Marketo Changes UTM Shortlinks in Emails

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

We built a UTM code using Terminus to track link clicks in our webinar invites. The way it works is we created a Marketo landing page and created a UTM shortlink to the page using Terminus. We then put that link in our webinar invite email for people to  However, when we send out emails, we noticed that Marketo changes the shortlink to "go.ourdomain.com/randomnumbers" to track link clicks.

Since Marketo changes the link, we aren't able to track the link click in Terminus. Is there a way to prevent Marketo from changing the UTM shortlink while still being able to track the link click in Marketo for our email performance reports?

[SanfordWhiteman]

Marketo doesn't eliminate the original target URL.  It rewrites the URL so that the lead first hits the Marketo tracking server, then is redirected to the original target. You haven't explained why Marketo redirecting people to the Terminus link makes that Terminus link non-functional. 

In answer to your general question: no, there is no way for Marketo to track the click if you don't let it rewrite the URL. If you turn off tracking, you... turn off tracking.

[Julz_James]

Backing up what Sanford Whiteman​ said above...the link that you see as soon as you click is just a tracking link for Marketo, and then it will forward to the link you set up in Terminus.  Have you tested the link sent from another email source (not via a Marketo email).  To see if that tracks, or even via a shortened bit.ly URL.  All of those ways should still track the ultimate URL with the UTM information.

I used to have utm information in my email links and once it redirected from the Marketo link (the tracking one) it would work fine.

Do your leads have to fill out a form after they click the link?  You could pull all the UTM information into the form fill as well to help?

Thanks

Julz

[SanfordWhiteman]

All of those ways should still track the ultimate URL with the UTM information.

The exception is when the next-hop URL cannot parse the mkt_tok parameter, and rather than simply discarding it, chokes and throws a 404. This is, generally speaking, a sign of bad design. But I was waiting to hear if this is what Taran is directly experiencing.