Any experiences on Lead tracking activity across different domains

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Does anybody has experiences in organization using different domains between Marketo i-frame and Company website ? For example, Company website uses domain name ABC.co.uk and Marketo Contact Us form (i-frame) uses domain info.ABC.com etc.

We find out and encounter an issue to track whole lead activities if he/she has activities across two domains. Sample scenario : A lead goes to company website, register on Contact Us form on website (Domain : info.ABC.com), and then continue visiting company website by clicking some links (Domain : ABC.co.uk). As a result, two leads will be generated separately. One of them is anonymous lead with Click Link activities on the website, and the other one is identified lead with name with registration activity on Contact Us form. This make us not able to capture completed behaviour on one lead. We think that the main reason is about communication of cookie across domain. Different cookies generated at different domains and cannot be communicated across each other.

We think about centralize domain names but it is not feasible for our big and internaltional domain structure. Nurturing a lead across domain would be the one that we think but it is also not realistic approach to capture lead behaviour (ie. two forms on two domains etc.)

Anyone had same experience in your organization, please kindly help share how you handle this situation to capture lead behaviour across domain.

Thank you very much...
Taworn D.

[Anonymous]

Hi Taworn-
Your scenario is one that we've dealt with as well - and you are right, multiple domains means that each cookie will be different per domain.  However, if you are able to cross-associate the leads, the leads will merge into one record in MKTO even though there are two cookies.

Depending on the content or what you can send from domain 1 to MKTO if you use domain 2 as your primary form fillout location, you could do an associate lead call function to help with this.  For example, if domain 1 is a user portal and domain 2 is your WWW property, you can write an AssociateLead api call from domain 1 (once they signed in) to pass email address back to MKTO and once they go to domain 2 and fill out a form, they will be 100% merged.

Hope this helps!

[Anonymous]

Hi Brigid,

Many thanks to your reply and sharing. Does it mean that we need to have two forms or source to let a lead fill in on both domains ? Our environment/appearance does like usual company website with only one contact us form. So we cannot have one more form/source on company website (WWW) to let visitor fill out form/information again. Please correct me if I understand wrong from your explanation.

Thank you very much,
Taworn D