Recommended expiration for tracking codes

[vickyg28253246]

Trying to find info on best practices for tracking code expiration.

I see that the options range from a hit to a year. I know that most people use 1 week.

My logic is this - when dealing with highly transactional business, where the customer tends to make the purchasing decision fairly quickly, it might make sense to shorten the tracking code expiration, possibly to a visit. Especially so in case where the affiliate sites are rewarded not at the point of sale but per click, regardless of the conversion. Thoughts?

Also, would the Marketing Channels still capture attribution at First Touch if a customer had initially visited with a tracking code (which then expired after the visit) but later came back directly (within the Marketing Channel expiration period of course)?

And my last question - is there any way to implement differentiated tracking code expirations, so that some tracking codes expire faster than others?

Thank you

Vicky

[BrianTopham]

Marketing Channel first touch is a life time variable. It will hold the first value ever seen for the user.

Often times people will put the same value into different evars with different expirations on them (IE, visit, one week, 30 days are the most common). This way the can run reports on the different evars and get different attribution.

With the release of Attribution IQ last week, you can put the evar to your most common expiration and then user this new feature to generate reports based on the, different, expirations.

[vickyg28253246]

Thank you Brian, really appreciate your response.

Creating different eVars for the same value will work.