First-Touch Attribution (Email)

Definition

First-touch attribution assigns 100% of conversion credit to the first email that a subscriber opened. It answers the question: "Which email campaign first got this person's attention?"

This model is useful for understanding top-of-funnel effectiveness — which subject lines, offers, and campaigns are best at initiating engagement. It is less useful for optimising later-stage conversion because it ignores all subsequent emails that may have been critical to closing the sale.

Trade-Offs

First-touch attribution is simple to implement and easy to understand. Most email platforms can track it by recording the first campaign each subscriber opened. However, it dramatically undervalues nurture sequences, abandoned cart emails, and other later-stage campaigns that drive the final decision.