Cross-Channel Path Exploration in Marketing Intelligence

Key concepts

Touchpoint

A marketing interaction before a conversion, such as clicking an ad, opening an email, or visiting a landing page.

Journey step

A position in the sequence of touchpoints.

Path

A sequence of connected touchpoints across channels.

Assisting channel

A channel that appears before the final touchpoint in a conversion path.

Drop-off point

A transition where event volume decreases between journey steps.

What the dashboard shows

The Path Exploration tab groups customer events into journey steps and connects them by path. Wider bands represent more events. Use the dashboard to:

• Identify common paths to conversion.
• Compare channel participation across journey steps.
• Find assisting channels and drop-off points.
• Use Anchor Campaign and Campaign filters to focus the analysis.
• Select a path to emphasize it and fade other paths.

When to use

Use Cross-Channel Path Exploration when:

• You want to understand the order in which customers interact with channels.
• You need to identify frequent channel transitions and drop-off points.
• You want to evaluate complete journeys instead of isolated channel totals.

Use case

Michael, a marketing manager, runs campaigns across email, paid search, and social media for a product launch. Reviewing each channel separately makes it difficult to understand how customers move across channels before converting.

He opens Cross-Channel Path Exploration and reviews the most common paths to conversion. He sees that display advertising often appears early in journeys that continue through email and paid search.

Michael identifies assisting channels and drop-off points. He uses these insights with attribution and performance data to adjust the campaign budget.