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For agencies: which case studies and channels bring the retainers.

A marketing agency wins clients slowly: a prospect reads case studies, books a call, buys an audit or a pilot, and then signs a monthly retainer. Tally ties the audit and each retainer payment to the prospect's visits, so you can see which pages and channels bring clients worth keeping.

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01How they sell

  • SubscriptionMonthly retainers billed by Stripe subscription or invoice, running for months or years.
  • One-offPaid audits, strategy sessions and pilot projects, often the first payment before the retainer.

02Payments it reads

  • StripeAudits sold through Checkout, and retainers as Stripe subscriptions or invoices, with refunds and chargebacks read.

What Tally can't read

  • Your clients' ad spend, or results in their ad accounts, isn't read; Tally reads only your own agency's payments.
  • Retainers paid by bank transfer outside Stripe aren't read.
  • Proposals and contracts in other tools aren't read; mark the proposal request as a goal instead.

03Where buyers come from

  • Case studiesProspects read a case study in their own industry closely, often more than once, before contacting you.
  • ReferralsClients and partners recommend the agency; those visits arrive typed or as shared links.
  • LinkedInFounders' posts reach marketing leads through the LinkedIn app, the start of a long path.
  • Agency directoriesListings on review and directory sites send prospects with a referrer, so each listing's revenue can be compared.

04What Tally answers

  1. How long from a first visit to a signed retainer?

    Path to purchase gives the median time and visits from first visit to first payment, often the audit, and the pages buyers saw, case studies among them.

    Path to purchase

  2. Which case studies do clients read before buying?

    What they read compares engaged time and scroll depth per page for buyers and other visitors, so the case studies that clients read in full stand out.

    What they read

  3. Which channel's clients stay on retainer?

    Lifetime value counts every retainer payment under the client's first source, with renewals, so the channels that bring long relationships show it.

    Lifetime value

  4. Is this retainer linked to the right visits?

    The receipt shows how the invoice or subscription was tied, usually the client's email matching an identify call, with the confidence and the visits behind it.

    Receipts

05Numbers worth watching

Lifetime value by first source
Average lifetime revenue per client by first source; one long retainer outweighs many audits.
Median time to buy
The median time from first visit to the first payment, which sets the length of your follow-up.
Engaged time
Active time on case studies for clients and others, a sign of which work persuades.
Renewals
Retainer payments after the first, by first source.

06An example

Example

Path to purchase

Last 30 days · 105 of 124 new sales, the ones linked to a visitor

Median time to buy

3days

from their first visit

Median visits

3visits

the one they paid in included

Bought on the first visit

12%

13 of 105

Pages before buying

11

median pages viewed

Where buyers came from, and who closed the sale

105 new sales: where each buyer first came from, and the source credited with the sale.

50% of new sales were credited to the source that first brought the buyer in. Hover or focus a flow for its numbers.

  1. Googlecredited toGoogle26
  2. x.comcredited tox.com10
  3. Other (3 sources)credited toOther (3 sources)10
  4. Directcredited toOther (3 sources)9
  5. ChatGPTcredited toChatGPT9
  6. Other (3 sources)credited toNewsletter9
  7. Redditcredited toReddit8
  8. Googlecredited toNewsletter6

6 smaller flows in the table below.

Show the flows as a table
105 new sales: where each buyer first came from, and the source credited with the sale.
Brought them inCredited with the saleNew salesShare
GoogleGoogle2625%
x.comx.com1010%
Other (3 sources)Other (3 sources)1010%
DirectOther (3 sources)99%
ChatGPTChatGPT99%
Other (3 sources)Newsletter99%
RedditReddit88%
GoogleNewsletter66%
DirectGoogle55%
x.comGoogle55%
RedditGoogle33%
DirectReddit22%
ChatGPTGoogle22%
Other (3 sources)ChatGPT1<1%

Time from first visit to purchase

  1. 13Same visit: 13 sales (12%), bought in their first visit
  2. 13Same day: 13 sales (12%), a later visit, under 24 hours after the first
  3. 301–3 days: 30 sales (29%), 1 to 3 days after the first visit
  4. 194–7 days: 19 sales (18%), 4 to 7 days after the first visit
  5. 151–2 weeks: 15 sales (14%), 8 to 14 days after the first visit
  6. 102–4 weeks: 10 sales (10%), 15 to 28 days after the first visit
  7. 51–3 months: 5 sales (5%), 29 to 90 days after the first visit
  8. 03+ months: 0 sales (0%), 91 days or more after the first visit

Pages buyers saw before paying

Share of the 105 buyers who viewed each page before paying

  1. /pricing96%, 101 of 105 buyers
  2. /71%, 75 of 105 buyers
  3. /signup63%, 67 of 105 buyers
  4. /docs38%, 40 of 105 buyers
  5. /blog/stripe-fees26%, 28 of 105 buyers
  6. /compare21%, 23 of 105 buyers
  7. /changelog8%, 9 of 105 buyers
  8. /blog/launch-week5%, 6 of 105 buyers

Only new sales count here. Renewals and upgrades belong to the visit that won the subscription, so counting them would count that journey again.

Fig. 1Path to purchase on the example site. For an agency, look at the pages clients saw before the first payment and how many visits it took.

07Setting up

  1. WebflowAdd the tag in Webflow's site-wide head code so case studies, service pages and the contact page carry it.
  2. Call tally('identify', { email }) when someone requests a proposal, so the audit and retainer invoices link by email.
  3. StripeConnect the agency's Stripe account with a restricted key; subscriptions and invoices are read, with the past 365 days imported.

08Questions

  • Can Tally report on our clients' campaigns?

    No. Tally doesn't connect to ad platforms or read ad accounts. It reads visits to a site and the payments in that site's connected provider.

  • A retainer is paid by bank transfer. Does it show?

    No. Only payments that go through a connected Stripe, Paddle, Lemon Squeezy or Polar account are read.

  • Can we see which service page brought a retainer?

    The page breakdown puts revenue beside each service page, and the client's journey shows the pages they read on each visit before the first payment.

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