Original Referrer Field Inaccuracies

Original Referrer Field Inaccuracies

Hi everyone,

Recently have been doing some research on how this field works, and as a result have found some issues that I think if resolved would be very helpful to everyone.

1.  When merging records (which I am sure we all do a lot of ) if the master record you are merging has a NULL Original Referrer value, the master record will have its value overwritten.  See screenshots below as proof.

     a.  Why is this bad?  Normally I am fine with this type of functionality, but the Original Referrer is supposed to tell you how a record was acquired by your company, not how the duplicate record got acquired.  This can skew those metrics a lot depending on how much merging you do and duplicates your instance has.

2.  Original referrer is not necessarily set upon the record's creation, but one the record first encounters the Munchkin API.  If the record already exists in the database and the original referrer value = NULL, then the value will get overwritten.  As a result, you end up getting instances where maybe you have your unsubscribe page shows up as the original referrer.  Screenshot below.    

So to sum up, Original Referrer is not quite as original as we all thought...

Solution: Original Referrer should have a default value = NONE if NULL. That solves both of the above problems.  Any other suggestions are welcome.   

Pre-Merge

Pre-Merge Values (1).PNG

Post-Merge

Post Merge.PNG

Unsubscribe Original Referrer Value

pastedImage_5.png

1 Comment
kh-lschutte
Community Manager
Status changed to: Open Ideas