Integrating Marketo with Google enhance conversions

[sdutoit]

With expiring cookies we are keen to connect Google enhanced conversions with Marketo - ie. sending a conversion back into Google to record success. 

We have received this response from Adobe:

At this stage, our method of integration leverages Google’s Offline Conversion Import, rather than Enhanced Conversions. This does rely on clicks using the Google Click Identifier (GCLID). 

We can't share the GCLID at this stage - has anyone come across any way to use webhooks to send the converted audience across.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Not sure what you mean by “expiring cookies” but — despite frequent FUD — cookies in general aren’t going anywhere for a long while. You’ll far sooner see tracking params stripped, as currently done in Firefox, than having cookie support removed.

Anyway, there’s a lot of info missing from your question:

• Do you mean Google Ads enhanced conversions or Google Analytics enhanced conversions? These are different things.
• Why specifically can you not “share the gclid at this stage”?
• Are you currently using UPDC (user-provided data collection), and if so, how exactly have you integrated w/Marketo forms?

[sdutoit]

1. I'm referring to Google Ads
2. We cannot share gclid as we are not currently capturing this and we do not have the detail of the form development to understand how adding the gclid as a new field to the webform will affect it.  
3. We are using a complex hidden Marketo form for our progressive registration form. 

[SanfordWhiteman]

All you need do is add a Hidden field set to Autofill from the Query Parameter.

This doesn't disrupt anything and works equally well if the whole form is hidden via CSS.

[ggerla]

Hi @sdutoit,

if I can get this correctly, there are two topics in the same discussion here about offline conversions:

• Sending back GCLID to Google ADS (Enhanced Conversions)
• Server-to-server conversion actions to Google Analytics (Measurement Protocol)

These topics need a precise understanding and evaluation (specifically the first one) since they may need to involve also CRMs (suggested!), but here is a panoramic:

In both cases, you need first to identify those actions that you need to evaluate also on Google Analytics and Google ADS (specific conversion points, just collection of information, general events, open opportunities, and so on), and then implement a server-to-server interaction: in this final step is mandatory to collect information like the Analytics Client, Session ID and/or the GCLID value (that needs a little bit of Javascript coding - mainly in the first case) trough the form submission or the Marketo's API endpoint. 

For example, in my case, I've used the Measurement Protocol to send back to Google Analytics some information like a company's revenue or the employee range, so I can segment per these dimensions. The flow foresees:

1. When a data value changed (Revenue or Number of Employees) and the fields are not empty AND the Google Analytics 
2. Send a Webhook to the measurement endpoint with the following payload:

{
  "client_id": "{{lead.Google Analytics Client ID:default=}}",
  "non_personalized_ads": false,
  "events": [
    {
      "name": "marketo_identification",
      "params": {
        "revenue": "{{lead.Revenue:default=}}",
        "employee_range": "{{lead.Employee Range:default=}}"
      }
    }
  ]
}

As you can see, I'm identifying a user through its Analytics Client ID, I'm using this information to fill out the rest of the information to send out directly to Google; in the same way, you can send server-to-server conversions for tracking, for example, how many submissions you had for a certain form/program.

You can build up your event's payload with this useful tool: https://ga-dev-tools.google/ga4/event-builder/

About Google ADS, I think the answer here is a little bit more complicated. Behind the scenes, automatism works in the same way, but you need to build a more sophisticated structure because you may need to involve CRM's milestones for better optimization.

In this case, I would suggest connecting directly your CRM to Google ADS (Salesforce can be connected natively with it) for plenty of reasons (automatic tagging, conversion import, milestone evaluation, etc), but if you want to create your own integration, the logic is the same: Action --> Webhook; in this case, you may need some developer assistance because you need to develop some additional structure: https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/conversions/enhanced-conversions/web