Manually Turn Anonymous Lead to Known

Brendan_Gallagh
Level 2

Manually Turn Anonymous Lead to Known

Long story short, I had a non-Marekto form on a Munchkin tracked page (no lead created, but kept track of a users IP Address). I then went into Marketo's Anonymous Web Traffic Report and was able to find that Anonymous user's activity by filtering for the IP Address (as well as their score changes, etc.). Is there a way for me to create a lead in Marketo and associate that information with that lead? I tried adding an email address to the Anonymous Person and that did not appear to help matters.

8 REPLIES 8
Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Re: Manually Turn Anonymous Lead to Known

Hi Brendan,

The trick is to know the lead entry in the database and add a name and email address to it. While the lead is anonymous, since the change in the way anonymous leads are handled, AFAIK, the anonymous lead database can no longer be accessed nor edited.

also, be aware that IP addresses are not always an accurate way of recognizing people. It shows the gateway email address and all employees on the company will have the same one.

-Greg

Brendan_Gallagh
Level 2

Re: Manually Turn Anonymous Lead to Known

Thanks for the quick response but I am not sure if I follow the first part. For the second paragraph, I know that it isn't always that accurate, and I would not normally use this approach, but based on cross-referencing the activity of the user through GA, the form submission information, and Munchkin web activity I am certain of these Anonymous leads.

It looks like there is no easy setting to "Convert to Known" and then be able to add an email address, name, etc. Or vice-versa, manually create the lead and then find the anonymous activity and tell Marketo to "associate this activity" to a Known Lead (like we are able to do when we merge leads).

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Re: Manually Turn Anonymous Lead to Known

Hi again Brendan,

The best and recommended way is to add your known leads to Marketo seperately from the anonymous one. Then send emails to the known person. As soon as this person will start visiting your site or fill out a form, Marketo will merge the anonymous lead with the known one and also merge the activity log.

-Greg

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Re: Manually Turn Anonymous Lead to Known

And the first part of my comment refers to the fact that until a few months (may be more ) ago, you could see the anonymous leads in the DB and add email address and names manually to them. But this is no longer the case, unfortunately.

-Greg

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Manually Turn Anonymous Lead to Known

If you're talking about associating an existing cookie with a known lead, there are actually multiple ways to do this. The newer REST API Push Lead to Marketo can do this, as can the older Associate Lead endpoint, the Munchkin associateLead method, or a manual form post.  Depends on your level of skill/drive. 

If you have a record of a lead's URL activity resulting from an email click, you can also use the mkt_tok param to associate their web session.

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Re: Manually Turn Anonymous Lead to Known

Hi Sanford,

From what I gather, the difficulty is to do it manually in Marketo GUI without knowing the cookie value

-Greg

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Manually Turn Anonymous Lead to Known

Yeah, fully in the UI, probably not.

But you could know the cookie value via other means (i.e. web server logs).

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Re: Manually Turn Anonymous Lead to Known

Good old ideas: