What Is Multi-Touch Attribution (and How to Track It)

When it comes to multifamily marketing, it's not always a clear path from an interested resident to a signed lease. Did someone:

• Convert after seeing a PPC ad that leads to a tour?
• Come by the leasing office after visiting a friend's unit in your community?
• Called your office after holding onto a flier about lease specials for months?

Instead of guessing where new residents are coming from, you can measure it all with multi-touch attribution.

Multi-touch attribution takes all of the touchpoints on the customer journey into consideration to help determine your marketing's effectiveness.

Some studies show that 75% of companies are using a multi-touch attribution model to measure marketing performance.

The insights you gain help shape your campaigns and maximize your time and resources.

So What's the Difference Between First Touch, Last Touch, and Multi-Attribution?

If you're not sure if you're already using attribution models and how it all works, here's the breakdown:

First-Touch Attribution

Gives full credit to the first marketing touchpoint before a conversion, which could be helpful in your top-of-funnel marketing efforts.

The problem? You're not accounting for the many steps that happen after, which could skew your marketing spend.

If it took that resident ten months to convert, you're missing out on all the reasons they finally came in and signed that lease.

Last-Touch Attribution

Last-touch attribution gives all the weight to the final touchpoint of your marketing effort before conversion, such as someone who comes for a tour.

The problem? It's tempting to just go with last-touch attribution, but hold up! What about every step beforehand?

When you ignore all of the other touchpoints, you're leaving gaps in your insights. All of the previous steps could directly impact why the resident took that last action before converting.

Multi-Touch Attribution

Multi-touch takes into account every touchpoint from start to finish for a more accurate view of what's really going on with your marketing.

Truth 💣: With so many devices, social media channels, and places to be seen and heard, you want to know what’s working and what’s not to supercharge your marketing efforts.

No attribution method will be seamless or return absolutely perfect data, but multi-touch is a gold standard because it shows you everything in your resident's journey.

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Types of Multi-Touch Attribution

There are several multi-touch attribution models, but here's a rundown of the six most common types.

1) Linear - Linear models give the same weight and importance to every conversion, from a flier to an apartment tour.

2) Time Decay - Time decay models are often more accurate than linear models, as they give more credit to interactions that occur closer to the conversion. As a result, earlier touchpoints receive less weight.

3) U-Shaped - The U-shape model gives the most weight to the first and last touchpoint in your marketing efforts with minimal importance to the in-between steps.

4) W-Shaped - Similar to a U-shape, the W-shape gives the most weight to the first and last touch points but also factors in some of those more obvious touch points along the way.

5) Full Path - The full path takes the W-shape model a step further and combines all that info, plus a final touchpoint that moves the needle on your conversion.

6) Custom - As the name implies, custom models let you set the weight to different touchpoints and KPIs, but they usually require some trial and error to figure out what to prioritize.

Don't get too caught up in the nuances of every multi-touch model. The goal is to track your rental business's most critical touchpoints and KPIs.

Pro tip💡: You may decide it's not worth tracking every social media comment when they're seldom a part of your conversions. Or you can't figure out what role they play. Instead, focus on what you know is working and slowly consider other areas to measure attribution.

Ways to Track Multi-touch Attribution

Don't let the multiple steps in multi-touch attribution derail your focus. You can easily track your touchpoints with a few simple steps.

Identify Your Attribution Model ✅

Decide which attribution model to use for your marketing efforts or an individual campaign.

Determine Your KPIs ✅

What do you want to measure? A prospective resident's request for more info? Signed leases? Phone calls?

Open Your Online Tools ✅

Whether you’re using Google Analytics or Microsoft Clarity, your online marketing tools should have conversion tools to track your KPIs.

Connecting your marketing and sales channels can also help, as well as your go-to CRM.

If your campaign is simple, you can also track your multi-touch attribution manually with the help of a spreadsheet that tracks  different aspects (like how many people engaged with your Google Business Profile).

If this feels all a bit "extra" at the beginning, take a step back. Once you get the hang of it, measuring multiple touchpoints will run like clockwork.

Measure Your ROI ✅

As with anything in marketing, you need to measure the ROI of your multi-touch attribution to optimize your time and resources.

ROI isn't always straightforward in multi-touch marketing due to all those touchpoints. But you can use this popular formula to stay on top of it:

Sales Growth − Marketing Cost) ÷ Marketing Cost = MROI

As you dig into your multi-touch marketing and attribution, you can tweak your ROI formula to customize it for your business.

For example, you could factor in the amount of time it takes your leasing team to sign the lease between two particularly challenging (but important) touchpoints.

Those extra hours could impact your rental business's productivity rather than your costs.

Understand the Limitations

Despite all the praise you can give multi-touch attribution, there are some limitations to consider.

Multi-touch attribution is looking at all of your digital touch points, but when it comes to multifamily marketing, a lot happens offline too.

You still need to capture those offline KPIs that drive potential residents towards conversions.

Pro Tip💡: The good news is it’s pretty straightforward. The best way to discover offline touchpoints is flat out asking residents and prospects how they heard about your community.

Optimize and Test Your Results

Once your multi-touch attribution is running, it's time to optimize and test your results.

👉 Are you seeing some conversions from specific social media channels? Put more focus on changing up images, graphics, and copy to amplify your results.

👉 Are you crushing it with your online reviews, and they're leading to more  inquiries? Answer every review or comment and add more testimonials to your website.

👉 Is everyone emailing you to ask about virtual apartment tours? Follow up on  those tours with info about rent specials.

Continuous refinement is just part of good marketing and saves you time and money in the long run.

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