3 - How It Works

What is a Digital Touch?

A digital touch is a page view by a visitor to your site that originated from a digital channel. With some media, like email, you have a good idea who that visitor is, since they're associated with something unique like an email address.

Other digital marketing approaches (like paid ads on Google) also drive visitors to your site. These visitors are often harder to uniquely identify. We call these visitors anonymous digital touches, as you don't yet have identifying information on them.

Touchpoint Capture tracks digital and anonymous digital touches. The following types of digital touches are tracked:

1. Clicks from paid ads, where the clicked link contains UTM parameters in the URL that you have configured
2. Organic search engine traffic from major search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo!)
3. Organic traffic from social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)
4. Other referral traffic that comes from links that do not contain UTM parameters, such as a blog post of someone reviewing your site, or a third-party partner

Touchpoint Capture Technical Data Flow

Below is a more detailed explanation and view of how visitor data from tracked links flows into Salesforce.

1. Each time a visitor clicks on a digital link to your website, Touchpoint Capture saves information about that visit.
2. When a visitor to your site fills out and submits a form:
   1. This action is captured by your marketing automation platform (MAP).
   2. The email address from the form submission is associated with the (now formerly) anonymous digital touch information.
3. The MAP will create a Lead and add that Lead to a campaign in Salesforce.
4. If that associated campaign in Salesforce is noted as one that should track digital touches, it will receive the anonymous digital touch information from Touchpoint Capture and populate this on the related Campaign Member record.
5. The first anonymous digital touch's details will be associated as a Campaign Member, added to the Anonymous Digital Campaign record.

Tracking Details

This section provides details about what Touchpoint Capture tracks.

UTM Parameters

When a visitor views a page and one or more of the following UTM parameters are present in the URL, Touchpoint Capture will record this page view as a digital touch.

• utm_campaign
• utm_content
• utm_medium
• utm_source
• utm_term

Non-UTM-Tracked Referrals

When a visitor views a page and there are no UTM parameters present in the URL, it still may be tracked as a digital touch if it meets any of the following conditions:

When the referring URL is Google, Yahoo, or Bing, a digital touch will be recorded and the following UTM data will be set on the touch:

• utm_source will be set to the name of the search engine ("google," "bing," "yahoo").
• utm_medium will be set to "organic."
• utm_term will be set to the search term that produced the search result that was clicked on. This is only applicable to Bing, as Yahoo and Google prevent access to that information.

When the referring URL is Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter a digital touch will be recorded and the following UTM data will be set on the touch:

• utm_source will be set to the name of the social network ("facebook," "linkedin," "twitter").
• utm_medium will be set to "social."

When the referring URL is any other website than the ones listed above, a digital touch will be recorded and the following UTM data will be set on the touch:

• utm_medium will be set to "referral."

NOTE: All digital touches get the Referring Page and Referring Page Raw fields populated when the referring URL is available. See also What Data Gets Tracked.

Non-Referrals

When there is no referring URL and no UTM parameters present in the URL, a digital touch will be recorded and the following UTM data will be set on the touch:

• utm_source will be set to "direct."

Duplicate Digital Touches

Touchpoint Capture does not track duplicate digital touches. When a user visits the same page with the same UTM parameters more than once, Touchpoint Capture will only record the first digital touch and will ignore the subsequent ones.

Sample Visitor Journey: One-Click Conversion

Let's imagine that a visitor has clicked on a paid ad, arrived at your landing page, and filled out a form.

Understanding the Steps

1. The First Anonymous Digital Touch is recorded and saved to the anonymous visits database in AWS. Unique visitor ID is saved to a cookie.
2. Visitor fills out form.
   1. In this case, the First & Last Digital Touch are the same. This touch is recorded by the MAP and saved to the known visits database in AWS by DST.
   2. This Digital Touch data is then captured on the Campaign Member associated with this Campaign.
3. Visitor arrives at the confirmation page.

Sample Visitor Journey: Multiple Bounces and Visits

This describes a sample visitor journey and corresponding digital touch tracking that occurs. In this case, a visitor has clicked on a paid ad, arrived at your landing page, left your site, returned via other paid ads or organic methods, until finally filling out a form.

Understanding the Steps

1. Visitor arrives to site. First Anonymous Digital Touch is recorded and saved to the anonymous visits database in AWS. Unique visitor ID is saved to a cookie, then visitor bounces and leaves site.
2. Visitor returns to site. Anonymous Digital touch is recorded under user's visitor id. Visitor bounces and leaves site.
3. Visitor returns to site and fills out a form.
   1. Last Digital Touch is recorded by MAP and saved to AWS by DST. The visits from the anonymous visits database are transferred to the known visits database in AWS.
   2. Last Digital Touch is captured on the Campaign Member associated with this Campaign.
   3. First Digital Touch data is pulled into Salesforce from AWS.
   4. First Digital Touch data is captured on the Campaign Member associated with Anonymous Digital Touch Campaign.
   5. If Middle Touchpoint Sync is enabled: Digital Touches occurring between First Digital Touch and Last Digital Touch are pulled into Salesforce and associated to defined "Middle Touch Campaign." Repeat campaigns are automatically created to accommodate multiple middle touches.
4. Visitor arrives at confirmation page.

Digital Touch Data Elements

Touchpoint Capture captures a variety of useful data for each digital touch (listed below). Consider the following URL examples while reviewing the data below:

Digital touch: https://mycompany.com/the-great-white-paper?utm_source=foo

Referring URL: https://acmeco.com/press-release/123456?param1=abc

Where Are Digital Touches Stored?

This section describes architectural details of the feature.

DST Cookie

The Touchpoint Capture cookie stores a unique identifier for the visitor that is used to consolidate anonymous touches with the visitor's email address once they submit a form.

Anonymous Visits Database (DynamoDB)

• Each Full Circle customer has their own dedicated anonymous visits database where all anonymous digital touches for visitors who have not yet converted (e.g. filled out a form) are stored.
• The database is hosted and managed by Full Circle at Amazon Web Services (AWS) using the DynamoDB microservice.
• Anonymous visit records are stored for 6 months by default before they are deleted if the visitor has not yet converted. If you would like to change this timeframe, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager.

Touchpoint Capture Database (RDS)

• Each Full Circle customer has their own dedicated Touchpoint Capture database where all digital touches for converted visitors and related user information are stored.
• The database is hosted and managed by Full Circle at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and is fully encrypted while at rest.

Salesforce

• Digital touches are stored in Salesforce as Campaign Member records.