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04

Customer Data, Attribution & Lifecycle

Clean up the customer data layer that connects identity, lifecycle stages, CRM records, audiences, attribution, and revenue reporting.

This is the customer data layer after collection: CDPs, HubSpot, Salesforce, Segment, lifecycle stages, identity resolution, lead source governance, reverse ETL, audience syncs, and closed-won reporting.

Related field notes

All published writing currently classified under this system layer.

CDP identity resolution breaks after week 12, not before
Most CDP rollouts fail because nobody owned identity resolution before the contract was signed. Here's where the 90 days actually go wrong.
Why marketing and finance never agree on what a dashboard is showing
The BI dashboard rolls up GA4, Meta, and CRM into one clean number. That number is an opinion, not a fact, and most marketing teams never check which opinion it's giving them.
Your CAC numbers disagree because they're measuring different things
GA4, ad platforms, and finance report different CAC numbers by design. Here's the three-layer measurement architecture that resolves the disagreement.
GA4 added an AI Assistant channel. Check your referral numbers.
GA4 is separating some ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude visits from Referral, which can change reports and dashboards without anyone touching the property.
Cross-Domain Tracking in GA4: Why 30% of Your Journeys Show as Direct
When users move between your domains, GA4 often loses the session thread and attributes conversions to direct traffic instead of the original source. Here's how to diagnose and fix broken cross-domain tracking.
How to Tell If Your GA4 Attribution Is Wrong
Your GA4 reports show strong performance, but revenue doesn't match. Here's how to diagnose when GA4 attribution is inflating your numbers and what to do about it.
The Attribution Window Mismatch: How Standard BI Infrastructure Killed a 4.2x ROAS Channel
Why we stopped optimizing media buying and started optimizing our measurement stack. A deep dive into fixing B2B attribution for considered purchases.