What is attribution?
Attribution is how companies assess the value of the channels that connect them to potential customers. The challenge is that everyone looks at it differently. First-touch gives all the credit to the channel that started the relationship. Last-touch gives it to the channel that closed it. Multi-touch spreads it across every interaction along the way. Each model produces a different answer from the same data, and none of them is objectively correct.
Setting the right expectations
Because no model is objectively correct, we recommend not spending too much time debating how much credit each touch deserves. Treat attribution as directional: a useful read on what UserGems is contributing, not an exact measure.
Pipeline and revenue also depend on more than any one tool: how your team follows up, your messaging and offer, and how well your product fits the market you’re selling into. So the teams that get the most out of UserGems look at the full picture:
- Is UserGems delivering? The right people at the right accounts, with the signals and context to reach out well.
- Is the team acting on it? Leads worked quickly and followed up across channels.
- Is it showing up in early outcomes? Replies, meetings and new contacts engaged on open deals.
- What does attribution show? Read alongside the rest, not on its own.
If the first three are strong, the program is working, and attribution helps you see where it’s landing. If one of them is weak, that’s where to focus, not the attribution model.
Email works like exposure
Email replies only tell part of the story. Signal-based emails work partly like an ad campaign: a prospect who reads several of them and never replies, then takes a call two weeks later or books a demo through your website, was still influenced by them. Reply rate alone undercounts what the program is doing.
How UserGems measures attribution
UserGems doesn’t try to decide which touch came first or last. Instead, it looks at how a UserGems lead or contact is connected to an opportunity or account in your CRM, in three buckets:
- Sourced: a UserGems contact was created, contacted and added to an opportunity as its first contact. A strong sign UserGems sourced that opportunity.
- Assisted: a UserGems contact was created, contacted and added to an open opportunity that already had contacts. A strong sign UserGems is helping an existing deal.
- Suspected: a UserGems contact has 5 or more activities on an account with an open opportunity, and the first of those came before the opportunity was created, but the contact was never added to it. Worth a review: they may belong on the opportunity.
Sourced and Assisted are conservative by design. Suspected catches contacts who influenced a deal but were never added to it in the CRM.
TL;DR
Attribution models will always disagree; that’s the nature of models. Use Sourced, Assisted and Suspected as a directional read on where UserGems is contributing, alongside what UserGems delivered and how your team acted on it. Your CSM can walk through all of it with you anytime.