Marketing software is unusual: the thing it is bought to prove is the thing it is worst at proving. Campaigns go out, leads arrive, and the connection between the two is asserted rather than demonstrated. These are the questions that make it demonstrable.
**Where does a lead come from, as data?** Every lead should carry its source — the campaign, the channel, the page — captured at creation rather than attributed later from memory. Attribution reconstructed after the fact is a story about the data, not the data.
**Is scoring a rule you can read?** Lead scoring is useful when the rule is explicit and visible, so a sales team can argue with it and improve it. A score with no stated basis gets ignored within a quarter.
**Does the follow-up have a record?** Sending is the easy half. What matters is whether the send, the open, the reply and the next action are on the lead, so anybody picking it up can see what has already happened.
**Can you tie a campaign to money?** This is where consolidation stops being an abstraction. If the lead becomes a customer, and the customer becomes invoices in the ledger, then campaign cost against revenue is a query rather than an argument. If marketing and finance are separate systems, that number is assembled by hand each time — which means it is assembled rarely, and trusted less.
**What does the reporting let you ask?** Pre-built campaign reports cover the routine. The question that justifies next year's budget usually is not routine, so check that someone in the team can build it, save it, and schedule it without raising a ticket.