Identify A Contact's First Activity

[michellechopin]

Hi Community,

I've seen threads throughout the forums about identifying the First Activity for a lead but they all seemed to be either very specific to a particular program/campaign or for those who know the date/date frame they wish to search for.

While we can run filters on Latest Activity (Date only), there's no option to do so for First Activity - I'd like to identify that someone HAS a First Activity (and potentially narrow it down to things like website visit etc.). I created a custom field and automatically went for Date but realized that means I have to know when the activity happened. Any suggestions on the best way to find simply that there was a First Activity?

Appreciate any insight or suggestions!

Michelle 🙂 

[Mariah_Mattick]

Hi Michelle! You might have luck using the system managed fields like Original Source Type or Registration Source Type (more here: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/marketo/using/product-docs/administration/field-management/u...). You could also filter by the types for 'real' activity like filling out a form. 

[michellechopin]

Thanks @Mariah_Mattick! I'll take a look through this to see if it gives me the information I would like to identify - there wasn't a field to pull in for Activity Type which would have made it easier so if this is a suitable filter on Source Type, then I might have what I need.

[Jo_Pitts1]

@michellechopin ,

It might pay to be a bit clearer about 'first activity'.

• Do you mean from when they become known, or all time?
• Do you want to correct this retroactively?
• What do you mean by first activity.  Arguably, to have become a known lead they must have an activity (albeit potentially outside of Marketo and/or Munchkin tracking).

Cheers

Jo

[michellechopin]

@Jo_Pitts1 - I was digging into a load of data with a colleague last week which led to me asking this question and I'm honestly not sure what I was trying to achieve with this filter/field. 

I think we were trying to identify whether SFDC and Marketo used the same create date and thought that First Activity was a way to help identify this. But now knowing that they are two separate things, we've got a solution in mind to pull that data into SFDC so that, when we sync leads that are currently only residing in Marketo (we're trying to close a data gap), we can see the two different dates (and then the company won't assume that Marketing generated several thousand leads in one afternoon!).

Appreciate the additional questions to dig into this - I really shouldn't ask community questions in a less than clear state of mind 😂

[Katja_Keesom]

Hi Michelle,

Retrospectively looking for an activity is going to be a tricky thing, especially because quite a few high volume activities have a retention period of 90 days. All other activities only stay in the system for 25 months. So looking back is always going to be an incomplete exercise.

When you want to capture the timestamp it becomes even more tricky.

In my opinion the only way to be able to provide a timestamp on a person's first 'meaningful' interaction reliably is to stamp it when it happens. So you create a field "first meaningful interaction" and you set up a smart campaign to stamp it with a date and time when that interaction happens.

[michellechopin]

Thanks @Katja_Keesom - this makes me wonder if that's why there is no filter/option for First Activity in a general sense! 

As we manage our leads with a First/Last Touch Attribution model, we do time stamp the first set of data we get from a lead (Original Form Fill, Campaign, Source etc) in SFDC (and it's noted in the details on the lead activity in Marketo).

I think I was asking for something before I realized that I didn't actually need to go that route! 

[Katja_Keesom · Accepted solution]

Thinking along those lines you end up with the Marketo system fields Acquisition Program and Acquisition Date, which represent the program responsible for adding the name to your database and obviously the date and time that happened. In some situations these are stamped automatically, but I would recommend setting up your example programs to always ensure to stamp them whenever your program collects a new name.