Implications of removing mkt_tok from Newsletters due to errors in Google Analytics reporting

[ahc5]

Our marketing team that creates Newsletters out of Marketo is requesting to uncheck the mkt_tok in the email editor because what they think it is causing in Google Analytics reporting.

In Google Analytics currently every link clicked in the newsletter programs is getting registered as a unique URL (not ideal). We can manually roll up these clicks in Excel, but it’s tedious and there’s no value to how the clicks are getting captured currently. Ideally, we would have a cleaner view of CTR & be able to track referral traffic at the page level.

My question is, if we uncheck the mkt_tok from their newsletters, what actual implications does it have on reporting that I should be concerned about?

[Michael_Florin]

Well, probably my wording is not super accurate here, but mkt_tok cookies the clicker. Therefore you'll lose form pre-fill on the landing page if it's a Marketo page with form and munchkin web tracking if the clicker wasn't cookied before.

With form-prefill you might also lose additional features on forms like visibility rules based on hidden fields.

[SanfordWhiteman]

It's a horrendous idea to turn off mkt_tok simply because your analytics team can't figure out how to filter out that query param. You can filter it out on the GA server side (using a view filter) or remove it on the client side before loading GA. This is not advanced GA usage.

The mkt_tok query param is what Munchkin relies on to associate sessions from email clicks. Without it, all Visit Web Page activities will be anonymous unless a person - meaning someone already in your database, who could otherwise be identified - manually fills out a form. Personalization via {{lead.tokens}} also won't work on LPs until you can force people  to fill out a form. Native Pre-Fill will never work. 

I'd question whether you should even be using Marketo if disabling these features is remotely acceptable.