What finally made a customer convert? That’s the big question that attribution models and analytics data aim to answer, helping marketing teams identify which touchpoints worked along the buyer’s journey. With multiple attribution models available, let’s see if last-touch attribution is the right one for your business.
Defining Last-Touch Attribution
When your team analyzes their marketing efficacy, they look to the touchpoints along the buyer’s journey that helped move the customer to the next step. The final place your prospect interacts with your business is their “last touch” before a sale, so last-touch attribution credits that interaction with the sale. For example, the last touch might be downloading a rate card or brochure from your website, or seeing an ad on social media.
How Does the Last-Touch Attribution Model Assign Credit for Conversions?
Other attribution models break down percentages, assigning a certain amount of credit to the interaction for each touchpoint. However, with last-touch attribution, 100% of the credit is given to the last touch, or the last engagement the potential customer had with the business.
What Are the Key Characteristics and Assumptions of This Model?
Last-touch attribution is based on a few key concepts, which can help you determine if it aligns with your brand’s philosophies and customer journey:
- The last touchpoint is the biggest and most important factor in the sale.
- Previous touchpoints warm up a prospect to the idea of purchasing, but don’t hold too much purchase power: Rather, they are increasing awareness of the company.
- People make decisions impulsively, often with just one click, which happens in that last touchpoint.
- The entire customer journey doesn’t have to be long, elaborate, or complicated.
Advantages of Last-Touch Attribution
In What Scenarios Might Last-Touch Attribution Be a Suitable Model?
If you’re new to attribution models, last-touch attribution is one of the simplest and easiest to understand and can serve as an excellent starting point for evaluating the customer experience. This model is also ideal if you’re looking to understand what converted the customer to action, and can provide valuable insight to help drive future conversions.
How Can Last-Touch Attribution Help in Quickly Identifying the Last Marketing Effort Before a Conversion?
Last-touch attribution can quickly show you the data on exactly what converted customers — because it doesn’t share attribution with any other touchpoints, there’s little math involved in assigning credit. In addition, this model eliminates all of the leads that didn’t convert along the way, just focusing on the ones that did. That can help you narrow your research down to people who said “yes” and ultimately became customers, versus those who said “maybe” or “probably” along the journey, but didn’t take the final steps to make a purchase.
Disadvantages and Limitations of Last-Touch Attribution
How Does Last-Touch Attribution Potentially Undervalue Earlier Touchpoints and Their Influence?
The last-touch attribution model has its flaws, particularly in not recognizing earlier touchpoints’ role in the customer journey. Since marketing is often a series of touchpoints, removing those first relationship-building impressions can undervalue the work that has gone into capturing a prospect’s attention at the outset. In short, it can be simplistic to assume the conversion that took place resulted entirely due to the last touch.
Can Last-Touch Attribution Lead to Misallocation of Marketing Budget and Resources?
Marketing teams should be aware that the most simple strategy isn’t always the best one. If you’re using a last-touch attribution model and placing all of your resources into that final conversion metric, you might overspend on the wrong touchpoint. While the final ad inside an offer that really pushes people to convert can be flashy and exciting, it doesn’t replace building trust with leads through multiple touchpoints leading up to it — a sometimes slow and deliberate process that’s just as worthy of budget and resources.
Are There Specific Types of Conversions Where Last-Touch Is Particularly Misleading?
Longer and more complex buying journeys, or products and services that are expensive or involve a long-term engagement with your company, might not be best choices for last-touch attribution. That’s because lead nurturing is an essential part of these more involved buyer’s journeys, including multiple interactions like demos or discovery calls, that prepare a lead for the opportunity at that last touchpoint.
Additionally, some types of buyer journeys involve multiple platforms, such as thought leadership content, social media ads, blogs or webinars, product or service demos, and more, so only crediting a retargeting ad at the end of all that investment is incorrect. In addition, last-touch attribution doesn’t reflect the impact of each of those investments in lead nurturing.
Alternatives to Last-Touch Attribution
What Are Some Common Alternative Attribution Models?
If you find that the last-touch attribution model isn’t the best fit, there are several alternatives, including:
- First-touch attribution: All credit for the conversion goes to the first touchpoint, such as the first ad someone clicks on, or the first email they open.
- Linear attribution: All touchpoints play an equal role in the customer journey, including the first and last.
- Time-decay: Helpful for businesses with slower sales cycles, this attribution model emphasizes recent and bottom-of-the funnel interactions.
- Lead conversion: If you’re looking to optimize your advertising budget, this model gives priority and credit to “milestones” along the way, and focuses on the channels that turn leads into customers.
- Position-based: This model credits all touchpoints, but allocates a bit more credit to the beginning and end of the journey.
When Might It Be More Appropriate to Use a Different Attribution Model?
When determining the best attribution model for your marketing, it’s important to remember your goals. While the overall aim is to convert the prospect, the right attribution model can help you better understand your customers and what leads them to action — this knowledge can help you make better use of your marketing budget and resources for campaigns.
Key Takeaways
Last-touch attribution is a framework for crediting the final part of the customer journey with conversion. It is not always a complete picture of all the efforts that go into a full customer journey ahead of conversion, but can be a useful metric when determining resources to allocate to final touchpoints.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Is last-touch attribution ever the best model to use?
Last-touch attribution can be helpful if you’re looking for a simple attribution model and one with fewer errors. It can also be helpful in exceptionally simple marketing campaigns where there aren’t many touchpoints, and most of your proven value to leads is in the last touchpoint anyway.
How does last-touch attribution compare to multi-touch attribution?
Last-touch attribution focuses on a single touchpoint within the buyer’s journey, whereas multi-touch attribution examines the entire action process to determine which touchpoint led to the conversion. Several attribution models, such as position-based or lead conversion, are considered multi-touch because they credit multiple touchpoints with conversion.
What are the implications of using only last-touch for reporting?
While last-touch attribution is generally less prone to errors in comparison to attribution models that incorporate several touchpoints, last-touch eliminates the overall buyer’s journey and other factors that may have led to the customer’s conversion. It can ignore certain marketing touchpoints, such as TV ads, that might not be as easily measurable for conversion as an email newsletter or online ad.
How can I implement last-touch attribution in my analytics platform?
First, determine if your analytics platform’s default is last-touch attribution, as is sometimes the case. From there, you can often choose the type of attribution you want to use in settings. For some, you might need to manually assign credit as percentages, or otherwise follow the prompts to implement the attribution model you prefer.
