Disable cookie tracking on an embeded form

[Richard_Wasylyn]

We have set up a form on our website for the sales team to unsubscribe individuals that have verbally asked to be removed from any email messaging. What we are finding though is when they enter in the email and submit that they are cookied with that email address and start to receive alerts for their activity on our webiste. The form we have is currently an embedded form. Has anyone figured out a way to disable the cook tracking on an embeded form, I understand how to do it with a marketo landing page.

[Jeff_Bedford]

Would it work to have folks download the Ghostery plugin and block Marketo from loading through the browser that way?

[SanfordWhiteman]

How could that possibly be easier than using the standard and simple Referral Form technique?

[Jeff_Bedford]

I'm not sure what you mean. Ghostery was a bad idea because it blocked the form all together. I would love to know more about said Referral Form Technique - I'm brand new to Marketo.

[SanfordWhiteman]

The basic Referral Form pattern is implemented using the exact code Kenny provided above!

(Ghostery is an even worse idea than you're thinking, because even if you managed to whitelist Marketo forms while blacklisting Munchkin, that doesn't actually prevent the Munchkin cookie from being set on another page and sent along with the form -- it's not really germane to the problem.)

[Jeff_Bedford]

So we implemented the script, and now a small sample of submissions are not passing required fields to our email notifications. Kind of interesting. It does seem like Marketo captured the data though.

[SanfordWhiteman]

The JS doesn't affect which fields are required or not, unless the code was implemented incorrectly and is throwing errors (any code errors can in turn short-circuit validation code that hasn't run yet, but they aren't directly related to each other).

And if the field values were passed to Marketo (visible in the Activity Log detail for the Filled Out Form activity) then they were populated on the lead. The JS can't interfere with that after the fact.

[Jeff_Bedford]

Looking into this a little more this AM - I'm finding it interesting that the form is two steps. So, we have one embedded form that leads to a second embedded form in Wordpress, which in turn triggers the alert to our sales team. Since the script was implemented - 4 out of 25 leads have ended up on form 2 without and reference to form 1 - and because form 2 only contains company information - none of the key person contact info is available without some tedious cross referencing (and a little bit of guessing).

This is more just commentary because I think it's interesting and maybe the two step process is adding a little complexity to the original issue.

[SanfordWhiteman]

This is more just commentary because I think it's interesting and maybe the two step process is adding a little complexity to the original issue.

Yes, of course it would!

The definition of a referral form is that it doesn't associate the Munchkin web session with the lead on whose behalf the form is submitted.

In the two-form workflow you're describing, if the second form doesn't contain the email address field, an associated Munchkin session is required  in order for the two submissions to match up to the same lead.

So there's a clear technical conflict.

You can resolve this by passing the email address from Form 1 to Form 2 in the query string. Then have Email be a hidden field on Form 2, Auto-Filled from query param.

[Jeff_Bedford]

A couple more notes:

1) We asked one of our resources to place the script on the page with step 2 instead of step 1. We are observing that for the time being.

2) I looked into the query parameter - but since it's an external URL I'm getting some errors just trying to work within the interface. I'd be curious if there was a workaround.

I must say - I've been learning a lot from this conversation and am very appreciative of your help!

[SanfordWhiteman]

1) We asked one of our resources to place the script on the page with step 2 instead of step 1. We are observing that for the time being.

That will not work. The forms need to post with either the same cookie value or the same email address, or the form submissions will not be associated with the same lead.

2) I looked into the query parameter - but since it's an external URL I'm getting some errors just trying to work within the interface. I'd be curious if there was a workaround.

Non-Marketo URL or Marketo-hosted LP, doesn't matter. Query params are populated on any page, there's no preferential treatment given to Marketo LPs.

You set up a form field with type = Hidden and Auto-Fill set to read from query parameter Email. So if you add the Email (in a Forms JS API onSuccess event listener) to the Thank You URL for Form 1 (the Thank You page presumably being the page with Form 2) then Form 2 will populate the hidden Email field.

[Jeff_Bedford]

Thank you!

[Kenny_Elkington]

As Erik Said, this is fairly easy.  Apply thos script to your page:

<script>
MktoForms2.whenReady( function(form){
form.addHiddenFields({"_mkt_trk":""});
form.onSubmit( function(form){
form.vals({"_mkt_trk":""})
})
})
</script>

This will clear the cookie value during submission.

[Anonymous]

You could also use Javascript to clear out the Munchkin value in the hidden field on the form, but I suggested using Request Campaign so we could avoid dealing with custom Javascript.

[Anonymous]

Good question. The best workaround I can think of is to speed up the cookie expiration. So after the cookie is created, you can force it to immediately expire. Because the cookie is expired, the browser will automatically delete it. Not an elegant solution, but it will work.

I am working on an implementation of this. Then I will update this thread with the code you can use to do that. 

[Jamie_Rodger]

Thanks Erik - I found it and voted for the feature. In the thread there was also this which may help the OP:

"Thought I'd mention the workaround for this while I'm here.
Set up a smartlist for Employees by email domain, inferred ip, and whatever else you need to filter employees by, maybe even membership in a static list.
Use that smartlist in all other analytics and lists to exclude employees.

Posted By CraiGrrr Blackketter on 8/15/2012 10:28 AM"

Although this just blocks the analytics, I suppose you would still be getting email alerts?

[Anonymous]

@Jamie, we don't have that feature currently, but I think there is an idea on the community if it's something you're interesting in us building.

[Anonymous]

I see. Have you considered using the Request Campaign feature in SFDC to do the unsubscribe rather than a Marketo form?

[Jamie_Rodger]

Can't you block tracking for the IP addresses of the sales team computers. I am new to Marketo, but in Act-on this was a standard feature so I would hope the ability to block internal IP addresses from being tracked would be a Marketo feature.

[Richard_Wasylyn]

The problem is that a sales rep submits that form, they then get cookies for the prospect email address. Then if they come back to the website they then get alerts that that prospect has been visiting our website because his computer has the tracking cooking activated for that prospect. It's writing false information over to the record in SFDC.

[Anonymous]

Are there a lot of tracking campaigns? Wouldn't it be pretty easy to just suppress leads who have filled out that form?