---
title: "No-show and cancellation rate by source | Cometly Academy"
description: "When SDRs and AEs say 'Meta leads never show up' or 'LinkedIn brings the best meetings,' they’re reporting on no-show rate by source. Cometly turns that anecdote into a report by tracking no-shows and cancellations as their own events and grouping them by traffic source."
source: "https://www.cometly.com/academy/no-show-rate-by-source"
---

# No-show and cancellation rate by source

The metric your AEs already track in their head.

- Module 02: Sales-Led Growth Reports
- Lesson: 2.7
- Track: SLG
- Format: Report
- Read time: 6 min

When SDRs and AEs say 'Meta leads never show up' or 'LinkedIn brings the best meetings,' they’re reporting on no-show rate by source. Cometly turns that anecdote into a report by tracking no-shows and cancellations as their own events and grouping them by traffic source.

## Key takeaways

- Create No-Show and Cancellation events from your scheduling tool (Calendly, Chili Piper, OnceHub)
- Track them on the same source as the original Demo Booked event
- Surface no-show rate as a column on the source-funnel report
- Use the data to set channel-specific qualification rules in your CRM
- Pair high no-show channels with stronger pre-call sequences before scaling spend

No-show rate is the unglamorous metric that quietly determines whether a paid channel is profitable. A 50% no-show rate doubles your effective Cost-per-Demo and quietly destroys channel economics — and the only way to surface it is to track it explicitly.

## Why it matters

Your AEs already know which channels ghost. Translating that intuition into a report turns it from a complaint into a budget decision. Once you can see no-show rate by source in the same table as Cost-per-Demo, you can rank channels by Cost-per-Attended-Demo — which is the number that actually predicts pipeline.

## Wiring the events

Most schedulers fire webhooks for cancellations, no-shows, and reschedules. Calendly has them out of the box; Chili Piper and HubSpot Meetings expose them via their integrations. Create one Cometly event per signal: Demo Cancelled, Demo Rescheduled, Demo No-Show.

Cometly attaches each event back to the original visitor identity, so the source attribution carries through from the ad click to the no-show event automatically.

## Acting on the report

The most common interventions for high-no-show channels are: shorter SLAs to the meeting (book it within 7 days, not 21), a confirmation email + SMS sequence, a 5-minute pre-call survey to filter out tire-kickers, and a 15-minute prep call before the longer demo.

If a channel’s no-show rate stays above 40% after those interventions, the channel is probably attracting the wrong audience. Either narrow the targeting or move the optimization event deeper in the funnel.

- No-Show event — fires when the meeting time passes without attendance
- Cancellation event — fires when the invitee cancels
- Reschedule event — fires when the invitee reschedules (optional)
- Pair with Demo Attended for a complete picture of meeting outcomes

## Common pitfalls

### Not separating no-shows from cancellations

These have different causes — fatigue vs. fit — and different fixes. Track them as separate events.

### Reporting only at the channel level

Drill down to campaign and creative. The no-show rate is often driven by a specific creative or audience, not the whole channel.

### Scaling a channel before fixing the no-show problem

Adding budget to a 50% no-show channel just doubles your wasted spend. Fix the funnel first.