--- title: Marketing Attribution slug: rxEl-marketing-attribution docTags: createdAt: 2024-06-25T15:13:52.651Z --- # Introduction Marketing attribution is the process of figuring out which marketing touchpoints—like ads, email campaigns, or social media posts —contributed to a customer taking a specific action, such as making a purchase. Essentially, marketing attribution is a critical piece of the toolkit for connecting customer actions (like ad clicks and email opens) to customer outcomes (like revenue and retention). Think of it as giving credit where credit is due: if a customer sees a Facebook ad, then opens an email, and finally clicks a Google search ad before buying, attribution helps determine how much each of those steps mattered in the path to the customer’s purchase. It’s foundational for making smarter, data-backed decisions that move the needle for your business. # Chord’s Methodology While understanding marketing attribution helps you spend smarter and grow faster, it can also be tough to analyze because people are unpredictable, their purchase journeys are messy, and your tools don’t always talk to each other cleanly. Chord makes attribution not only possible, but practical—giving you the tools to go from reactive reporting to proactive growth strategy. It's built to make analysts like you more confident, efficient, and impactful. Below you will find additional information on Chord’s methodology behind marketing attribution. ## User Stitching User stitching is the identity resolution process of assigning an anonymous ID, or many anonymous IDs, to a user ID for all events recorded for a given user. This is becoming increasingly challenging in a world where users navigate websites from various devices and across multiple sessions, both before and after each purchase. Once user information, such as user ID or email, is known for a given touchpoint, the user can be assigned to the anonymous ID throughout time to understand all of the events and sessions before and after purchase(s). This process will be repeated for all known anonymous IDs and then aggregated to have one or many anonymous IDs to one user ID combination for a user's history. Partitioning by user\_id provides a more accurate attribution and allows a better view of users across various devices and sessions. ## Attribution Points There are many different types of attribution methodologies that marketers can leverage. Chord supports four different attribution points that you can use as part of your analysis. Note: Which attribution point system you use will depend on which touchpoint your business considers to be the most important. The attribution point systems are: - **First-Touch:** The first session gets 100% of the attribution points. - Tip: If you’re focused on reporting on first-touch attribution, you will want to leverage this attribution point system. - **Last-Touch:** The last session gets 100% of the attribution points. - **Linear:** All sessions get assigned an equal portion of the attribution points. - Tip: If you’re focused on multi-touch attribution and each touchpoint is valuable to your analysis, leverage this point system to assign equal weight to all of your touchpoints. - **40-20-40 (Forty-Twenty-Forty):** The first and last sessions each get assigned 40% of the attribution points, and the sessions in-between get an equal portion of the remaining 20%. - Note: For users with only one session, that session gets all the points. If a user has two sessions, there’s a 50/50 split between the sessions. Here’s an example of how these attribution points can be used in your analysis for a single customer: ![](https://api.archbee.com/api/optimize/VPxpEoMPxDsnmxOyjOdWV-vmg8V81u8d5Ex6hfDlKy7-20250625-194138.png) ### Further examples Brands will be interested in first-touch and multi-touch attribution. Here are some examples that may help illustrate the differences: **First-Touch Attribution** - **What it does**: Gives 100% of the credit to the *first* marketing interaction that brought a user to your brand. - **Focus**: *Customer acquisition.* - **Example**: If someone saw a TikTok ad, then later clicked an email and made a purchase, first-touch attribution credits the TikTok ad. **Multi-Touch Attribution** - **What it does**: Distributes credit across *multiple touchpoints* a customer interacts with before converting. - **Focus**: *The entire journey.* - **Example**: That same customer’s TikTok ad, email click, and final purchase via a paid search ad might each get a portion of the credit (based on the attribution point you choose). ## Channel Mapping Chord assigns a referring channel category to each session. :::hint{type="info"} Note that we extract sources and mediums from Chord's eventing, specifically the landing page UTM parameters. For sessions with no UTMs, we infer the source and medium from the referring URL whenever possible. ::: We are able to assign all sessions to one of the following categories when mapping source-medium pairs with channels: - **Paid search:** Traffic driven by paid ads on search engines (like Google Ads or Bing Ads). This includes search results labeled as “sponsored” or “ad.” - **Organic search:** Traffic that comes from unpaid search engine results. These are links users click after typing a query, without seeing or clicking an ad. - **Paid social:** Traffic from paid ads on social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, or Snapchat. - **Organic social:** Traffic from unpaid posts, shares, or profile links on social media platforms. - **Email:** Traffic from marketing emails sent to your list—newsletters, promotions, post-purchase messages, etc. - **SMS:** Traffic from text message marketing—includes promotions, order updates with links, or personalized offers sent via SMS. - **Direct:** Traffic from users who type your URL directly into their browser or access your site via a bookmark. - **Affiliate:** Traffic from third-party websites promoting your products in exchange for a commission on referred sales. - **Other:** A mapping for which the combinations of variables (source, medium, GCLID, referrer) have at least one value but is unknown as to which channel this combination should be mapped. Here’s an example of an aggregated channel-level view of multi-touch attribution: ![](https://api.archbee.com/api/optimize/VPxpEoMPxDsnmxOyjOdWV-OacLGp66sV3Nq3aR19AAk-20250625-194300.png) While Chord assigns a default channel mapping, customers can choose to create their own channel mappings through Chord's Amplifications feature to override Chord's default logic. # User Attribution vs. Order Attribution on Chord Chord provides two different models for you to start digging into your rich attribution data. One focuses on analysis at the User (customer) level and the other centers around Order-level data. Read on for additional information about each of these models. ## User Attribution :::hint{type="info"} **Note:** The **Marketing Attribution - User Attribution Explore** was previously called **Marketing Attribution Explore**. ::: - **What it does**: We attribute the revenue metrics based on when a user converts (i.e. makes a purchase). - For more information, view our [User Attribution documentation](https://docs.chord.co/user-attribution-on-chord). ## Order Attribution :::hint{type="info"} **Note: **The **Marketing Attribution - Order Attribution Explore** is a NEW attribution Explore. ::: - **What it does**: We assign an attribution value based on every session before a purchase. The key difference here us that we identify the session when the user makes their first purchase and then we repeat the attribution exercise with every session thereafter. - For more information, view our [Order Attribution documentation](https://docs.chord.co/order-attribution-on-chord). ## User vs. Order Attribution Comparison Here’s an example highlighting the differences in methodology for the two Explores: ![](https://api.archbee.com/api/optimize/VPxpEoMPxDsnmxOyjOdWV-jc79KdX-SQmE6zLJwewrq-20250625-194419.png)