Known leads and progressive profiling

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I am wanting to create a form that will only appear if the visitor is an unknown lead.

In Forms 2.0 I can set up to show Custom HTML if the user is known, which works well?

But I also want any known user to also answer one of our Progressive Profiling questions.

Is this possible using the "Known Leads" option?

How does Marketo actually define "known"?
Is it the Tracking ID with First Name , Last Name, email address or just email?

I don't want users to be faced with a large form every time even though we can pre-fill the fields.

I want a more elegant solution that will only show form fields for missing data hence progressive profiling.

Am I better creating a custom form using Javascript to test for form fields that are empty?

Any thoughts

Tim

[SanfordWhiteman]

"Known" doesn't even require an email address on the lead! It simply means the web session is associated with a lead in your Marketo database. As opposed anonymous/not connected with your database.

The language around "known leads" could really use some adjusting. You can have a lead in your database whose corresponding real-life person has 10 anonymous sessions and 2 associated sessions..  So there's indeed a lead you know behind the keyboard in all 12 cases, but the session may not know them yet.

ProgPro and Known Lead HTML are, to some degree, alternative approaches to the same problem. If you're using ProgPro, the form will not switch into KL HTML mode -- which makes sense.  And your requirement of a form that only shows while a session is anonymous is in direct conflict with the concept of ProgPro. By definition, a ProgPro-enabled form will reappear across an associated session.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the clarity Sanford.

So in theory "Known" could be useless for a re marketing perspective.
I think we will re think our strategy and go down a custom form and an improved UX design

[SanfordWhiteman]

I wouldn't say Known is useless for remarketing, no... why would you put it that way?

Any web form is ultimately going to be subject to exactly the same restrictions... there isn't any magic way of knowing a lead if they haven't done anything knowable.

[Anonymous]

I thought you meant anonymous leads, hence no email?

[SanfordWhiteman]

A named Marketo lead doesn't need to have a valid email address -- this is commonly misunderstood because of discussions about deduping  -- neither when it's created, nor over the lifetime of a Marketo instance. The only thing a named Marketo lead really needs is an (auto-generated) Lead ID, and to be present in one of the primary shards/partitions of your database. (That's also the part of the database you pay for.)

An anonymous lead doesn't exist in the billed part of the database, though it does exist in the database as a whole. (In the newer Munchkin 2.0, the distinction between where anonymous and named leads are stored is more stark, but the same principle applies.)

If a web session is associated, it must be associated with a named lead.

[Anonymous]

So the primary key in Marketo is the Lead ID and not the email address?

[SanfordWhiteman]

That's correct. Email address isn't even a unique key.

[SanfordWhiteman]

And let me be clear about "... doesn't even require an email address on the lead."

I don't mean an anonymous lead, and 99.999% of leads in your db will have an email address (even if they aren't email-marketable as the addy is no longer current). I was, however, pointing out that neither First Name, Last Name, nor Email Address need to be on the lead record at any point in time. It could have just a street address or have all its fields blanked out -- that's not going to un-associate its web session(s) once they're associated.