Is "inferred country" a reverse IP lookup?

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I was reading about the form field "inferred country" on Marketo Community, and I am confused by some of the answers. Can a Marketo employee verify?

For example, we have a form that asks only for the email address, but we would like to know which country that visitor is coming from. Would inserting a hidden field of "inferred country" automatically provide that visitor's country? This article makes me think that visitor must have already filled out a form or visited the site through an email link.

I was under the impression that the "inferred country" field would assign a country to that lead. I can't seem to find any Marketo Resources regarding inferred country, so hopefully this question is in the right place.

Thanks!

[Josh_Hill13]

Inferred Country is automatically inserted into any new lead record. It is an IP lookup based on the assigned IPs to a country, ISP, etc.

You do not have to do anything other than encourage people to visit your site or fill out a form.

You can setup a workflow to take the Inferred Country and assign a value to the Country field, however, that may be imperfect.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

What Josh says is 100% correct. The IP address is collected when a lead is still anonymous and the inferred data is all we can tell about them. Once they fill out a form or interact with an email and become a known lead, all that inferred data comes across into the known lead.

You don't have to add anything special to a form to collect it, it's already there.

Be aware though, inferred data isn't always accurate. For example, right now I"m at home in Portland, OR. If I connected to the Marketo VPN and visited your page, it would show me as coming from San Mateo, CA.

In general, the widest area possible is most accurate. Country, for example, is pretty accurate (unless you have a remote employee or office in one country connecting through a network in another.) State is less accurate, city is less accurate than that, company probably not accurate at all (I work for Marketo, it would show you "Comcast" because that's my ISP).

[Anonymous]

Thanks so much Jordan and Josh!