Can I report on link activity within a Whitepaper?

[Anonymous]

Can I report on the links contained within a whitepaper?

My landing page contains a CTA to download a whitepaper. The whitepaper contains multiple links to additional information.

I know how to set up reporting for downloads of the whitepaper itself but unsure if I can report on the links contained within the WP.

[Casey_Grimes]

Hi Lana,

In terms of technical tracking? No, you can't see if someone downloads a whitepaper and clicks a link to say, www.google.com. What you can (and should) do, however, is set up the links in your whitepaper with querystring parameters to check if someone came directly from a click to your site and/or landing page. That way, you can at least attribute the visit from the click by using Marketo to look for those web visits.

[Anonymous]

Hi Lana >

I track all of the links in my white papers that go back to my corporate website. As long as it goes to a page that has your Munchkin tracking code on it you can track it. However you need to create a tracked link which will look like http://company.com?utm_source=WhitePaper&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=GreatestWhitePaperEver

I wrote extensively about this for the old Marketo Community. When those old posts disappeared I posted it again.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Let me add to the others' answers that if you set up a redirector page that's running Munchkin* -- either a Marketo-hosted LP or your own page -- then you ​can ​track hits from within a white paper.  The redirector has the sole function of logging the hit and then taking them to the destination page.

So links in the WP are to http://pages.example.com/offsite.html?url=http://www.google.com instead of straight to http://www.google.com.

If the user is using a browser in which they are already "known" (best example: the browser they used to fill out the form to get the white paper!) then the click on the PDF link will appear in their Mkto Activity Log.  If the user is not known in the browser that is launched by the PDF reader, then you'll still see the hit, but it'll be for a new anonymous lead.  Obviously, the former is preferable, but we can't always get what we want.

*I would recommend tweaking the Munchkin call to make sure the hit gets logged, but even a default Munchkin call will usually work if you wait a second before redirecting them.