First touch attribution is the first time an inbound contact came into contact with your brand, and specifically how they did it. It's done by using tracked links (UTM standard) that tell Upsales where the link was clicked.

Need to create UTM links?  Here's how

This means you can see which channels drive conversions so you can focus your marketing efforts on the most popular sources.

To get the most out of First Touch, use Upsales Insights and the First Touch Dashboard to get analytics and reports on your digital touchpoints

This article covers:

• First touch channels
• Accessing the first touch dashboard
  • Filtering attribution based on time periods
  • First touch attribution overview
    • Table overview:
    • Graph overview:
• Accessing first touch on the Contact Card

First touch channels

First touch is the first registered inbound touchpoint for any contact. It shows where your contacts originated. You can see which channels drive conversions, so you can adjust your marketing efforts.

As an example, a common first touch is from organic or paid searches on Google.

Create a Google ad and the link you display should be a tracked link using the UTM standard. Upsales will then register this and show it inside Upsales:

First touch types:

• Organic search: Visits from search engines (for example Google, Bing)
• Referral: Visits from other websites
• Social media: Visits from social media sites (for example Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter)
• Paid search: Visits from pay-per-click (PPC) ads.
• Paid social media: Visits from paid social media ad campaigns
• Direct traffic: Visits from users reaching your site by directly typing in a URL.
• Other campaign: UTM lead source that doesn't fit any of the above channels
• Email campaigns: Visits from links in your Upsales email campaigns
• Manually created: Contacts added in Upsales manually, by import or from the prospecting extension
• Created when submitting a ticket and Created via ticket form: Contacts created from a support ticket

Where to view this data

• Aggregated: In your analytics dashboard
• Individually: in an Upsales contact card 

A contact you add yourself gets the first touch type Manually created. Phone calls and one-to-one emails are not registered as a first touch.

Accessing the first touch attribution dashboard

The first touch dashboard gives you a campaign overview, with data on your most popular touchpoints. It helps you identify strengths and weaknesses in your marketing efforts, and see which channels actually drive conversions.

The first touch dashboard is part of Upsales Insights, which requires the Insights add-on.

To access the first touch dashboard, follow these steps:

1. Click Analytics → Upsales Insights and click the First touch attribution link:
   
   
    

Filtering attribution based on time periods

To filter the data based on dates:

1. Click the current filter and adjust the criteria (Optional: To add multiple time range criteria click the + button) and click Run:
   
   
    

First touch attribution overview

The first touch attribution window allows you to review the number of contacts that have been acquired based on each type of marketing effort and how they have progressed through the sales journey. 

Table overview:

• First touch type column: Shows how many contacts registered with each first touch source, or marketing effort.
• Journey columns: (Disqualified, Lost, ...Total) Shows the number of contacts that registered with each first touch type and where they are in the sales journey now:

Graph overview:

"Out of all sales, how much was generated from each first touch type?" The graph is a visual display of aggregated data and the percentage of sales each touch type generated. This gives you a quick understanding of which marketing efforts are most effective.

Accessing first touch on the Contact Card

Because opportunities and sales start with an individual contact, it is important to view that contact's sales journey, where the journey started, and how it progresses.

To access first touch analytics on a contact card, follow these steps:

1. Click the Sales & CRM → Companies & contacts → Contacts:
   
   
   
    
2. Click a contact:
   
   
    
3. Locate the first touch section in the left sidebar.
   
    
4. First touch displays:
   • The first touch type and its source
   • Date
   • Click Show more to see the Search term (Organic search, Paid search), Campaign name (Social media, Paid social media) or Website link (Referral)
     
     

Merging two contacts with first touch attributes 

When you merge two contacts, the contact you keep retains its own first touch. The first touch of the other contact is not carried over.