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Self-reported attribution helps recover lost conversions from “Direct,” “Brand,” or “Organic” channels by asking users directly how they heard about your brand and then mapping these responses to the appropriate paid or owned channels.

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Add the “How did you hear about us?” field

Add an optional “How did you hear about us?” field to your registration, checkout, or lead form. Free-text is preferred, but you can also provide a list of answers to select from.

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Store responses in GA4 or CRM

You can store the user’s answer as an event parameter in GA4 (for example, self_reported_source) or in your CRM. Both the Client ID and the response must be available in the source where this data is stored.
When the form is submitted, pass the user’s answer to a custom event parameter, for example self_reported_source.In Google Tag Manager, configure this in your GA4 event tag by adding a new Event Parameter and setting its value to the variable that contains the user’s answer.GA4 event parameter configuration in GTM

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Testing the implementation

1

Complete test forms

Open your website in a test environment and complete the form using different responses.
2

Verify GA4 events

In GA4 DebugView, confirm that the event is being sent correctly and that self_reported_source appears as a parameter.
3

Verify CRM records

If using a CRM, verify that the same field is populated correctly in the lead or transaction records.
4

Check Client ID

Ensure that the Client ID is recorded together with the self-reported value.
5

Validate event firing

Validate that the event fires once per submission and that the data appears within a few minutes in GA4 Realtime or CRM logs.
6

Deploy to production

After successful testing, move the setup to production.

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Define business logic

After collecting sufficient responses, define which responses and how you would like to map them to your business channels. For example:
User responseMapped channel
”Friend,” “Local,” or “Shop”Referral
”YouTube”Influencer
”Instagram”Meta
”Newsletter,” “Email from brand”Email
Keep a lookup table for consistent classification and to handle new response types as they appear. Even before re-attribution, the responses themselves provide insights into how customers perceive and discover your brand, helping identify which channels or touchpoints drive the strongest brand awareness and engagement.

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Re-attribute conversions

SegmentStream automatically classifies free-text responses using AI based on the business logic you define. It then uses classified data to re-attribute conversions that were originally labeled as Direct, Brand, Organic, etc. to their true paid or owned sources. The corrected attribution is then reflected in reports, improving visibility into real channel effectiveness.