. When the software is made like, that's not the language, that's not the idea. And so again, knowing the smart questions to ask in your business that then you're turning into reports, I think is a thing that is wrong. By the way, this, if anybody's counting, is the second thing wrong that I've said. Right. So what are they doing right?

Yeah. What are they getting right about it?

I mean, I'm sure that they're probably creating like dashboards.

Gosh, don't sound so optimistic about users in the customer port builder day.

No, that's, that's the thing. And I, I'm jaded. Everybody that I have trained, when we talk about, and this is why Jory said, bold move, Custom Report Builder right out the gate. Everybody that I have trained historically just has issues with the custom report builder. They have a hard time. This is why I was talking about candles and sage and saying reporting is not difficult report. I have to actually train people on how to learn the custom report builder, not how to use the custom report builder. That's the world that I live in.

What do you. If you could get in front of, let's say, I don't know, a captive audience of hubspotters who might be listening to this episode, Take them virtually by the shoulders and say, listen to your boy, Georgie. If you've remembered nothing else about the customer report builder, let it be this.

Oh, my God. Well, again, in a totally different direction, then I'm going to shut up and let Devin talk for a while. I feel like I'm on. I feel like I'm right now. No, here's what I, here's what I would tell people is that it is worth the climb to the top of the mountain to understand the tool because the tool and the power that you have in it with just being able to go in there and, and the filtering and grouping and like, additional stuff that you can do in the custom report builder that you can't do in single object or attribution or funnel reporting like it's worth it. Unfortunately, I just don't know if they can see the end value for the reason to climb the mountain. And if there was something that I could wave a magic wand, I would have every HubSpot user somehow see the top of the mountain.

Love it. Devin, what do you got?

Well, I think the thing that people get right about Custom Report Builder is they understand the need to open it instead of opening an Excel spreadsheet. So thank you for that. The fact that people are even diving into the tool is fantastic. And allowing their reporting to live in one place so they have a single source of truth that is dynamically, constantly updating is fantastic. I think one of the things that people get wrong about it is not pulling the right information in order to get what they need. There are some fairly universal metrics that all companies should be tracking that aren't necessarily in the static, you know, reports or in the report library. And so I. It's really important to get in there and create some of these metric or create some of these reports that are. Allow you to track these metrics. Like, I forgot who said it before. I think, yeah, I don't remember who said it. But it's about being able to be an advocate to the other people who aren't necessarily using the tool. And that's. That may not always be the case. You might, and I always say this, you might lose sight of the forest for the trees. You might be focusing and drilled in in one thing when you should be expanding out and tracking some of the core metrics. I actually found this thing from a HubSpot Solutions partner, Alicia Domenico. She shared with me his HubSpot blog post on 12 metrics every SaaS company should know. And it breaks down like customer churn revenue, churn customer lifetime value, customer acquisition cost, months to recover the customer acquisition cost and more, more. And these are all things that if you're creative enough and know how to use like the math functions that are within the tools that you can generate reports around.

See, I want to double down on a word and that's all. Then I'm going to be quiet, I swear. I promise. I want to double down on the word that Devin just used. And that is creativity and creative and thinking of this reporting process as a creative act instead of like Joyce had a mathematical act.

Thank you.

That.

I'm sorry, Go ahead.

And if you're, and if you're like finding the difficulty to bridge that because I know that like it's like very creative in thinking. I think that sometimes because we see it on the X and Y axis, it gets really difficult to be like, okay, how do I translate all of that creativity into, like, tactically what I'm dragging over, like, into my report? So I actually have a quick cheat sheet for people that are like, getting confused about like, what goes on the x, Y axis. And like, so that's kind of like, because I realize I didn't say, like, what people getting wrong. And like, in bold letters in my notes. It's like the X and Y axis. Okay, so start with measures. Okay, so default measures you can think about as like counts, right? They're calculations that HubSpot automatically provides for you uniquely in the HubSpot Report Builder, right? So always a great place to start. But in terms of thinking about the difference between your dimensions and your measures, measures are always going to be like a quantity, right? They're going to be a number. And so dimensions you can think about as usually categories. So they're going to be like what you're using in your report to break things down by groupings, right? So with the exception of horizontal bar charts, because that like flips the axis and it's, it's, you know, if that's what you want to do, go for it. But measures should always, almost always, yes, there's going to be some times that you want to break the rules, but measures are always going to be, first of all, green when you, so your, your numbers, they're going to be green in the HubSpot Report Builder. The other. And dimensions are going to be gray. Measures are always going to go on your Y axis and your dimensions. So those gray fields almost always on your X axis. And the only thing that gets a little complicated is date properties, again, almost always on your X axis. Okay? So the other thing that gets confusing with this because you can drag a number property in and you're like, oh, that's gray. I don't get it. Isn't that a measure? Isn't that supposed to be green? Not quite so a measure. So because it's still tracking as a property order, to turn a number property into something that becomes a measure and is like looking at a specific number. So you can think of like aggregations or summaries, like averages or totals, you need to actually calculate that field and aggregate it. And then it will turn whatever number property you're trying to report on into a measure. As soon as you aggregate it, it will turn green and then it will function like any of your other measures in the HubSpot report builder. So too long didn't read measures green. Think about them on the Y axis. Dimensions Gray, most likely on the X axis. Date properties as well. Those can be just like where you start when. Because I know people are like, I'm building a chart. There's axes. Like, that's the cheat sheet.

Yeah.

And it's called.

That needs to be a snippet.

Hold on.

That needs to be a snippet.

That was unbelievable. I wish people were watch like, okay, so if you're in the hub heroes community, you're able to watch this live because I just saw the most beautiful thing happen. I watched both Devin and George transform into what I can only imagine is what they looked like 7 years old on Christmas morning when mom's bringing out the big gifts. And they're like, what's under there? Oh my gosh. It's a cheat sheet for reporting. That was unbelievable. How can we get access to that? I want, I want this. I want it.

Okay, so the good news is I'm writing like a customer reports lesson that does this. But I can also just send you the summary because, like, literally everyone should know this. And the only other thing I'll say is, like, the one thing that you should keep into consideration when building reports with date properties. Right. Is like, there's going to be two ways that you can use date properties. So typically people are using date properties like frequencies. So if you go into like property settings, it's a time series, right? Like, so say, for example, like you're building like create date by number of contacts on a report, right? So frequency is going to show you, okay, like in the last month, how many contacts were generated per day. Great. But then there's also a way that you can sort, depending on your exact question, date properties, using what's called date parts. And essentially, if you were to use count of contacts by create date and then group it by date part, it would show you, for example, how many contacts are you generating on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Which is a different way to view your data, but it's something that you can only unlock in date properties. So very cool way, depending again, on the exact question. So for example, like, if you're like, I just want to know how many contacts I'm generating, probably frequency. But if you're like, hm, like, I wonder if there's any trends in the specific days depending on what I'm doing, that new contacts are coming in, you could use a date part.

Unbelievable. Un freaking believable.

I'm having a holy moment over here. Like, I need so I can catch my breath. Yep, I'm Just saying.

Can I just talk about that? I also just want to say a moment. In Hub heroes history, that's the first time I think you've used the swear button, actually swearing, because normally you just smash the button and I'm just watching you be like, I'm good. Jesus.

I'm good. We're fine.

Think of any other one right here.

Somebody needs to get me a towel, some ice, a washcloth, I don't know, something.

Go get a towel. Go get some ice. I want to switch gears for a moment. I want to talk about the other. Now I'm going to be honest. I'm asking for a friend, and by that I mean me. I want to talk about attribution reporting.

Before we get into that. There was one.

Devin, my dude, there's a. I'm sorry.

There was one mistake, one gigantic flaw that people do with their reporting that I forgot to mention.

Oh, okay.

Oh, okay, wait. Pump the brakes. Break it back.

The flaw that people make is they treat their numbers like numbers and not like the actions of people. You have to understand that you're not here to, when looking at metrics to move the needle. You're here to move people, and you're here to influence people's actions. You're here to work and help, hopefully help people. And these metrics are a gauge of your success. So you shouldn't be focused entirely on manipulating the numbers. What you should be focusing on is serving your customers and using your numbers to reflect whether or not you're doing your job. If your whole goal is to change or grow a number, you're. You're thinking about it entirely too wrong. Because not only are you doing a disservice to your customers, but you're going to miss out on trends, on new. Unlike political commentary, you're going to miss out on things that will genuinely influence and encourage and inspire people by trying to. Let's double down on our, you know, character count, because this character size blog does better than this size blog when you could be impactful and half the character length. What you should be focusing on is people, not numbers. You're not a robot and neither are they.

I love you, Devin. That was beautiful, Devin. I want to double click on what he just said there real quick because it goes back to what we've been talking about this whole time, right? The concept of storytelling in your reporting. The thing that I think people always forget is that when you're looking at numbers, when you're looking at data points, I don't care if you're looking at the sources report attribution reporting, which Jori's going to help me understand here in just a minute. I don't care what number you're looking at. Every single data point in your HubSpot portal is a human freaking being. They are a human being with a problem. They are a human being with a question. They are a human being desperately in search of help. And what you are just seeing is data. Humans in aggregate, it is your community. These are people who desperately want you to be there for them. And if you dehumanize them to the point of, well, because this average is different from this average, then I guess we're just going to say F whatever the humans actually want. You are doing reporting wrong, you will always be doing it wrong.

I think you just out human. George, for the first time in the history of this podcast, just wanted to throw that out there.

That's right. I do have a soul. It's small, it's made of coal. But here we are.

I. I love where we're at so much right now. Because, Liz, as you were talking, I was like, if you drill it down to the fundamental principles, every number you're looking at is a hurdle or an aspiration that somebody has.

Oh, my God, that was beautiful. That was beautiful. Package that up, put it in a fortune cookie.

Put it on a T shirt.

Yeah. Oh, a T shirt maybe. Maybe an inbound T shirt maybe, Possibly. Oh, we'll have to see T shirts.

Speaking of T shirts. Joy, please help me with attribution reporting at this point. I'm not lying. I'm not lying anymore, pretending it's for somebody else. This is. Hi, my name is Liz. I would like to go to attribution.

Reporting school because George Jetson and astribution reporting.

You know what? I'm doing great today, guys. Everything's fine. This is a delightful day. So attribution reporting is that thing where, in theory, high level. Love it. Because we're talking about what roles different assets play in a weighted manner in terms of deals that close, leads that come in, or whatever it is that we're talking about. But they're like 80 different models. There are like many models. So what is like. Explain it to me like I'm Liz. Explain it to me like I'm five. What is the simplest way to break down attribution reporting in HubSpot in a way that's easy for Liz is to understand.

I don't know. I think you did it really well. Right? Like attribution.

There are lots of them.

Yep. Oh, so models then. Right, so the models are going to. So essentially attribution reports are built on mathematical models that you will never need to think about besides clicking the button. Right. So essentially what your analytics software or HubSpot's going to do is it's going to be like, oh, you want to see what's generating new contacts, new deals, the most revenue within a time frame and you want to split it up based on what makes the most sense for your business. Okay. We have a mathematical model for that. So essentially, like mathematical models, the attribution models are really just about how you're going about splicing up your credit. I think the best way to think about them. Okay, this might sound weird, but I like to think about them like different cookie cutters. Right. So you got like this big thing of cookie batter. Sure. Or cake, whatever you use cookie cutters with. And the different attribution. Sorry, the different attribution models are going to be in different shapes. Right. And the different shapes align with your questions. Right. So if you're for example, curious about what, like in general, you're just starting to get used to like attribution, like you're just curious about splitting credit. You're probably going to go to the linear model because it's the most intuitive to understand. Understand. Right. It's going to split credit equally, regardless of your business process, across all assets that a contact, a deal or a closed customer with a certain deal amount touched before reaching that conversion. So you might choose that one cookie cutter or maybe you're just curious about like how people are finding your website and you just want to see what's generating contacts. You might choose like a single touch attribution model. So that could be first touch or last touch. Um, ultimately I feel like in general people tend to skew in the HubSpot customer base towards linear, which is just gonna split it up equally time based or time decay, which is basically going to look at the most recent conversion and then in a time based like logarithmic way, essentially give the most credit to the most recent interaction and less credit to like, past interactions and then full path. Right. Which is going to like take the most credit and put it on the first interaction, the last interaction, because that like acknowledges that those are important and then equally split credit up. Ultimately, I think the best thing that you could do is like find the model that best fits your business, best fits your, your company and the questions that you're asking and stick to it. I think the biggest issue that people have is they like build an attribution report, they get some kind of insight and then they start switching it up. But then it's like apples to oranges because like you're dealing with different splices of data that's presented in different ways. So I think in the beginning like definitely taking the time to understand what the different models are doing, probably going to end up with linear and then like sticking to that one. I think also something that's really important about attribution that I don't really see anywhere besides like in partners minds or in reporters minds, is that oftentimes with attributions like you got to let it run long enough to give you some kind of insight site. Right. Like I think that in general people will like check attribution reports a lot. And I think in general you, you want to like let it propagate.

24 hours worth of data isn't enough.

Yeah. You want to, you want to let, you want to let the report propagate with honestly somewhere between like three to six months of data to give you some viable insights and not like over filter yourself. Oh, go.

Hold on a second.

Sure.

George. George. Do you need a hug or do you need an entry point into the conversation?

I'm going to lose my mind. So here's the thing. Jory said use what's best for your business. That's the problem, right? So like here's the thing. So what is it? Sweet. Why is it important? Sweet. Got it. Here's the issue. It's like the movie that the guy, it's the bomb squad guy, right? And he's going in and he sees the red wire and the blue wire. Wire and the yellow wire and the purple wire. And, and he's like, cut, cut the purple one. No, no, no, no, no. Cut, cut the red. No. I don't know. I don't want to blow anybody up. This is the mindset of most users to when to use the model, right? And if I could clip out what you just said earlier and give it to you to build another tool for people, it's literally when do you use what model and for what reason. People know the what, they know the why, they don't know the when. So we got to let them, we got to teach them when to cut the red wire, when to cut the blue wire so they're not blowing stuff up.

Devin, I'm going to come to you here momentarily about. Because I want to turn it back to Jory because I so rudely interrupted you because I was watching, I was watching George roadrunner into the carpet.

I'm surprised. I thought you were going to ask me if I had to use the bathroom and I was going to be like no, I'm good.

But no, I know you're. There's a different level of stuff strut that occurs. There's a different level of stret. And then there will be some excuse like hold on, I hear a sparrow in danger. I'll be right back. So you know. Anyway, Jory, I so rudely interrupted you because George was so rudely quietly interrupting you. So could bring us back home on attribution reporting.

Definitely. And I mean I know, I get it. The the it depends like way of answering that question can get really frustrating. I think the thing is, is like it really does depend on how you're also running campaigns. I think in general a good rule of thumb is you might want to stay away from single touch attribution models because it's going to assign entire credit to the first or last touch. And we understand that the customer journey is more nuanced than that. It's going to really heavily skew your data. I tend to find that multi touch revenue attribution models tend to show the full story a little bit more. Okay, so time decay, right? When are you going to use it? Rule of thumb, are you running time sensitive campaigns at your business? If so, might be a good model, right. The other ones, again, it kind of depends, right. Like it try. It depends on the question you're trying to answer. Right? So for example, you've got U shaped. That's one that like we, we haven't really talked about. So what it's going to do is like kind of combine the single touch models. It's going to give some like first and last touch points interactions. Cool. So that's going to matter if generating high quality prospects at the top of your funnel and then identifying the leads that were really effective to nurture later is like part of the question that you're answering. So the thing is it depends because it depends on your question. It depends on how you're running your campaign. It and like I think we could go through the like if then branch of like which attribution model is like best? I think that's something that we could build out. But I also think that it like is part of the process to peel back the layers of like general rule of thumb. If you were just getting started with the attribution, there is nothing wrong with going linear because that is going to help you understand and unpack this tool to the best of the ability. I think that in general, like the nuances of the other ones also come with time. So there's nothing wrong with going full path first. There's nothing wrong with going linear first. Probably stay away from the single touch ones. But hey, I'm just me. Those are my opinions. So I know, I get that. It, it depends is frustrating. But again, if you're starting with a question, start with the question and let the question guide you. Based on these models, what's going to most effectively answer that question? And that's honestly your North Star. That's not something that, because your question could be anything, I can give you the definitive this is the 1 to 11 attribution model to rule them all. But if you have questions after that, then once you have a question, I can help guide you.

You know what, I gotta be honest, Jory, I listened to you a drop Lowkey, Lord of the Rings, little nuggets there and talk about reporting all the time. I do want to jump in though and share. Okay, so I understand that I came through the attribution, came to this attribution conversation feeling confused, lost. Let us try, you know, all of these different things. But here's what I will say about attribution that I have thought about in the past. And this is something where if you've been a long time listener, first time caller of this program, you may have heard me talk about this before, which is attribution reporting is kind of like any other reporting that you're going to see in the HubSpot ecosystem, which is you can't take it literally. You have to use it to inform a story that you are telling. It cannot be the only story that you're telling.

You need to contact.

Because in attribution reporting, what can happen is it'll say things like, well, because it had this number of touch points across X number of contexts, it exactly contributed this amount of revenue to your business. And it's like, wait, hold on a second. Because one of my favorite things that I used to do when I was the editor chief at Impact, which is an elite diamond partner agency, is I used to love to do a forensic analysis and audit of deals that closed. I would go in and because we had both the sales hub and the marketing hub together, I could see how a bill became a law from someone landing on the site, converting on something and then closing and becoming a customer. Now here's what's fascinating. There was one customer in particular where they did so much digging around in Our content. I ran into them at an event and I said, hey, I'm just curious because I'm a resident content nerd. What was the piece that closed it for you? Because you were all over the place. And it turned out, even though this man had looked at 25 different pieces of content numerous times, he had looked at the same one a bunch. The one that actually close the deal was the first touch, something he only looked at once. He looked at it once at the beginning, once at the end. It was the piece of content he looked at the least out of anything else. But he was like, that closed it for me, the humor, the personality, and the fact that I got to see who I was going to be working with. So sometimes you do not know the human story. Attribution reporting is only going to give you, like a guesstimate in some cases.

And I think that's totally fair. I think that the big caveat of attribution reporting is it's always going to be bias towards success. Right? It's always going to be like, this is what it's most likely causing the most leads, deals, or revenue. Right. But the thing is, and like, we'll get to Customer Journey analytics in a. In a second that you need to be really careful of is like, not understanding and not digging into that a little bit further. I agree. I don't think that your. Your reporting strategy should start and stop with attribution. I think it's a really interesting, interesting kind of like, additional layer of information that you can bring to your reporting strategy. But you should always be digging in and honestly being just like, curious about, like, okay, so you say that this ad campaign is better than this ad campaign going back to what we said earlier. Why? And, like, what can we learn from that, honestly?

You know what, you teed it up so nicely there, Jory. Let's dig right in because we've covered a lot of ground in this episode today, but I want to make sure we touch upon this because I know, George, this was something you were really interested in hearing about from Jori, which is when we think about that Customer journey, right? How does that figure into the way we map our storytelling across reporting? What does that look like? Is that integrated, if at all?

Yeah. So Customer Journey Analytics, I feel like attribution and Customer Journey analytics are like a one plus one equals three moment. So it's just like together they are greater than the sum of their parts. So to kind of go back to what I was saying, like bias towards success. Right? So situations can happen where you might run an attribution report, say on a linear model, because I think that's just like a jewelry best practice. Anyway, okay, so you, you run this attribution report and say you have campaign A and according to your attribution model, you know, it generated $30,000. And then you look at campaign B and it didn't, it doesn't look like it performs so well. Like it maybe generated like $2,000 in revenue. So looking at your attribution report, you may be like, well, obviously campaign A is better. It generated $30,000, not $2,000. Great. Okay. So what Customer Journey analytics is built for is to start to optimize based on specific conversion paths, to get really nitty gritty on like an asset to asset basis or a channel to channel basis. How people are, yes, continuing through the journey but also dropping off from the journey. And that's additional insight that you're not going to get from an attribution report because it's just going to tell you what's working. Right? So maybe you look at these two campaigns and you build attribution reports from them. Right? Well, you could find, because ads don't equal money in the bank, there's different steps that happen between your ad and your purchase. Right. That potentially you might find that campaign B actually had higher conversion rates at higher value assets than campaign A. But maybe it was external factors, maybe it was how you were budgeting, maybe it was seasonality. Maybe it was like all these other factors that weren't apparent in your attribution report that actually contributed to the success of campaign A over B. And you need to learn from campaign B to, to be better at advertising. So really, Customer Journey analytics, while really important when you think about, oh like, I'm really curious about like how my blogs are performing or like landing pages or like just the traditional conversion paths we think about, I think do the best job and our strongest. I know I keep saying like contextualization, but at contextualizing, like the success and the failures that you're seeing throughout your site and because you can really drill in and I mean like down to the like list of people that made it through conversion A, B and C but dropped off at at D, like you can get really granular or even honestly kind of zoom out a little bigger. It's really important insight and it's access to a level of like engagement data that just like hasn't been available before. So it's really exciting. But I think that like using it with attribution, like you can definitely get results. Just creating customer journey analytics because it's. It's very CRO heavy, but, like, using them together is huge.

That's freaking incredible. Now I know we've only got a couple minutes left, and I'm sitting here going, why are you apologizing? Can we talk about, like, I'm having the best time taking so many notes. I'm sitting here like, yes, I am hosting this podcast. I am also frantically taking notes to be better at reporting.

Yeah.

Part of me wants to. Isn't this amazing?

I have to agree. Like, I'm literally in the last session. I'm. As Jory's gone, I'm like, yep. There's just times in life where you sit down and you shut up and you let the grown ups talk and. And you just let them have their moment and you learn from them. And this. I love this episode so much. This is why I wanted to get Jory on the. The. The hub here.

I was so excited when I saw it because it's.

It's just information that more people need to be able to hear these things and apply these things to their reporting because it will just a. It's job security. I'm just gonna throw that out there, people, if you can leverage the things that Jordy is throwing down and put in your tool belt. Job security. All right, I'll. I gotta sit back down and shut up for a while.

No, you're totally good. And I know we only have a couple minutes left. And part of me wants to be like a positive Pamela and asks if they, like, if someone remembers only one thing about HubSpot reporting today, what would it be and why? But I am choosing chaos. I am choosing anarchy.

I love that.

So also, before George can cut me off, I am going to read my poem now, because that's what he's done. He's done it the past three episodes. The past three episodes. The past three episodes, you've been like, it's a shame no one could hear a poem.

Cut. I'm like, I have been that guy.

All right. It's a haiku jewelry just for you.

Okay.

HubSpot wields the charts, data, whispers, then departs, wooing nerdy hearts.

Oh, and it rhymes.

I want that on a mug.

And I coo. That rhymes.

Tweet it. Tweet it. Save it. Love it.

You're welcome. But here's the last chaos question. Are we ready?

Yeah.

Yes.

I want a horror story. I want a horror story. And, Devin, I know in the depths of your heart you have a HubSpot reporting horror story that will teach our millions, our dozens of us, literally dozens of listeners.

Teach them about hoarding.

Overkill is a thing. Stop it.

Having just paint a picture. Paint a picture.

A dashboard that has every single square filled with individual reports with all the numbers that no one cares about. Like, data for the sake of data. It's just so unbelievably annoying. Like, no one cares. I understand that you're having fun, but I cannot stress this enough. You're the only one having fun. Stop it.

Well, isn't it what Jory said earlier? Widgets aren't stories.

People. They don't care about the stories they like. Oh, look, it's a number. Oh, and here's another cool number. We don't care. It has nothing to do with any. Like, you're the only one that's looking at that number. I'm happy that you did this nerdy thing that allowed you to create this nerdy thing. And, oh, look, we on the full moon. We know.

Shut up.

We don't care. This isn't baseball. Stop it.

In the south, we say, in the south, we say, bless your heart.

Oh, sweetie.

I know. Oh, my gosh. You know what? That's what I will say about the south that confuses me. Everybody's like, I read some so nice in the South. I'm like, no, I don't know what they think about me. They give me pie. But this could be a hate pie. This could be a love pie. Sarcastic, Literally mean anything. But I also will say it isn't an episode of the Hub Heroes without Devin going slightly like.

Yeah, yeah. Honestly. I mean, we've got Devin unhinged. We've got Jory's greatness. We've got a Schoolhouse Rock reference. I just don't even know how we make this episode better.

I do. Okay, So I found. Maybe I was just, like, naive. Maybe I have just not really spent a lot of time in the HubSpot Report Builder. But I found this trick, this hack, this little known secret in the HubSpot Report Builder and dashboards that I have never seen before. And I just need. I need everyone to know about this, because when I saw a product manager do that, I was like, what did you just do? What? What. What is that? So did you know that when you build a chart in the HubSpot Customer Report Builder, you can just highlight the section that you want to see and it automatically zooms in?

What?

And you can see what? Yep. It is an interactive chart that apparently nobody's known, but the product team. So you need. Okay, so go, Go build a report. I think it has to be a bar chart because, like, pie. How would you even zoom into that?

But very carefully. We love pie here.

And then just with your cursor, highlight it, and it will zoom into that specific section. And then you. You'll see a tab that's like, reset, zoom. So if you're like, oh, you just need to zoom into that one. And then that is a. That is a functionality that you can do on dashboards. And I have found no documentation about this.

And so I. Devin has gotten up and left. Jory, you are. You're like a human Christmas. You just keep giving gifts. It is wild so much.

It is wild.

George, are you checking right now?

You need to check.

Checking right now.

I literally will share my screen right now.

No, I'm not. I'm paying attention. I'm paying attention.

What'd you find? What'd you find?

So remember, I found that.

Anyway.

You know what? All right, here's how we're gonna end this. George, I would love to hear from you. What is the biggest takeaway George is taking away this week? Because I feel like we've done a lot of learning today, but, George, I've literally watched your brain collapse and come back together four times. What is your biggest learning, your biggest takeaway? The thing that you are going to be sharing with clients next week?

Oh, well, all of it. The whole damn episode. I'm just gonna throw that out there.

But you're gonna have to pick one.

No, no, but easy there. I'm just saying the whole episode. But my biggest takeaway personally, is that there's always something else to learn. And my second biggest takeaway is HubSpot. Please create more documentation around reporting. But the biggest takeaway, I think, for me is the mindsets section of what we talked about at the beginning of this. It doesn't have to be difficult. You should be thinking about questions. You should use the five why matrix. Like, those things I think will get some people from where they're at to like, oh, I feel comfortable. And now I'm willing to dive into the deep end. That that's what I'm taking away.

I freaking love it. Jory, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

Want to get in contact with you. How can they find you, you delightful reporting sprite?

So you can find me on LinkedIn, Jori Monroe, or Twitter. Finding Jory. So.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, well, that's me. Or wherever you know, email me. We'll figure it out.

George, you want to take us out? You can't yell at me about poetry this week, so you're gonna have to get creative.

Yeah, I don't know what to say other than my mind is blown. This is an amazing episode and I hope that everybody just goes from here into the reporting tool and just starts to play.

Go crush it.

Do it.

Well, until next week. We'll talk to you all then.

Okay, Hub Heroes, we've reached the end of another episode. Will Lord Lack continue to lo over the community or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the Hub Heroes podcast? Make sure you tune in and find out. In the next episode, make sure you head over to thehubheroes.com to get the latest episodes and become part of the League of Heroes. FYI, if you're part of the League of Heroes, you'll get the show notes right in your inbox and they come with some hidden power up potential as well. Make sure you share this podcast with a friend, leave a review if you like what you're listening to, and use the hashtag hubberospodcast on any of the socials and let us know what strategy conversation you'd like to listen into next. Until next time, when we meet and combine our forces, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human. And of course, always be looking for a way to be someone hero.