First-touch attribution

Sales credits the closing call, marketing credits the campaign, and an executive credits the event they attended. None of those instincts answers one useful question: what introduced this person to the company. First-touch answers it, and it can rescue a channel that looks weak in a final-click report. Content may look unimportant judged by what happened just before a sale and prove essential judged by what started the conversation.

Its weakness is the mirror image. It ignores everything that happened between the first contact and the sale, so it undervalues the nurturing that closed the deal.

• Capture the first touch and lock it, so a later visit never overwrites the channel that started the relationship. HubSpot's original source field works this way.
• Tag campaign links consistently with UTMs, so the source is recorded in a form that can be reported.
• Segment by outcome, not just volume. A channel can produce many first touches and convert poorly.
• Read it beside last-touch attribution, since one shows what starts a conversation and the other what finishes it.
• Add a "how did you hear about us" field to forms. It catches podcasts, referrals and word of mouth that tracking cannot see.

Every sale is the end of a chain of interactions: an article, an ad, an email, a call. An attribution model decides which of them gets the credit. First-touch gives all of it to the first. If a prospect found the business through a podcast guest appearance and bought five months later after many other contacts, the podcast is credited with the sale.

• Using it alone. It ignores everything after the first contact, so it undervalues the nurturing, sales calls and content that closed the deal. Read it next to last-touch or multi-touch.
• Letting the first touch be overwritten. If a later visit replaces the original source, the report quietly turns into last-touch. Lock the field when it is first set.
• Untagged links. Campaign links without UTMs land in 'direct' and the true source is lost.
• Counting volume instead of outcome. A channel can produce many first touches and few customers. Compare channels by pipeline and revenue.
• Missing the invisible first touch. Podcasts, referrals and word of mouth rarely show up in tracking. A 'how did you hear about us' field on forms catches some of them.
• Using too short a window. In long B2B sales cycles the first touch may be months before the deal. Make sure the attribution window is long enough to include it.