The Marketing Report That I Trust Above All Others

By David Ronald

Every marketer has a report that they rely on.

A report that cuts through bias, noise, and opinion to reveal the truth of what’s really happening.

For me, it’s the weekly pipeline influence report.

It’s the one snapshot that keeps our feet planted firmly on solid ground – especially when everything else in the business feels full of shifting narratives and competing priorities. 

In this blog post I explain why this report matters to me so much. 

What is a Pipeline Influence Report?

A weekly pipeline influence report is a recurring analysis that shows how marketing activities are contributing to the creation and progression of the revenue pipeline. 

At its core, it highlights what pipeline was created or progressed, which touchpoints shaped that movement, and where early opportunities or bottlenecks are emerging. 

It brings together data from a variety of sources including our CRM platform, marketing automation platforms, and website analytics to reveal which campaigns are influencing opportunities at each stage of the buyer’s journey. 

And, because it’s built on consistent definitions and clean data sources, it provides a stable, trusted view of how marketing affects real revenue outcomes, and not just vanity metrics.

What The Report Shows

The pipeline influence report tells the story of real customer movement, not surface-level performance data, and it does so without clutter.  

At its core, the report answers three things: 

1. What pipeline was created or progressed this week? This surfaces new opportunities, deals that moved forward, and any shifts in deal velocity or value.
2. Which marketing touchpoints influenced that movement? It connects engagements such as content downloads, events, ads, emails, or website activity to opportunities, showing where marketing is helping spark or accelerate buyer interest.
3. Where are the emerging opportunities or bottlenecks? By normalizing data week over week, it highlights patterns, friction points, or early signals that might impact future revenue.

Because it’s built on consistent definitions (eg, what counts as an “influence,” “qualified engagement,” or “pipeline”), it provides a stable and trusted view of how marketing affects revenue outcomes.  

When done well, it connects the dots across channels, campaigns, and sales activities without exaggerating marketing’s role or underplaying the contributions of the broader go-to-market engine. 

Building Your Own Pipeline Influence Report

Although there isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” example of a “weekly pipeline influence report,” especially since much of the information on would be proprietary, there are some excellent templates available: 

1. Pedowitz Group

The Pedowitz Group provides a practical breakdown of how to define, track, and report influenced pipeline. Their guide outlines the core elements: defining qualifying touchpoints, mapping contacts to opportunities, choosing an attribution model, and building dashboards that show pipeline / revenue by channel and program. 

2. Salesforce

If you use Salesforce, there’s a built-in Campaign Influence feature, and you can run reports like “Campaigns with Influenced Opportunities (Customizable Campaign Influence)”. 

3. Qualified

Qualified offers a Weekly Pipeline Council framework that’s designed for cross-functional team alignment. While not exactly a “pipeline influence report” in the pure marketing attribution sense, this kind of structured weekly council model ensures the data (influenced pipeline, velocity, risk) is being consumed by stakeholders and acted upon. 

4. Microsoft

Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Marketing (Customer Insights / Journeys) has a built-in Marketing Program Effectiveness report. It includes a “Lead Pipeline” report and an ROI / attribution section. You can export or snapshot this weekly to serve as your influence report if you define “programs” or “journeys” as your influencing touch points. 

5. ClickUp

ClickUp provides a weekly sales report template that tracks key pipeline metrics: velocity, number of new opportunities, deal values, conversion rates, and so on. While it’s more of a sales pipeline report than a “marketing influence” report, you could combine this with a custom influenced-pipeline dashboard to approximate your weekly pipeline influence report. 

Conclusion

When a report consistently helps you make better decisions, you start to rely on it – not out of habit, but out of earned confidence.

And over time, it becomes more than a dashboard. It becomes the compass you trust in both calm and chaotic seasons, the one source that points you back to what buyers are actually doing, not what anyone wishes they were doing.

Thanks for reading – I hope you found this blog post useful.

Are you interested in discussing how to improve your ability to track marketing’s influence on pipeline? If so, let’s have a conversation. My email address is david@alphabetworks.com – I look forward to hearing from you.