First-Touch refers to the first touchpoint or channel that a user interacted with before converting on your site. Marketing attribution is very useful for understanding how users are interacting with different channels before converting. For marketers, this is useful in valuing marketing channels and understanding customer behaviors.
In this tutorial, learn how to track first-touch attribution in HubSpot.
What is First-Touch Marketing Attribution?
Marketers are responsible for building awareness and getting users to their website to convert to customers. For many marketers, first-touch attribution is a great starting point for giving credit to specific touchpoints.
With creating a First-Touch attribution model, marketers can quickly discern which channels are high-performing and see which channels are providing the most qualified leads.
Knowing where users are engaged early on can help marketers iterate on campaigns, allocate more budget to what’s working and create more relevant content.
An example of First-Touch attribution model can be the following customer journey:
- James searches for pants on Google and clicks through a search result for pants.com. He browses a few sites and finds a pair of pants he likes but doesn’t buy them.
- He continues searching online and finds a men’s clothing forum that mentions the pants and clicks through to pants.com. Still not ready to buy, he mouses over to the exit box and see a pop-up for 15% if you sign up for the newsletter. He signs up for the newsletter.
- A few days later James gets an email from pants.com and clicks through from the email and buys the pants.
In the above example, the conversion credit would go the the organic search (Google), rather than the forum (referral) or the email.
How to Track First-Touch Attribution in Hubspot
Hubspot allows users to create attribute reports within the marketing automation platform. To create a first-touch attribution report in Hubspot, follow these steps:
- In Hubspot, go to Reports > Reports Home
- Click the ‘Create a new report’ button
- A pop-up modal will appear prompting you to choose a report type. Choose Attribution Report
- While Hubspot will give you a few options of attribution report types, let’s choose Start from Scratch, then click Create Report
- Start building your report by choosing a group of contact to report on, a conversion type and time period, interacting score or source (in our case, first-touch)
- Save your report
- On the next page, be sure to title your report
- View and share your report
Conclusion
First-Touch marketing attribution is important for assigning credit to the first-seen content or interaction with your site. For many marketers, this is where awareness and Top of the Funnel meet, so it makes sense that First-Touch attribution is a widely used model.