Finding first "engagement" date

[Matt_Stone2]

My guess is there's no good answer to this question, but here's what I'm looking for: I'd like to know the first time a lead actually engaged with our company -- meaning they filled out a form, had some kind of interesting moment, etc.

I don't have any fields set up to record this information, and naturally Last Interesting Moment Date is continuously updated, so that wouldn't be the best solution. Created date might also be misleading, as it's possible they were added via a list upload or something but didn't truly engage.

Is there anything via the API or other tricks to find this data in bulk? Or pretty much only individually via the activity logs?

[Jim_Thao7 · Accepted solution]

AFAIK, No.  This is usually referred to as a First Touch (FT) value and a strategy would need to be put in place to have recorded this type of behavior, however it is defined.  

[Jessica_Kao3]

I have handled this by creating a date field called Engagement Date.  This is triggered on behavioral score.  So when the behavioral score changes to something greater than 0, I stamp the system date into Engagement date.  You can also use the lead score field if all your scores are purely on behavior and not including any demographic. 

[ChristinaZuniga]

Could you use acquisition program for this? Mine usually work that the first time a lead interacts with a program (usually by doing some behavior) the acquisition program is set for them / I have a campaign to write it for certain programs.

[Jessica_Kao3]

You could theoretically use acquisition program date for this but not all acquisition dates indicate behavioral activity ie operational programs.  Ensuring that all activity is captured via Acq Program and acquisition date and making it 100% accurate is really challenging. It's what you should do anyway, but it's a lot of work to stay on top of it.   There is no global way to set acquisition date and must be done on a per program level.  With first engagement date, it's pretty easy to accomplish this with half a dozen filters or so. 

[Matt_Stone2]

Yeah, Acq Program Date isn't a bad idea, but like you said, it's not a global fix. I figured there wasn't a silver bullet for this unless you have the foresight to set it up initially -- but I might be able to cobble together enough half measures (like Acq Program Date) that it gets me close. Thanks for the input!