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Multi-touch cost per lead report

The Multi-touch cost per lead report gives you a calculated cost per lead for each of your Google Ads, Facebook, and Microsoft Advertising campaigns based on the attribution model of your choice. With this report, you can measure which campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and individual ads drive your business's most cost-effective leads.
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Getting started 

Your multi-touch cost-per-lead report is viewable by all levels of users in your account, including administrators, managers, and reporting users. The multi-touch cost per lead report requires the following:

  1. Visitor tracking with your company's JavaScript snippet installed on your website.
  2. Form tracking is enabled on your account.
  3. One or more of the following integrations for each company where you'd like to measure cost per lead:

Need to print, export, or save a report? You can follow the instructions in this article to do so.

Activate multi-touch cost per lead reporting

Use these instructions to access your multi-touch cost-per-lead report for a specific company.

  1. Select Analytics on the left navigation bar.
  2. Select Reports at the top of the page.
  3. Choose the company whose multi-touch cost-per-lead report you'd like to view.
  4. Choose Multi-Touch CPL from the Acquisition header on the left.
  5. If you haven't done so already, select Activate Multi-Touch Cost per Lead to enable CPL reporting for all companies in your account. 
  6. Once you've activated your report, Google Ads data will start populating within 24 hours (with a 48-hour data freshness window). 
    Note: For Facebook Ads and Microsoft Advertising, you'll need to add tracking templates to your ads in order to start receiving CPL data.
  7. If you see a message that says, "You need an active integration," you'll need to integrate Google Ads, Facebook, or Microsoft Advertising for that company to pull campaign and cost data for reporting. 

CPL for Google Ads

Your CPL report includes Google PPC calls to telephone numbers in your website pools, as well as calls to your Google Ads calls details forwarding tracking numbers.

If you have an active Google Ads integration but your report shows cost per lead data as "n/a," you'll need to re-authorize your Google Ads integration to ensure your data can be sent to CallRail. After you authorize Google Ads, your first batch of CPL data will populate in up to 24 hours.

Follow these steps to authorize your Google Ads integration and receive cost-per-lead data.

CPL for Facebook Ads

To receive cost-per-lead data for your Facebook ads, you'll need to add URL tracking parameters to each of the ads you're currently running.

Follow these instructions to set up your Facebook ads for CPL reporting.

CPL for Microsoft Advertising

You'll need to add a global tracking template to your Microsoft Advertising campaigns to receive cost-per-lead data for Microsoft Advertising.

Follow these instructions to set up Microsoft Advertising for CPL reporting.

Choose an attribution model

You can calculate the cost per lead based on our five attribution models. Each model attributes lead credit to different milestones in the sales funnel. Choosing different attribution models will change your cost per lead total based on how that model weighs each milestone.

Learn more about attribution modeling and how we calculate cost per lead.

  1. Once you've opened your CPL report, click the Attribution drop-down menu within the filter panel above the chart to choose an attribution model.
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  2. Select an attribution model to see your cost-per-lead calculation for that model. Your report initially loads with the 50/50 Model selected, but you can change models anytime.
    • Select the First Touch Model to give 100% credit to the first touchpoint a customer engaged with.
    • Select the Lead Creation Model to give 100% credit to the last touchpoint before a customer calls, texts, or submits a form and becomes a raw lead.
    • Select the 50/50 Model to evenly split the cost per lead credit between the First Touch and Lead Creation milestones.
    • Select the Qualified Model to give 100% credit to the last touchpoint before a customer is scored as a qualified lead. Leads can be scored manually or through keypad scoring.
    • Select the W-shaped model to split the cost per lead credit evenly between the First Touch milestone, Lead Creation milestone, and the Qualified milestone, with one-third of the credit assigned to each.

Add sources to cost per lead reporting

Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and Microsoft Advertising allow you to automatically pull cost-per-lead data into your report.

You can also add manual sources with their spending amounts for a full side-by-side comparison of cost per lead across your campaigns.

Use this help article to learn how to add or edit sources to your cost-per-lead report.

Filter report data

Use the filter panel above the report to apply filters to your report. Each column illustrates which of your sources, campaigns, ad groups, or keyword/ad ID sets are generating raw and qualified leads. 

  1. Use the Date filter to determine the time range your report should show. 
  2. Use the Keyword/Ad ID filter to sort your data based on PPC keywords or the individual ad level. 
  3. Use the Raw Leads/Qualified Leads filter to filter your report by total leads or leads marked as qualified leads via manual scoring or through keypad scoring
  4. Use the graph drop-down to select a time interval for your report. You can view by hours, days, weeks, months, or years. 
  5. Click Add Filter to apply additional filters, such as Sources, Campaigns, Ad Groups, and Interactions.

FAQs

What's the difference between a raw lead and a qualified lead?

Raw leads include all leads that have contacted your business, regardless of whether or not they are high-quality leads. Qualified leads are potential customers who have been qualified manually through Keypad Scoring. Your cost per qualified lead totals will always be higher because qualified leads are further down the sales funnel, resulting in fewer total leads captured. 

Why does my data for today look incorrect?

Google has a 48-hour window where the data we pull from the Google Ads API might be incorrectly attributed. This means that if you're looking at reports for the previous two days, you will likely see what appears to be "unsettled" data with incorrect attribution. After 48 hours, all the data should match the correct campaign attributions. We recommend waiting 48 hours for accurate reporting on your Google Ads CPL.

Read more about Google's data freshness policy.

How does measuring CPL work over time?

Time is an important factor for cost-per-lead reporting. Often, First Touch and Lead Creation milestones do not occur in the same week or month, meaning that attribution data can be refilled over time.  When you’re using website pools, we won’t have a customer’s First Touch session data until they call one of your tracking numbers (the lead creation event). That means a First Touch can backfill in your CPL reports and lower your cost per lead for that time frame.

Here’s an example: In January, Jim clicks on a Google PPC ad and browses a few pages of your website but doesn’t make a call. In February, Jim googled your company name to find your website again (a Google Organic touchpoint) and called the tracking number on your website. Jim’s first touch is the first Google PPC ad he clicked on, but that session data for January (when he clicked the ad) won’t show on your January CPL report until he calls you in February, and we can capture that session data. So once Jim calls your tracking number as his lead creation event, your January first touch will populate and lower the cost per lead for that First Touch source.

What about cookie expiration?

Our JavaScript snippet defaults to a one-year cookie expiration. You can also set a custom cookie expiration for your account. Once a visitor’s cookies expire or they clear their cookies, they’ll be treated as a new visitor.

Learn about cookie duration settings for the JavaScript snippet.

How are outbound calls attributed?

Outbound first touches (e.g., the sales team reaching out to potential customers) will show as first touches unless session data reveals when the customer calls again that they interacted with advertising before the outbound call. The outbound call will still be recorded in the visitor timeline.

How have Apple's in-app tracking updates in iOS 14+ affected what can be tracked?

To accommodate Apple's recent changes to user privacy options, Google has stopped using gclids (Google click IDs) for ad clicks in Safari and Google apps. They have been replaced with click IDs which track groups of users in aggregate instead of individually. This applies solely to visitors who are interacting with your site via iPhone and only if they have enabled Apple's new privacy features.

Previously, we weren't able to post these interactions as conversions. However, as of March of 2023, we can now post those conversions and have started doing so automatically.

 

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