Data & Insights
Improving Attribution Accuracy for a Wealth Management Firm
A wealth management firm partnered with Marcel Digital to strengthen their marketing attribution and lead tracking efforts. Known for their evidence-based investing approach and client-first philosophy, this financial services firm provides a full spectrum of wealth management services to individuals, families, and businesses nationwide.
The Challenge
Despite strong inbound traffic and a healthy volume of leads, the client’s marketing and sales teams lacked critical visibility into where those leads were coming from and which campaigns were driving performance. Several key problems contributed to this issue:
UTM tracking data was frequently lost before a user completed a form submission, making it difficult to accurately identify the original source, medium, or campaign responsible for driving the lead.
Lead capture forms were split across two different platforms, with Gravity Forms on WordPress and embedded Pardot forms collecting data in different ways, which created inconsistencies in how attribution information was captured, passed, and stored across the organization’s lead generation ecosystem.
Salesforce campaign attribution was incomplete and unreliable, reducing confidence in lead routing, campaign reporting, and overall measurement while making it harder for both marketing and sales teams to act on accurate source and performance data.
The Solution
Marcel Digital addressed this challenge through a collaborative, cross-functional approach led by our Data & Insights team. We began with discovery workshops to evaluate the organization’s technical architecture and uncover attribution gaps across WordPress, Pardot, and Salesforce. From there, we designed a tailored solution to improve how attribution data was captured, preserved, and passed into the systems the organization relied on for lead tracking and segmentation.
Key components of the solution included:
Building a first-party cookie tracking framework through Google Tag Manager
to capture and store UTM parameters such as source, medium, and campaign across sessions, creating a more reliable method for preserving attribution data even when users returned later through direct traffic or navigated through multiple pages before converting.
Developing dynamic hidden-field population across both Gravity Forms and Pardot forms
so attribution values stored in cookies could be automatically passed into each submission, using form-specific logic to create a consistent tracking experience across different platforms without relying on live URL parameters at the time of conversion.
Creating a cleaner flow of attribution data into Account Engagement and Salesforce
so each form submission carried more complete and consistent source information, giving the internal team better visibility into lead origin, campaign influence, and marketing performance.
Conducting extensive quality assurance and validation across browsers, platforms, and user journeys
to ensure attribution data was captured accurately and passed consistently regardless of form type, user behavior, or path to conversion.
The Results
The improved infrastructure delivered measurable improvements to the organization’s lead intelligence and attribution accuracy:
Significant increase in leads with complete source, medium, and campaign data in Account Engagement.
Enhanced visibility into lead origin, reducing reliance on “unknown” or “direct” classifications.
Enabled the client to segment leads by UTM source and campaign directly within Account Engagement.
These improvements laid the foundation for clearer ROI insights and better lead quality assessment, even without fully leveraging Salesforce, and they empowered the organization’s internal marketing and sales teams to make informed decisions about where to invest resources and which channels were truly driving business growth.
