One of the great things about Marketo Measure is that it tracks someone’s true first touch with your organization. No, not their conversion point… but the thing that happened prior to that.
Now, sometimes the first touch and their conversion point happen simultaneously. Think about what happens when our very first interaction with someone is at a conference. That’s our introduction, and we scan their badge at the booth and enter them into our database. In that scenario first touch and conversion are the same thing. This can also happen online. Imagine a scenario where someone googles something… they click on your website… and fill out a form all in one session, which happens to be their first time on the website. In this case the first touch and the conversion point are the same thing.
But sometimes, the first touch and conversion point are different. Imagine again the same scenario online: someone comes to your website for the first time, but they don’t fill out a form. Then, a day later, or a week later, or three months later, they come back to the website and fill out a form. In that scenario, the first touch and the conversion point are different.
In this second scenario–where first touch and conversion are separate sessions–marketing automation systems do a very poor job of tracking the first touch. They’ll show you what it is. But, it’s typically not something that is reportable or attributable.
This is one of the clear advantages of having a marketing attribution system, such as Marketo Measure, in your tech stack. It will not only show you that the first touch was, for example, Paid Search… but it will also tell you the campaign name, ad group name, keyword, and more. And it does it in a way that is imminently reportable and attributable. This is great!!
The missing piece.
However, there’s one area that doesn’t get surfaced, and that is what this article is all about. The area that doesn’t get surfaced is the stuff that happens between the first touch and the conversion point.
So, let’s reimagine scenario two there. We’ll create an outline of everything that happened from first touch to conversion.
- March 1, 2024 – Person visits website via Paid Search but doesn’t fill out form – FIRST TOUCH
- March 7, 2024 – Person visits website via Organic Search but doesn’t fill out form – NOT SURFACED
- March 14, 2024 – Person visits website via Direct traffic but doesn’t fill out form – NOT SURFACED
- March 21, 2024 – Person visits website via Organic Search and does fill out form – CONVERSION POINT
In the above scenario, the first and fourth interactions are surfaced as Marketo Measure Touchpoints, but the 2nd and 3rd are not surfaced as Marketo Measure Touchpoints.
Now, I know what you’re thinking… “I need to know that those two touchpoints happened, because I need to see the journey/path so that we can optimize that. And, we need to make sure those touchpoints get credit when/if it turns into an opportunity.” And, I can see your point. But, I also disagree.
The point behind hiding these.
One of the main reasons why attribution is hard is because for many orgs, their data isn’t clean, it’s a mix of clean and muddy. In that mix of clean and muddy data are things that matter, things that don’t matter at all, and things that don’t matter nearly as much as others.
Well, that’s the conscious decision that Marketo Measure has made here to not surface the two hidden touchpoints. Because quite frankly, neither one those two touchpoints is as significant in the grand scheme of things, as touchpoint #1 and #4… the first touch and the conversion point, respectively.
And here’s the thing… those two touchpoints, #1 and #4 are far more important than #2 and #3. Because they represent the thing that caused someone to come to your website for the first time, and the thing that made them want to give you their info for the first time. That’s BIG.
The other two… not so big. Not so important.
So, the point here is that Marketo Measure is helping to clear away the mud and help you focus only on the most impactful and most important things. It doesn’t give you everything, because not everything is important. And, they’re trying to help you from going down rabbit holes that are a waste of time, energy, money and effort.
But, I want them anyway.
With all of that being said, you want those touchpoints anyway. You’re going to find the value in them. That’s fine… you can get them.
Even though Marketo Measure doesn’t pass them into your CRM as touchpoints, or surface them in the in-platform reporting suite, it still tracks them. It still knows that they came to the website and all of the metadata about that visit. So, you can still get access to that data.
Access to those touchpoints, and to that data, comes through the Marketo Measure Data Warehouse solution. It’s simply a read-only Snowflake database that gives you access to any and all web visits that have happened in a person’s history, regardless of its relative importance or impact.
With that data, you can do more advanced analysis that includes those less significant touchpoints and web visits.
That being said… having done this a lot… we recommend that you identify specific use cases, or specific questions that you want to answer with this data, before making the plunge. This more muddy data is so much more difficult to sift through to find insights and anything actionable.
