How do we ensure that "free gift" links in Marketo emails can only be claimed by the recipient?

[Anonymous]

I have a question about unique links inside Marketo email campaigns.  I expect it's a fairly common issue, but I can't find a solution in the docs.  Here's the situation...

We want to send "free gifts" to our a subset of our users.  These are sent via Marketo email campaigns.  The email contains a link to "claim" the free gift. We need to ensure that these links aren't shared with non-recipients. 

At the moment we have users who create duplicate accounts in our system. They then click the link and log in which each account one-by-one and claim the "free gift".  I'm hoping there is some way to ensure that the links can only be clicked by the intended recipient. 

Ideally we create the link with a URL that is unique to the recipient.  It should include a param that is a hash of their email address and a secret key.  When they arrive on our website, we validate the hash to limit it to the intended account.

I think we need to create these URLs with a script on our system so we can generate the unique hash.  Is there some way to do this?  Can we create "tokens" that are generated from our own script?  Or perhaps some way to upload these via CSV?

Thanks very much for your help!

David

[SanfordWhiteman]

Please move the thread to Products​ so we can work on it there, as it is Marketo-product-specific.

[Anonymous]

Moved to "Products".  Thanks Sanford.

[Josh_Hill13]

I believe Rybbon or similar service will help if gift cards are your use case.

But otherwise, this would be very hard to lock down. The URL you have is a Anyone with the Link situation...right? How would your secret key really solve this? If I get the link forwarded or create multiple accounts I control, wouldn't I already have the data required to unlock?

Anyway, your solution sounds good, so all you need is a developer to handle it. I'm not even sure Marketo is involved other than to send the email and maybe hold the data pts.

[SanfordWhiteman]

But otherwise, this would be very hard to lock down. The URL you have is a Anyone with the Link situation...right? How would your secret key really solve this? If I get the link forwarded or create multiple accounts I control, wouldn't I already have the data required to unlock?

I think (though it's not totally clear) that David means that only some people in the Marketo db will be eligible, so slamming the db with net news should not result in exposing the coupon. The issue of forwarded emails is sort of separate (though the coupon field could be cleared after it's first claimed, thus moving the lead into the ineligible file.

David Tapper​ if you want to generate unique hashes for selected leads you can use a webhook like I do here for Munchkin Associator Tokens. You'd have to do the verification using another service, not Marketo (as you already seem to be planning).