Click link to website in Marketo Email but nothing in Web Activity

[Anonymous]

Hi,

If I send a Marketo Email (directly through Sales Insight in Salesforce or using the Outlook plugin) and the receiver clicks in a link to my website in that email, shouldn't I be able to see that visit in the Web Activity tab? I can see that they clicked and how many times, but I can't see anything in Web Activity.

Thanks.

Irene.

[Keith_Nyberg2]

Hey Irene,

Typically, links that are included in MKTO emails are blanketed with a MKTO token (unless not tracked). You can see this when you hover over a Marketo email that was sent asit will show a different URL than what you put in the HTML. When the link is clicked it opens the browser using the MKTO tracking URL first, then re-directs to the page you wanted to visit. That brief period of time before the re-direct allow MKTO to track that the email was clicked by the user. So this is how MKTO tracks the clicked link in email activity. Now for the visits webpage piece, this is done via Munchkin tracking. My understanding here is that when you visit the webpage, Munchkin tracking tries to log the webpage visit. But, if it is unable to log the webpage visit after something like .3 milliseconds, the request times out and the "visits webpage" activity will be lost forever. This is a major reason that Marketo will be moving to the Orion platform sometime next year. The new platform can handle alot more requests and will track more Munchkin interactions. You can see this most noticeably if you look as webpage visits in a MKTO analytics report compared to Google Analytics. GA typically tracks more interactions that MKTO can based on the timeout that I mentioned above.

Sincerely,

Keith Nyberg

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

That brief period of time before the re-direct allow MKTO to track that the email was clicked by the user.

Nope, the Click Email is logged regardless of whether the redirect finishes. The mere act of reaching the branding domain logs the click. That's why it will work even without JS support (though the person will never get to the real page).

But, if it is unable to log the webpage visit after something like .3 milliseconds, the request times out and the "visits webpage" activity will be lost forever.

That isn't so.  Visit Web Page logging doesn't time out after 350ms (you're thinking of Click Link on Web Page, which uses a synchronous call to let logging complete before loading a new page/asset).

Visit Web Page logging is lost when somebody navigates away from the page before the Munchkin request (not response) completes. If

     (a) you load a ton of scripts asynchronously, so Munchkin doesn't start until late in the game

     (b) the Munchkin servers are severely overloaded at a point in time

     (c) you automatically redirect people away from a page using JS

     (d) a user manually navigates away extremely quickly or closes a tab

or a combination of the above, you can lose analytics data.

However, in this case I'd be inclined to believe Munchkin is not running on the destination domain until proven otherwise.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Keith and Sanford for the responses.

You were right Sanford. With the latest Wordpress updates the header (where the Marketo Munchkin is) was overwritten so there was no Munchking tracking anything.

Thanks again for your help.

Irene

[Keith_Nyberg2]

Thanks for clarifying Sanford. Educational as always!