Multi-touch attribution (MTA) model is a great way to determine how effective different customers’ touchpoints and campaigns are and optimize them for your business.
Due to growing competition, it has become difficult to track buyer journeys and optimize them.
But if you can’t pay attention to small details, it can cast big impacts on your bottom line.
Thanks to MTA, the process is now easier.
In this article, I’ll dive deeper into MTA, how to implement multi-touch attribution, and its benefits and types.
Let’s start!
What Is Multi-Touch Attribution?
Multi-touch attribution (MTA) is a technique to measure the most effective customer touchpoint, marketing strategy, or campaign that actually led a visitor to become a customer.
In a buyer’s journey, there could be multiple touchpoints before they decide to become your consumer. These touchpoints could be:
- TV ads
- banner ads
- social media ads
- product recommendations by influencers on YouTube and social media
- blogs and articles on search engines featuring products and services, and more
In order to measure MTA, you will need to track and assess all the customer touchpoints in their journey, right from when they first came to know your company or products to when they became a consumer or bought your products or services.
You will then need to analyze the values and impacts of all those touchpoints separately and assign credit to each one of them. This will help you find out the best one(s) that can be attributed to the conversion, which can be a sale, signing up for a free trial, opting for a demo, subscribing to a newsletter, etc.
Measuring MTA for each touchpoint will help you understand which ones are driving conversions working and the ones are not. This way, you can focus more on profiting channels and shift away from ineffective channels. This helps enhance customer experiences, conversion rates, and revenue while minimizing resource waste.
Example: Suppose someone is looking for a handbag for travel. They did some research on Google to see a few bags. They ignored them and moved on. After a while, they see a targeted ad on Instagram, which caught their attention. They click the link to check out the website offering travel handbags. Next, they receive an email with some additional offers. This again impresses the buyer and prompts them to buy the handbag.
Here, the Instagram ad, website, and promotional email were the touchpoints that paved the way for the sale.
Multi-Touch vs Single-Touch Attribution Models
| Multi-touch attribution | Single-touch attribution |
|---|---|
| Giving credits to all those customer touchpoints that led to a conversion | Giving credits to a single touchpoint, commonly the first or last interaction of a person before the conversion |
| Linear, time decay, u-shaped, w-shaped, full-path, and custom multi-touch attribution | First-touch and last touch single attribution |
| Gives a full picture of your entire marketing efforts and their performance Helps understand the complete customer journey |
Understanding this model is easy for everyone with varying skills Easy to implement in your marketing strategy |
| Hard to understand and implement Depends on accurate data analytics |
Tracking the performance of the touchpoint that actually led to a conversion is challenging |
Role of MTA Model
Mapping a customer’s journey is a complex process consisting of multiple touchpoints or channels contributing to a sale. Here’s what MTA can do for your business:
- MTA provides an in-depth idea of your complete marketing efforts and how they are paying off. This will help you determine what’s working and what doesn’t and improve accordingly.
- With MTA, you can figure out customer needs, preferences, etc., and delight them with personalized offerings.
- MTA helps in effective budgeting so you can focus more on profitable channels and land better opportunities. This also enhances ROI.
- You will be able to make better decisions based on data and facts.
Popular Multi-touch Attribution Models
Linear MTA
In Linear MTA, you will need to attribute equal credits to each touchpoint in a buyer’s journey that has resulted in a conversion.
This type of multi-touch attribution is also called the even weighting model. It takes into account all the touchpoints that have contributed to a conversion, unlike single-touch MTA, not ignoring anything even if its impact is smaller.
However, this means the touchpoints that have a higher contribution to a sale won’t be given exact credits as linear MTA involves crediting evenly to every channel, which might not be fair.
Example
Suppose a customer viewed an Instagram ad of a lipstick and liked it. They again found it on Sephora and decided to purchase it from there. So, both touchpoints must get 50-50 credits. But if you add other touchpoints like a billboard ad, a TV ad, etc., you will need to give equal credits to these channels, too, even though the customer wasn’t that impacted by the TV ad.
Benefits
- An advanced approach to giving credits
- Easier to implement
- Helps understand complete customer journeys across multiple channels
- Great for small companies and startups with fewer distribution channels or historical data
Limitations
- Doesn’t explain the complete story of a given conversion
- Can’t measure the channel with maximum impact
- Improper crediting and resource allocation
Who uses it
Linear MTA is used by new marketers who don’t completely understand customer journeys in different channels. Also, businesses that find their customer journeys simpler and shorter with just a few channels use this MTA.
Time Decay MTA
In time decay MTA, you will give more credits to those touchpoints in a buyer’s journey that are closer to a given conversion or the bottom of a sales funnel, even if other parts have been impacted significantly.
This means time decay MTA doesn’t value much to touchpoints that have made a customer aware of a given product or service they end up buying. It recognizes those clearly visible, last channels before the conversion happened.
Overall, in this MTA, the credit percentage gradually increases towards the last touchpoint.
Example
In the previous example, three touchpoints influenced a person to buy a handbag from a given brand – an Instagram ad, an official website, and a targeted email with a promotion. The person doesn’t buy the bag until they receive the promotional email. This means time decay MTA will attribute promotional emails the highest credits while the website and ad will be given lesser credits respectively.
Benefits
- Detects the final touchpoint that influenced a person to conversion
- Doesn’t completely ignore other touchpoints
- Tells the complete story of the customer journey and what impressed them the most
Limitations
- Doesn’t credit middle and top touchpoints in a sales funnel
- Short-sighted process
- Not suitable for complex or longer sales cycles
Who uses it
Many businesses consider using time decay MTA for short-term or time-bound marketing campaigns. This model is also useful when you can’t completely map interactions closer to a given conversion.
U-Shaped MTA
In the U-shaped multi-touch attribution model, you will need to give more credit to the first and last touchpoints in a buyer’s journey and less credit to other touchpoints that come between.
Many also call this model the “bathtub model” due to its shape when you map the impacts in a 2D graph. Generally, U-shaped MTA follows the 40-20-40 rule:
- 40% credits to the first touchpoint
- 20% credits to all the other touchpoints combined that fall between the first and last touchpoints
- 40% credits to the last touchpoint
This MTA recognizes the fact that different touchpoints have different impacts on the customers. It also realizes that customer awareness is one of the most important touchpoints, without which a visitor may never have become your customer.
Example
In the handbag example, 40% credits will be given each to the Instagram ad (first touchpoint) and the promotional email (last touchpoint). Other touchpoints in between – website visits, YouTube recommendations, other social media ads, etc. will get 20% credits combined.
Benefits
- Helps in mapping how the customer became aware of your offerings or brand and what made them convert
- Recognizes that some touchpoints impact more than others
- Helps you allocate resources to more valuable channels
Limitations
- Doesn’t value much to the middle part of the sales funnel
- Attributes the first and last touchpoints equally, which might not be true always since impacts vary
Who uses it
U-shaped MTA is useful to businesses with a lot of touchpoints and longer sales cycles. This is also handy for marketers who want to figure out lead generation sources and/or deal with finalizing moments. Choose it if you decide to focus on the first and last touchpoints more and their impacts.
W-Shaped MTA
In W-shaped multi-touch attribution, you will need to give most credits (30% each) to the first, middle, and final/last customer touchpoints. This means that the remaining 10% will be credited to other interactions in a buyer’s journey of becoming a customer.
Example
Suppose you are looking for a travel handbag, and you became aware of a product and brand through a Google search. Then, you saw some TV ads and banners and visited their website. Next, you saw a targeted ad on Instagram and got interested in the product more.
You still did not make the purchase, but you kept on interacting with their social media account and occasionally checking their website. One fine day, you received an email with some exciting promotions going on, and you finally decided to purchase the bag.
In this scenario, the Google search, the targeted Instagram ad, and the promotional email will be given 30% credits each. TV ads, the website, and banners will be given the remaining 10% attribution combined.
Benefits
- Helps in figuring out the channel that directly led to the sale or what attracted them to your brand at first.
Limitations
- Can sometimes be difficult to implement when there’s no complete clarity about the customer journey
Who uses it
It’s useful for marketers or businesses wanting to find out the most profitable channels that attract customers, boost their interest in a product, convert them into customers, and allocate resources effectively.
Full Path MTA
In full path MTA, you will give 22.5% credits each to the first touchpoint, opportunity creation, lead creation, and final touchpoint before the sale. The remaining 10% will be given to others in between.
This is an advanced MTA model similar to a W-shaped MTA but with an added or fourth touchpoint – lead creation. Lead creation refers to the moment when you realize a visitor has become a quality lead.
Example
In the above example, the customer is exposed to social media channels like the Twitter page of the brand selling handbags after finding them through a Google search. They check out the band’s social media pages and follow it. This is lead generation. Let’s take the rest of the journey the same as above.
In this case, 22.5% credits will be given each to Google search (first touchpoint), Twitter page (lead generation), Instagram ad (opportunity creation), and promotional email (final touchpoint). The remaining 10% credits will be given to TV ads, banners, and the website combined.
Benefit
- Insights on the complete customer journey
Limitations
- Can be difficult to implement when there’s a lack of clarity
Who uses it
Marketers and businesses who want to know about lead generation sources and optimize sales processes can use this model.
Custom MTA Model
Organizations can create their own MTA model by combining different multi-touch attribution features based on their business needs. Such MTA models are called custom MTAs.
You will determine what touchpoint had the greatest impact on a sale and credit them accordingly using data and insights.
Benefits
- Flexibility
- Proper attribution without ignoring the contribution of any touchpoints
Limitations
- Complex to implement
- Needs greater expertise
Who Uses It
If you want to showcase your marketing strategy’s unique points and think that a given MTA is not a good fit, you can define your own custom rules and create a suitable MTA for you.
How to Implement MTA
Collect and Analyze Data
Collect the data related to your customers’ buying journeys. You can also use some reporting and visualization tools to analyze the data and its impact on your business.
You might want to track conversion data such as the total number of sales or conversions in a quarter or month, ad clicks, website visits, etc; social media interactions; number of campaigns running and their performance, number of channels you are active on, and so on.
You can either do it manually or automate the process and bring better efficiency using modern tools such as marketing analytics software, CRM integrations, UTMs, JavaScript tracking, and more.
Select a Suitable MTA
Choose the MTA model that is suitable for your business and aligns with your goals.
For this, consider factors like types and number of campaigns, whether your sales cycle is long or short, number of channels you opt for marketing, and so on. You should also analyze the typical number of touchpoints in your customers’ buying journeys.
Determine Credits
Once you opt for an MTA, start determining the credits for customer touchpoints. Work with your team consisting of data analysts and other stakeholders and use efficient tools like advanced analytics platforms for complex touchpoints.
Optimize Your Strategy
Analyze all the attributions to garner useful metrics and insights that you can use to optimize your marketing and sales strategies. This will in turn, help you enhance your ROI and customer experience.
Keep on testing and validating attributions for your use cases. This will help you determine which strategies are working and the ones need some more effort in order to improve your bottom line and customer satisfaction.
Case Study
The blend is a data science solution provider that helped a 2.8 billion dollar hospitality client reduce costs and enhance conversions with the help of a multi-touch attribution model. MTA provided the client with detailed data on their customer journeys with different touchpoints, which helped them optimize their strategies and register growth.
FAQs
What is a multi-touch attribution model?
Multi-touch attribution model is a concept of attributing or crediting some value to different touchpoints in a buyer’s journey to understand their impact on a given conversion.
What are the different MTA models?
– Linear
– Time decay
– W-shaped
– U-shaped
– Full path
– Custom models
What is the difference between MTA and MMM?
MTA provides comprehensive details on each campaign while marketing mix modeling (MMM) provides an overall idea of your marketing strategy’s impact.
Final Words
I hope this article on multi-touch attribution (MTA) helps you understand the overall concept, its benefits, and different types so you can choose the best one based on your business needs and goals.
