MQL Attribution

If you’ve ever stared at a dashboard thinking, “Where the hell did this lead really come from?” - you’re not alone. Attribution in B2B isn’t just messy, it’s borderline broken.

Heydar Guliyev, Senior CRM Tech Manager at HeyJobs, knows this pain. At the INSIDE CRM Meetup in Berlin, he didn’t show off some fancy hack. He walked us through the real grind - how he built a workflow in HubSpot that finally tells his team where MQLs come from. No guesses. No noise. Just truth.

What you will learn:

💡 How to fix tracking gaps when UTMs don’t cut it

💡 Why timestamps matter more than you think

💡 A fallback plan for when data goes missing

The Pain: Too Many Leads, Too Little Clarity

Imagine this: you’ve got multiple channels and different traffic sources - all bringing in leads. But when sales gets a hot one? No clue where it came from.

- UTMs? Cool, until someone blocks cookies.
- HubSpot’s tracking? Works… sometimes.
- Server-side logic? Great if you’ve got a dev team on standby.

And in B2B, where five different people from the same company might hit your site before one fills out a form, good luck tracing the thread.

Step Zero: Set Things Up Right

Before building anything, Heydar’s team cleaned house. Here’s what they got in order:
1. Grouped channels so everyone spoke the same language.
2. UTM tracking that actually worked.
3. HubSpot-wide tracking so fallback logic had a chance.
4. Form naming that was consistent and intuitive..
5. Timestamps on everything important. Why? Because if you can’t tell when something happened, you’re flying blind.

The Workflow: 4 Steps That Finally Made Sense

1. Know Your Sources
Forms, tools, anything that creates MQLs - all of them fed into the workflow.

2. Automate It
If a contact hits MQL status, they get pushed into the workflow. Simple.

3. Decide Who Deserves the Credit
- Branch A: If a UTM timestamp was updated in the last 24 hours? That’s your winner.
- Branch B: No UTM? Fall back to HubSpot’s “Latest Traffic Source”.

4. Lock It In
Save the channel source to the contact. And - because it’s B2B - update the company with the given source too.

The Ugly Bit: Testing Never Ends

Getting the thing live wasn’t the finish line. It was the warm-up.

- 2–6 weeks of checks: The workflow  results had to match what channel managers saw on their end.
- Troubleshooting branch: Leads that didn’t match got flagged.
- Real-time alerts: If something broke, the workflow owner  got pinged.

The Result: 75% Attribution That Everyone Trusts

What changed?

• Attribution accuracy improved from ~30% to 75% across all traffic sources.

• Channel managers gained the ability to analyze and optimize performance autonomously.

• Sales teams received deeper insights into the buyer journey for tailored follow-ups.

What to Steal from This

- Always have a fallback - UTM first, native second.
- Timestamps matter more than templates.
- Attribution isn’t a “set it and forget it” game.
- Sync it to contacts and companies - B2B demands it.
- Don’t rush. This took 4–6 months and needed every bit of it.

Meet Heydar

Heydar Guliyev runs CRM Tech at HeyJobs. His real skill? Cutting through the nonsense. He builds systems that help real people - like sales reps and marketers - do their jobs without digging through spreadsheets or praying to the analytics gods.

About the Meetup

Organised by Jessica Jantzen, the INSIDE CRM Meetup is a platform for CRM professionals to share insights, strategies, and success stories. It brings together experts from various industries to discuss the latest trends and innovations in customer relationship management.

Disclaimer: This article has been generated with ChatGPT based on an audio transcript and presentation slides from the INSIDE CRM Meetup. The content has been reviewed by the presenter to ensure accuracy and relevance.