What is Multi-Touch Attribution

Multi-Touch Attribution Definition

Multi-touch attribution is a kind of marketing attribution that seeks to credit lead generation across multiple campaigns.

Unlike first-touch attribution (credit is given to the first campaign a lead engaged with before conversion) or last-touch attribution (credit is given to the last campaign), the goal of multi-touch attribution is to capture a more complete picture of a lead’s progress through the initial stages of the buying cycle by splitting conversion credit between multiple campaigns based on a predetermined rule set or statistical model.

Multi-Touch Attribution Example

A business which operates multiple online advertising campaigns wishes to gain a better idea of the path a lead follows before conversion. The company decides to switch from first-touch attribution to multi-touch attribution in the hopes of gaining better visibility of funnel engagement.

Using tracking software, the business is able to “follow” the lead between multiple campaigns, even if those campaigns are on different channels—for example, a lead might interact with both a Google Adwords campaign and an email marketing campaign at some point along the buying cycle. First-touch attribution might only credit the Google Adwords campaign as being responsible for the lead’s ultimate conversion later on, when in reality a portion of the credit (perhaps significantly so) should be attributed to the email marketing campaign.

Why is Multi-Touch Attribution Important in Strategic Marketing?

Customer Experience: Multi-touch attribution can improve customer experience because it provides businesses with additional data that might enable them to improve the sales funnel, better meeting the expectations of prospects.
Lead Generation: Lead generation can be sometimes greatly enhanced by multi-touch attribution; rather than crediting only the first or last touch points, multi-touch attribution can reveal which campaigns are the “heavy lifters,” often also allowing marketers to identify campaigns which need improvement.