Cookie?

[SanfordWhiteman]

Yes, documentation is wrong, or at best misleading.  It's pretty easy to test + prove....

[Josh_Hill13]

Hi folks, so I haven't proven the docs are wrong here. My understanding was that:

•     Previously unknown person visits a Marketo Page OR a website with your munchkin code on it. If they have not blocked cookies/javascript, they are then tracked as they go through your site.
  • This unknown lead then fills out a form and is associated to an email, becoming Known. This is the basic function of marketo.
  • This Known lead then receives an email from you. Their Open, Click, or Unsubscribe can now be directly tracked. (I agree Opens is a bad metric, but it will be TRACKED if possible).
• Known Email Address inside Marketo - but they were never cookied by marketo before. This could happen when you first turn on Marketo and migrate the database. Technically they are known, but uncookied. Marketo urges people to do a tagging campaign
  • Send Email to lead. If they click or Open the email, then we know only that they did this behavior.
  • If they click through to any page with munchkin code, they will be cookied and should be assigned a cookieID, associating their email and cookie automatically. So in theory, the lead was already known, they just assoc to the cookie.
  • I know this works because I can put an email in the system, send an email, click on it, and get a visits web page log activity.

Sanford is saying that a lead doesn't become Known by clicking a link. I suppose that could be true, but they shouldn't have an email from us if we didnt already know them somehow. Are you saying that if I forward an email to someone and they click on the unique URL, the system won't confuse the two cookies with that single email address? I know this happens.
        Or we could say that my browser is cookied anonymously. Later, I get an email and click on it. will Marketo NOT assoc the cookie and email address unless I explicitly ask it to?

[SanfordWhiteman]

We've found automatic lead association does not work across all browsers and versions of Munchkin. I'm pretty sure it hasn't been working as reliably as you think!  The only way for us to test this functionality was to use Private/Incognito browsing and/or one-time virtual machines.  Using the same browser session you use for daily work breeds confusion -- there was huge confusion at my workplace because people thought auto-association was working, when they had actually filled out a form.  Once we ensured that everybody was testing with a fresh, uncookied browser session we were able to conclude the magic didn't always work. We had to use the Munchkin API to associate leads based on a special token stored in SFDC, which we in turn added to the query string of email links.  This gives us the 100% assurance.

One technical note if anybody is listening: when you click on a unique link in an email, the Clicked Link in Email activity attached to the named lead comes from opening the branding domain page such as http://click.example.com/34933fsg48645.  That's it.  Yes, if you have JavaScript enabled (which the vast majority of people do, don't get me wrong) then you will next be redirected to the real URL that was added to the email in Design Studio.  But whether or not you have JS enabled, the Clicked Link will show up in the leads' Activity Log. It literally only tracks the hit on the branding domain.  (It doesn't set any cookies because they would be useless for any other domains outside of the branding domain's SLD. The cookies need to be set by Munchkin running on the destination page.)

EDIT: The testing period I'm referring to was October of last year.  @Josh - Given your confidence I have assigned our engineering team to reevaluate the most current version.  It may be flawless now, though if anybody is hosting older Munchkin versions they would still be problematic. (Tightly run development teams host locally for change control, for better and worse.)