Working With Touchpoints
In Outcomes, touchpoints are recorded activities and changes associated with a contact or application. They help you learn more about the journey of individual contacts and identify patterns across groups of contacts or applications.
For example, a contact's journey may be:
- Received campaign outreach.
- Registered for an event.
- Submitted an inquiry form.
- Started an application.
- Progressed through your funnel stages up until matriculating.
Each of these are touchpoints, and you can use segments or activity history to track them. This can provide context for how the contact moved through their journey.
Review the information below to learn more about how to use touchpoints.
How Touchpoints Can Be Used
You can use touchpoints to:
- Review the activities and changes associated with an individual contact or application.
- Get a better idea of the sequence of interactions that may have contributed to an applicant's eventual outcome.
- Find contacts or applications that completed, or did not complete, selected activities.
- Combine activities with dates and other criteria to explore patterns across groups.
- Identify groups for follow-up outreach, campaigns, or other actions.
Touchpoints can help answer questions such as:
- Which contacts received a campaign email and then started an application?
- Which event attendees later progressed to enrollment or matriculation?
- Which contacts entered the Inquiry stage during the last 30 days?
- Which contacts registered for an event but did not attend?
- Which inquiry-form submissions came from a particular source or period?
A touchpoint indicates that an event or change occurred at a specific time. It is not always the same as the record’s current value.
Where Touchpoints Can Be Found
You can use Touchpoints in two main places:
- Contact or Application Activity: from the Activity History on contact records or applications, you can review the touchpoints associated with an individual contact or application.
- Segments: from the Contacts Grid or Applications Grid, you can create segments based on touchpoints. Select a touchpoint type, then refine it with the available criteria, date range, and other criteria.
The touchpoints available to you may vary based on your permissions and the features enabled for your organization.
Common Touchpoint Types
Examples of Touchpoints available for contacts can include:
- Marketing communications: email, text-message, and voice-message activity, including delivery or engagement details.
- Campaign activity: campaign, track, and message context where available.
- Event activity: event registrations and check-ins.
- Funnel-stage changes: historical changes to a configured contact funnel property.
- Inquiry activity: inquiry form submissions.
- Application activity: application starts and payment-related activity, where applicable.
Application records can include application-specific touchpoints, such as phase and stage changes.
Using Touchpoints with Campaign Conversions
Touchpoints help you explore recorded activities and build segments based on those activities, while campaign conversions measure selected outcomes for recipients of a campaign track.
To measure conversions for a track, configure its conversion settings. You can also select In a Segment as a conversion action when segment membership represents the result you want to measure.
Sample Use Cases
Review the examples below to learn more about how you might work with touchpoints.
Example 1: Reviewing Campaign Engagement
To identify contacts who received outreach from a campaign, build a segment using the Email Outreach, Text Message Outreach, or Voice Message Outreach touchpoint conditions. Then select the relevant source, campaign, track, message, activity status, and date range as available.
You can use this segment to identify recipients for follow-up, compare audiences, or combine outreach activity with another action, such as event attendance or an application start.
Example 2: Exploring Results of Events
To learn what happened after an event, begin with an Event Registration or Event Check-In touchpoint. Then combine it with an application, funnel-stage, or other outcome-related condition.
For example, you could identify contacts who checked in to an Accepted Students Day event and later reached an enrolled or matriculated stage. This can help you explore whether an event may have supported progress through the student journey.
Example 3: Identifying Contacts Needing Follow Up
You can use a negative touchpoint condition to find contacts who did not complete an action. For example, identify contacts who received a campaign email but did not start an application during a selected period.
This kind of segment can support a follow-up campaign, personalized outreach, or additional analysis of engagement barriers.