Creating Lead Sources and Ending Lead Sources

Typically, your company will add new Lead Sources to your system when you start advertising with a new provider or introduce a new marketing initiative. Lead Sources might include a quarterly postcard mailer, yard signs, an internet campaign on Facebook or a lead provider like Angi or Quin Street. The Source Type and Source values will determine the broader categories of marketing Lead Source Reports can be grouped by.

Note: If you are doing a Data Conversion and bringing data in from a past CRM, your Lead Source Names will be mapped as a combination of "Source Type" - "Source ". Most CRMs only offer two levels of lead provider data, and therefore only two levels of Report Grouping. Here is an example of how the data is mapped when there are two points of data for Lead Sources/Source and Source Type: 

See also: Set Source Type and Source values before creating Lead Sources

However, if you are setting up improveit 360 Lightning without any existing data, or you plan to restructure your marketing Lead Source data, you can take advantage of three (3) levels of Lead Provider data in improveit 360 Lightning.

In the below example, the broad Source Type is "Retail Outlet", the Source is "Home Depot", and the Lead Source is the specific Home Depot store where the leads originate.

This will allow you to drill down and report on Return on Investment for a specific location within the Home Depot marketing Source. 

Note: If you are new to improveit 360 and have data from another system, you'll need to End the Lead Sources you no longer advertise with. This prevents new leads from being attributed to a marketing effort your company no longer uses. 

Watch this 3-minute video and follow along with the click-path instructions below.

Go to the App Launcher menu and search Lead Sources

Click on the Lead Sources object 

Click the down arrow to change the List View 

Choose the "Active" List View

This list will display all of the Lead Sources your staff could select when entering a new Sales Opportunity for a Contact. 

It is important to End old Lead Sources to ensure you keep clean marketing data when running Reports. 

In the example below we have several Home Show events which took place in the past. We'll need to give them all an End date. You can select multiple records by checking the boxes on the left side of the list. 

Then double-click in the End date field, and select a Date

Be sure to choose "Update X selected items" to ensure all the records are updated with the End date you chose. 

Best Practice: End old Lead Sources to ensure you have a clean list for lead entry personnel to select from when entering new leads into the database. 

Create a new Lead Source 

Go to the App Launcher menu and search Lead Sources

Click on the Lead Sources object 

Click the down arrow to change the List View 

Choose the "All" List View

Before creating a new Lead Source check for any Lead Sources with the same name, to prevent accidental duplication. If there is another Lead Source, and it has been Ended you'll want to remove the End date to reinstate that Lead Source. 

If there is truly no Lead Source for the one you need, click the New button on the right side of the screen. 

Give the Lead Source an appropriate Name. Be sure if you have a Lead Provider sending data into the system that the Name matches what the lead provider is sending exactly. 

Next, select the Source Type, then select the Source. 

Source and Source Type can be used to Group and Filter Report data. 

In this example, the broad Source Type is "Retail Outlet", the Source is "Home Depot" and the Lead Source record is the specific Home Depot store where the lead originated.

Note: If you do not see the Source Type and Source values you need, see also: Set Global Source Type values

Tip: Be sure to include the Source name within the Lead Source name so that your lead entry team can easily find the correct Lead Source. When creating new Sales Opportunities and searching "Home Depot" this ensures your team would find all "Home Depot" Lead Sources in the search results: 

If your company uses Territory, you will want to select which Territory(ies) this advertising effort would bring in leads from.

For example: A Home Depot store may only be in one Territory while a Home Advisor Lead Source might bring you leads from nearly all of your Territories. 

When finished click Save! 

If you are setting up your system for the first time, you can use Save & New to continue creating Lead Source records.