I agree. There is a fixation on "last touch before X happens" and that's not helpful because it could have taken 10 touches, or 3, or 1 to get there. You'll never really know and then you optimize for an asset/channel that may only be relevant as part of a larger story. Sort of like the 10% of the iceberg is above water.
It's also a pain to keep track of!
Possible solutions:
- Nurtures have a Goal and that is your tracking point. See my slides from the summit 2016: slideshare.net/jdavidhill. If your goal is MQL, then only track that. If it is something else, that's ok too.
- Yes, you can track last asset or campaign using Trigger Tokens and IMs. The docs explain this well. You can leverage Last Interesting Moment Desc or push the Email name to a custom field on Clicks Link or whatever. You can also use Campaign Name token like this too.
- RCE - use it if you have it. Much more helpful to watch the impact of Success over time.
- Channel-Offer attribution - also I have slides on this, but this essentially requires a custom touch object and a lot of setup and reporting tools.