How to track contacts web activity?

[Anonymous]

I would like to track the web activity of contacts who are synced to Marketo.

How do you suggest I associate the cookie to their email?

When they sign up on our site, an account&contact are opened in SFDC (assume I can't change it).

If I add the MKTO associate lead function to the sign up form, it will open up a lead in Marketo and then once SF syncs the contact, a duplicate will be created.

any suggestions?

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Idan,

Sure it would be a very bad idea to double create in Marketo.

Since you cannot change it, the best way is to have a trigger campaign in Marketo that uses the "lead is created" trigger, with a "Source Type = salesforce.com" constraints. In the flow, you send them an email with a couple (not too much) of interesting CTAs, related to their subscription. For instance, it could be a "click here to confirm you email" link, or link towards some content on how to better benefit from subscription, ... You name it.

When they click on these links, they will get a cookie and the trick will be done.

You can even go further an add a few other emails after some waits an continue as is for a few weeks and stop when they have clicked.

-Greg

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your quick reply!

However I'm looking for 100% tracking unrelated to their engagement with our emails

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Idan,

You could also strengthen your email campaign with some emails sent by the sales through MSI, but it will not guarantee 100%

There are only 3 ways to associate a lead with a cookie, no more :

1. Have them fill out a Marketo form
2. Have them click a link in an email
3. Use the associate lead munchkin call or using the form 2.0 API

The #3 is excluded because it will create duplicates. The #2 is not 100% sure, so it leaves the replacement of your SFDC forms with Marketo forms, which you have excluded.

-Greg

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

This is a common problem with a simple and complete solution (sorry Greg, no email is necessary).

Save the Munchkin cookie to a SFDC custom field.  When the lead syncs over to Marketo, run a webhook that associates the lead using either REST AssociateLead/SOAP SyncLead/Munch associateLead.  Works 100% of the time.  I have a couple of clients doing exactly this for exactly the same reason.

I do recommend using Marketo forms instead because usually the person who chose third-party forms didn't understand the consequences, but there is a neat solution.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Sanford Whiteman,

Thx That's a nice and elegant one I agree.

he drawback is that it requires that someone develops the web service to be called from the webhook. Meaning a web server, some development skills, testing and all the like, unless you know an easy solution to make this, which I would love to hear of.

-Greg

[SanfordWhiteman]

True... we build this stuff a lot, so I think tech effort isn't a stopper but simply a project description.  We have a webhook engine that's already load-balanced/cloud-hosted and all that.  We often consider offering some common (?) hooks as products but couldn't figure out yet how to price them.

[Anonymous]

Hi, thanks for your suggestion, we thought about it too but with saving the cookie in our DB. Saving it in SF is a better idea, will try it

cheers

[Anonymous]

In order to run REST associate lead we need lead ID, how do I access the lead ID from within marketo?

I need to upload it into the POST webhook template.

we wrote a script that runs the REST call and SF sends the cookie value to Marketo, just missing the lead ID now

tx

[SanfordWhiteman]

Cool, if you could Mark Correct on my post that would help future searches.