Follow a buyer's journey end to end
The Buyer Journey tab draws one person's tracked touches as a numbered timeline: where they came from the first time, every form they filled in, and what brought them back each time. One real timeline is the fastest way to settle an argument about an attribution model, because the model is an argument about this picture. For the credit totals themselves, read How each attribution model splits the credit.
Before you start
You need the email address the person used on your form. The timeline is keyed on that address and nothing else.
This is your forms, and only your forms
Every node on the timeline is a form submission MarqIQ recorded on your site. Emails opened, meetings held, calls logged, pages viewed without a form fill and CRM activities are all outside it. Read the timeline as "what we can prove they clicked", not as everything that happened.
Find a person
Open Intelligence Studio in the left-hand menu, then Attribution & journeys.
It is a hover entry of Intelligence Studio, and the Analytics tab along the top of every Studio page.
Click the Buyer Journey tab.
The card at the top is headed Buyer Journey Explorer.
Type the address into Search by email address…
Capitals do not matter. The address has to be the one on the form submission, not an alias that forwards to it.
Click Search.
The button reads Searching… while it works. An address with no submissions answers No data found for this contact in red under the box.
Click a name under Most Active Contacts instead, when you do not have an address in mind.
That list holds the ten people with the most recorded submissions, drawn from the twenty with the most. It covers your whole history and ignores any period you set elsewhere, so it is the same ten people every day until somebody overtakes them. Clicking a row runs the search for you.
Read the header
| What it shows | What it means |
|---|---|
| The name, or Unknown | The name from their most recent submission. Unknown means no form they filled in captured a name |
| First seen | The date of their earliest recorded submission — not the date of their first visit |
| Last seen | The date of their most recent recorded submission |
| N touchpoints | The number of nodes drawn below, after duplicates are folded together. It is not the number of forms they filled in |
| Channel Mix | One chip per source across those nodes, with the count of nodes carrying it. A node with no source reads (direct) |
Note
Channel Mix counts sources, not mediums, and it counts nodes rather than form fills. Two chips reading 3 and 1 describe four nodes on this timeline and nothing wider.
Read the timeline
Nodes are numbered from the oldest. There are two kinds, and the colour tells them apart.
| Node | What it records | Where the details come from |
|---|---|---|
| First Touch | How this person first reached you | The first-touch source, medium and campaign stored on the submission, and the page they landed on |
| Form Submission | A form they filled in | The last-touch source, medium and campaign, the page they were on when they submitted, and the Form ID |
Each node prints its source as a coloured chip, its medium in grey beside it, Campaign: where one was recorded, the page address, and the date.
- A First Touch node is drawn for the earliest submission, and again only where a later submission carries a different first-touch source from that earliest one. A person whose first touch never changed has exactly one.
- Two nodes of the same kind that share a source, a medium, a campaign and the same day in UTC are folded into one. Somebody who filled in three forms from the same campaign on the same afternoon shows one node, not three. The folding is judged in UTC while the dates are drawn in your own time zone, so two nodes can carry the same printed date.
- Both node kinds carry the date of the submission they came from, so a First Touch node is dated the day the form was filled in, not the day the person first arrived. MarqIQ stores the first-touch values, not a separate first-touch timestamp.
- Dates are drawn in your own browser's time zone, in the form Sep 26, 2026.
- Nodes are ordered by the submission they came from, oldest first. A First Touch node and the Form Submission node from the same submission carry the same date.
Take care
Because duplicates are folded and a first touch is dated by its submission, the timeline is a record of distinct touches, not a minute-by-minute log. Do not read the gap between two nodes as time-to-decision.
Use one journey to explain a model
Open a journey whose first node and last node carry different sources, and put it beside the model you are being asked to defend.
- Point at node 1. That source takes 100% under First Touch and nothing under Last Touch.
- Point at the final Form Submission. That source takes 100% under Last Touch and nothing under First Touch.
- Point at everything between. No model credits it, because MarqIQ stores two values per submission and nothing in between.
- That is the whole disagreement. A person who can see this timeline stops arguing about the percentage and starts arguing about which of the two touches their budget is judged on.
Tip
A journey whose nodes all carry the same source makes the point faster still: every model awards that source 100%, so the model choice changes nothing for that person. Models only move people with two different sources.
What this tab does not do
- It does not open the record in the tool it came from. There is no link into your CRM here; the Form ID is the only identifier a node carries.
- It has no period control. The timeline is that person's whole recorded history, every time.
- It has no download and no share link.
- It shows one address at a time. A person who used a personal address once and a work address twice is two journeys, and neither is complete.
- It shows nothing for somebody who exists in your CRM but has never filled in a form on your site.
Where to go for the whole person
To see one person across every connected tool — their records, their duplicates and what each system holds — read See everything you know about one person. To see the stages a deal moved through rather than a person's clicks, read Read the Executive Read for a connected tool.
If it did not work
No data found for this contact
Why: No submission in your workspace carries that address. A typed address, an alias that forwards to the real one, or a person who never filled in a form all give this.
Fix: Copy the address out of the form submission or out of your CRM rather than typing it. Then check Most Active Contacts to confirm the tab itself is reading data.
Most Active Contacts is empty
Why: No submission in the workspace carries an email address at all. A form with no email field records a submission and no person.
Fix: Open Tool Operations, pick your tool, open Hidden Form Fields and check that your forms capture an email address. Until one does, no journey can be built.
The timeline shows one node for somebody you know filled in four forms
Why: Nodes that share a kind, a source, a medium, a campaign and a calendar day are folded into one.
Fix: Nothing is lost. The report builder counts every submission — group a report by Landing Page or Campaign on the Marqiq Attribution source to see them individually.
Every node says direct
Why: Nothing recorded a source on those submissions, so MarqIQ names the blank value rather than hiding it.
Fix: Read Why your traffic shows as Direct. It names which of the five causes you have and what fixes each one.
The name reads Unknown although your CRM holds a full name
Why: The header reads the name captured on the form, not the name in a connected tool. This tab reads submissions only.
Fix: Add a name field to the form, or look the person up in See everything you know about one person, which reads every connected source.
A search answers with a line about the Pro plan
Why: Journey reports are a Pro feature. On Starter the tab opens and every read behind it is refused, so the refusal arrives in the same red line the tab uses for a missing contact.
Fix: Read your plan on Your plan's limits, and what happens when you reach one. Until the workspace is on Pro or above, Most Active Contacts stays absent too.
Next steps
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