Multiple cookies for a single user

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I am keen to understand further how tracking a prospect's activity works in regard to different devices. If a prospect has already filled out a form and been drawn into a nurturing program on one device e.g their work computer, what happens if they continue to look at our website on a home computer?

Would that activity be anonymous until they fill out a form again? What if it is a different email address? Can different cookies be atributed to the same person?

Any information on these questions would be appreciated and if I have missed any other relevant information, please fill me in.

Thank you!

[Dory_Viscoglio]

Hi Jacob, in your example above, when they're viewing something at home then they're an anonymous visitor. If they were to click on a link in an email while at home, then they would be linked to that record and all of their prior anonymous activity at home should then be attributed to their record. The anonymous record is basically merged with their known record.

If they use a different email address and fill out a form, then a new record will be created and cookied. Unless you merge the person's records, they will 'develop' and record activity independently of each other.

[Anonymous]

I strongly agree with Dory.

Cookies are browser-specific and, on top of that, device-specific. That is the specification for the whole world wide web. It is defined by W3C's RFC-2109.

A cookied lead can be tracked as anonymous on the usual browser and computer after clearing cache and cookies. 

Clicking a tracked link or filling out a form with the same email address would merge the anonymous and known leads otherwise they will remain independent records.