How to get cookied

[Danny_Tran5]

Hi all,

I was under the impression that the two ways to get the Munchkin cookie were to, A. Fill out a Marketo form, B. Click a link in a Marketo email delivered to you that directs you to the website. (reference http://developers.marketo.com/javascript-api/lead-tracking/configuration/ ).

However it appears that Visits Web Page activity is only working for leads who have performed action A with our tracking. I've ran through several different scenarios to confirm this issue.

Has anyone ever run into this problem? The tracking issue is for our website here, EVSE | Electric Vehicle (EV) Charging Stations - ChargePoint.​

Any help or insight would be appreciated.

Thanks so much,

Danny T.

[SanfordWhiteman]

I'll need more than just the website. What you have to show is a tracked link in a Marketo email that directs to a page on that site.

Also, because it's important to be exact for future searches, it's not that you only get a Munchkin cookie using the methods you've described. You get a Munchkin cookie whenever you visit a site that runs Munchkin! That cookie gets associated with a lead in your Marketo database using one of the following methods:

• filling out a Marketo form
• visiting a tracked link that then attaches the mkt_tok query parameter to the URL on your site
• programmatically calling the Munchkin API associateLead method from the browser
• calling one of a few REST or SOAP API endpoints (Push, Sync, Associate)

[Danny_Tran5]

Gotcha. That definitely makes more sense than how I described it.

Here's the an example email link I used on a test lead:

http://go.chargepoint.com/MO0C0f0SW4xik00aa0aY0c0

Or do you need the full "original view" of the email?

[SanfordWhiteman]

The problem is very simple: your webserver is (mis)configured to strip off the entire query string and redirect (that's a true HTTP redirect, not a JavaScript-based redirect) to the bare hostname + pathname.

So a link like

https:​//www.chargepoint.com/drivers/home/holiday?utm_source=retargetingpromo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=19q4_em_b2c_holiday_promo_us&utm_term=b2chome&utm_content=promo&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTURBell6WTRZekF4TnpZNCIsInQiOiJVU1hPOFB0U

is redirected to

http:​//www.chargepoint.com/drivers/home/holiday

before Munchkin even loads.

When Munchkin does load, there's no longer a mkt_tok query param in the URL (let alone any utm_ params, it should be noted). Therefore it's equivalent to an anonymous visit to that URL.

This isn't anything Marketo can fix -- your webmaster needs to fix this misconfiguration.

[Danny_Tran5]

Thanks so much for this. I didn't realize that the query parameters were being stripped. I'll reach out to our developer to get this handled.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Danny, pls mark my answer as Correct when you get a chance so it'll be easier to find in searches.

[Danny_Tran5]

I didn't post this as a question, so I don't see the ability to mark your response as the Correct Answer. Do you know if there's a way to edit this discussion to mark it as a question?

[SanfordWhiteman]

Ah yes, Discussions don't have "answers" unfortunately. Well, next time.

[Danny_Tran5]

Sorry about that. You are always a great help. I'll be sure to use the right type of post next time.

[Loren_Robeck]

Hi Sanford Whiteman​,

I have a related question about cookies and utms. Our performance marketer spends a few minutes every morning checking a smart list for leads that have a first page visit with paid UTMs and a subsequence form fill that didn't capture the UTMs. In this example, I think it's because they visited multiple pages in between, though sometimes I think it's because the cookie expired 30min or more later. What is the recommend method to solve for this gap? I imagine it's very common, and have read quite a few posts and external sites including your blog about this topic, as well as custom JS to implement on your site.

Here are some screenshots that I hope display an example clearly.

Lead's Page 1 of Activity Log:

First page visit with UTMs, at 12:06pm

Form fill with no UTMs - on this page The Beginner’s Guide to Automation Triggers | Tray.io

Thanks in advance!

Loren