Anonymous Created Date

[Jenn_DiMaria2]

We have a "First Touch" campaign that triggers if a person was created within the past 48 hours; however, it looks like some leads with anonymous activity prior to their "known" creation (ex: filling out a form) aren't being pulled in to said "First Touch" campaign.

It's like Marketo is reading their anonymous activity as the date they were created in the system, as opposed to when they are actually created as "known" people.

Is this how it's supposed to function or has anyone run into this before? It's fine if it does function this way; I just need to know so I can troubleshoot appropriately.

Thanks!

[Emmanuelle_Biss · Accepted solution]

Hi Jenn DiMaria​,

Indeed, the Created date will show when the lead was created in the system, as opposed to when it really became aware of your website. If you look at your activity log, it usually starts with a New Lead activity type, as a Web form fillout.

Here's more information about anonymous leads and activities: Tracking Anonymous Activity and Leads - Marketo Docs - Product Docs

Also, you should be aware that the Created date can be updated to the latest (yes, the latest, not the earliest) update. i.e., if you have a duplicate and you merge these two together, Marketo will only keep the most recent activity. You will therefore lose the "true" date of when the lead was really known by the system. I recommend adding a new field that reflects the Created date, so that if you need to merge two leads together, you can decide on which value to keep, the oldest vs. the newest value.

Hope this helps

Emma

[Rachit_Puri2]

Agreed on your point for the merging of duplicates. However, we have been able to change that using custom dedupe solution in Marketo. That helps us choose which date should be kept as created date when the records are merged.

[Jason_Webber1]

There are two fields that I found in a custom leads view of a smart list, Created and Created Date. Created looks like the date that an anon user hit the website and was cookied by Mkto and Created Date is the date the anon user became known. Hopefully this adds to the answer of the question. My own question though is how to get these two fields in a report. Anyone been able to pull these two fields in a report that can be automagically generated?