Marketers are no strangers to dashboards—but most of those reports only tell part of the story.

Sure, you might know how many people opened your last email or clicked a CTA. But how do you know if that campaign actually influenced pipeline? Or drove revenue from the right segment?

That’s where Salesforce Data Cloud comes in. When paired with Marketing Cloud, it allows RevOps and Marketing teams to go far beyond surface metrics and into true campaign attribution—tracking exactly how your journeys impact sales, retention, and LTV.

In this post, we’ll walk through how to use Data Cloud to measure Marketing Cloud campaign attribution, prove ROI, and optimize performance at every stage.

Why Traditional Attribution Isn’t Cutting It

Most marketers still rely on a mix of:

• UTM codes
• Email opens/clicks
• Lead source fields in Salesforce
• A bunch of disconnected spreadsheets

The problem? That doesn’t tell the full story—especially in B2B, where:

• Buying journeys are long and non-linear
• Multiple stakeholders interact across channels
• Attribution fields often get overwritten or ignored

You end up guessing which campaigns worked and which didn’t. And that’s a problem when RevOps teams are trying to justify spend, prioritize efforts, and forecast outcomes.

What Salesforce Data Cloud Brings to the Table

Salesforce Data Cloud offers a real-time, unified way to see how your campaigns impact the entire customer journey—not just the top of the funnel.

With Data Cloud, you can:

• Create unified profiles that include campaign engagement, product usage, CRM data, and more
• Use Calculated Insights to track engagement scores, time-to-conversion, or drop-off moments
• Build dynamic segments like:
  • “Engaged but no opportunity”
  • “Marketing-sourced closed won”
  • “High-velocity conversion after email touch”

🔗 What is Salesforce Data Cloud?

How to Track Campaign Performance in Marketing Cloud

Here’s how to start capturing attribution-ready data directly inside Marketing Cloud:

1. Use Data Extensions to Track Engagement

Make sure each journey is tied to a Data Extension that includes:

• Subscriber Key
• Campaign or Journey ID
• Email send + click metrics
• Source segment or campaign tag

2. Use Journey Builder Entry Source Attributes

These help you tag where a subscriber came from and give you metadata you can use later in reporting or filtering.

3. Log Data in the Right Format

Standardize field names and types so your engagement data can be pulled into Data Cloud or Datorama later. Use timestamps, consistent campaign naming conventions, and identifiers tied to CRM records.

Related: How to Use Salesforce Data Cloud for Real-Time Personalization in Marketing Cloud and Beyond

Bring Engagement Data into Data Cloud

Once your campaign data is structured properly, you can push it to Data Cloud for analysis.

Here’s what that unlocks:

• Calculated Insights: Like “engaged in 3+ emails within 7 days of form fill” or “clicked but no opportunity created”
• Attribution segments: Identify which groups converted and which didn’t
• Behavior scoring: Use campaign activity to influence scoring models, retargeting, or sales outreach

🔗 Segment Builder and Calculated Insights

Visualizing Campaign Attribution in Marketing Cloud Intelligence (Datorama)

To really make this data actionable, send it into Marketing Cloud Intelligence (formerly Datorama).

There, you can:

• Build dashboards by campaign, segment, or customer journey
• Compare conversion rates across audience types
• Measure pipeline contribution by campaign or content type
• Slice performance by industry, lifecycle stage, or product interest

🔗 Marketing Cloud Intelligence Overview

Need help visualizing your segments? See:Marketing Cloud campaign attribution
🔗 Salesforce Data Cloud Segments and How to Use Them in Marketing Cloud

Campaign Attribution Use Cases in Action

Here’s how real companies are using Salesforce Data Cloud + Marketing Cloud to tie campaigns to outcomes:

• B2B SaaS: A nurture journey triggered a 3x lift in demo conversions among mid-market accounts—with clear attribution in Data Cloud
• Healthcare: A retention campaign prevented churn among high-risk patients, tracked via a Calculated Insight
• Manufacturing: A product update email led to increased upsell revenue from existing customers, tracked via journey engagement + sales data

Common Pitfalls (and How to Avoid Them)

Final Thoughts: Attribution Is a Strategy, Not a Field

If you’re serious about revenue impact, you need more than opens and CTRs.

By combining Salesforce Data Cloud with Marketing Cloud, you gain a full-picture view of how your campaigns influence customer behavior—and, more importantly, business results.

You’ll be able to:

• Optimize what’s working
• Kill what isn’t
• And finally answer the question: “Did this campaign move the needle?”

Ready to measure what matters?

At Revenue Ops LLC, we help B2B teams architect Salesforce Data Cloud and Marketing Cloud to track campaign attribution from click to close.