Thanks to everyone who came to Dreamforce! If you missed it, keep an eye out on successforce.com for the recorded sessions - they should be posted soon.

In the last session of the Marketing track, “How Salesforce uses Salesforce Marketing”, many of you were asking about how to measure the influence of marketing campaigns on opportunities. Using Custom Report Types (CRTs) we can start get a better handle on this metric.

Note: You will need to have the "Manage Custom Report Types" permission set on your profile in order to create and publish CRTs.

To create a new Custom Report Type go to Setup -> Build –>Custom Report Types

First thing you want to do is pick the primary object you want to report from (in this case it will be the
Opportunity), name your report and identify what folder you want it to show up in.

 Next you will create the relationship between objects. In this case we want to report from the Opportunity to Contact Roles to the Campaign History.

Once you have saved the report you can go in and edit which fields show up in the report by clicking the “Edit Layout” button highlighted below.

At this point, we are finished creating the reporting structure for campaign influence, however I do want to point out one of the most powerful components of CRTs which is hidden on the edit layout page under the link “Add fields related via lookup”.

This link allows you to extend your report even further by adding in fields from objects that are related by a lookup to any of the primary objects you are reporting from. For example, I could get to information on the account record from the lookup to the opportunity, or I could get to user data from the lookup to the campaign record. This hidden gem can come in handy, so keep it in mind for other reports you may be trying to run.

Now, back to our influence report…I’ve saved the report type down and can get to it through our regular reporting wizard.

Just like any other report, you can structure it in any way you like. I prefer to create a summary report grouping the results by campaign. This way I can see how much opportunity has been touched by campaign, regardless of what the campaign source is on the opportunity.  

Once you’ve tested out your report, don’t forget to go back in and deploy it to all of your users so anyone with access to your report folder gets the benefit of this new report!

Added 10/03:
Thanks to Tom Tobin who packaged up this CRT and put it on the AppExchange here:
https://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/detail_overview.jsp?id=a0330000004IOTRAA4