Marketing Sales Dashboard Guide

The Marketing Sales Dashboard displays OpenTable reservation and cover data across all restaurants in the group, categorised by booking source and enriched with marketing channel information where available. Data can be viewed by covers, reservations, or revenue, and filtered by either booking date or visit date.

This means marketers can:

• Measure the revenue impact of marketing activity — attribution data connects marketing touch points directly to confirmed reservations and revenue, across all booking sources.
• Compare channel performance over time — cover and reservation data can be broken down by marketing channel, campaign, date period, and restaurant to identify which channels consistently drive bookings.
• Assess booking quality by channel — cancellation and no-show data is visible across marketing channels, allowing assessment of demand quality, not only volume.

Data sources

This dashboard draws on two data sources:

• OpenTable reservation data — reservation, cover, and revenue data from OpenTable.
• Distil Tracking data — marketing channel and touchpoint data collected via the Distil tracking code on a brand’s own website.

Reservation sources

OpenTable classifies all reservations by source:

• OpenTable Network — reservations made through the OpenTable platform directly.
• Phone / In-house — reservations created by staff via phone or in-house.
• Walk-in — covers with no prior online touchpoints and no advance reservation.
• Your Network — reservations made through the restaurant group's own OpenTable booking widget, placed on owned channels such as the website or marketing emails.

Your Network represents the booking source over which the most direct marketing control exists. Campaigns can be designed, funded, and optimised specifically to drive reservations through this source.

Once Distil tracking is installed across owned customer touchpoints, marketing attribution becomes available within the dashboard. From this point, marketing activity can be measured in confirmed reservations and revenue, not only in clicks or visits.

Dashboard views

The dashboard is split by Booking Date or Visit Date. Booking date is the OpenTable equivalent of created date. 

Select the preferred date perspective before reviewing data.

• Visit Date — the date the guest is scheduled to dine. Use when analysing performance for specific dining periods, such as seasonal events or public holidays.
• Booking Date — the date the reservation was created (equivalent of created date in OpenTable reporting). Use when assessing how marketing activity has influenced reservation volume and revenue over time.

When analysing performance around a specific dining period — for example, Valentine’s weekend — it is usually most meaningful to view results by Visit Date, as this reflects when guests are actually dining. However, when the objective is to understand how effective marketing has been at driving reservations and revenue, viewing the data by Booking Date often provides clearer insight.

Within each date perspective, the following views are available:

Dashboard Filters

Filters are available in the left-hand panel. Selections apply across all views in the dashboard.

Marketing channel definitions

The second column of each dashboard view displays a breakdown of marketing channel information. Within each booking source, this shows which marketing touchpoints contributed to acquiring covers.

Most channel groups can be expanded to show individual channel detail. Channels within the Referral group are specific to the organisation.

For more details about the specific UTMs categorised into each channel, review the UTMs in Marketing Attribution guide or contact the Distil account team.

UTM tracking and campaign visibility

In order to understand more about UTM usage and the traffic being tracked by Distil, the UTM Usage Dashboard works alongside the Marketing Sales Dashboard and shows the UTM data being received through Distil tracking. 

This can be used to:

1. Confirm which Source, Medium, and Campaign values are being captured.
2. Understand how UTM parameters are mapped to marketing channels.
3. Verify that individual campaigns are correctly tagged.
4. Review tracking coverage at a restaurant level.

For more information, read the Guide to using UTMs in Marketing Attribution. 

Attribution model

The dashboard uses a 90-day linear attribution model. 

When a reservation is made, all marketing touch points recorded in the 90 days prior to the booking share equal credit. No single touchpoint is prioritised; each interaction — including email, paid ad clicks, and social engagement — contributes proportionally.

This provides a balanced view of how marketing channels work together to drive reservations over time.

Data accuracy

Accuracy of the data in this dashboard depends on three factors.

Consistent filter and date settings 

Select either booking date or visit date as the reporting standard and apply the same selection consistently. Apply the same filters in each reporting period to ensure comparability.

Accurate UTM labelling 

Distil uses UTM parameters to assign marketing channel categories to website traffic. Consistent UTM labelling across all marketing materials is required for accurate channel attribution. Refer to how to use UTMs in Marketing Attribution for more information. 

Correct Distil tracking installation 

If the Distil tracking code is not installed correctly, tracking events may not fire and channel data will be incomplete. Refer to the Tracking Setup documentation for installation instructions.