Munchkin API - Possible to capture querystring and update fields for known leads?

[Anonymous]

I have a problem. I want to start getting much more granular source information about the offers and content we're creating, but I don't want to put forms in front of my known leads, especially for content. Take a nurture campaign for example. I'd rather remove the barrier of a form and send someone to a landing page or the asset itself directly. The problem is, I lose the ability to capture the utm parameters I use to tag my links, and associate them with the lead. So to put it in terms of an example,let's say I am driving traffic to a whitepaper via multiple sources, some with a form in front of the asset (social, advertising, etc) and others with an ungated asset (email). I can track all sources as having consumed the content, but I can only see the utm details for the form conversions.

My question is: is it possible to leverage the Munchkin API, or any of the APIs for that matter, to get Marketo to parse the querystring on a particular page visit, and associate those values with the corresponding fields for known leads? This seems like it might be possible with the Associate Lead function (see docs here), but I've never tested it, and it seems like it's designed for a slightly different use case. Curious if anyone else has come across this use case before.

Additionally if you have some other way of getting to detailed source data for ungated assets, I'm all ears!

[Justin_Norris1 · Accepted solution]

Jeff Shearer​

Sanford Whiteman​ posted a very interesting idea about auto-submitting a hidden form containing the URL parameters in this thread:

UTM parameters

"Create a form that has only the UTM fields on it (all type=Hidden, pulling from the URL params). Inject the form into the page but don't display it. If any of the fields have values, call form.submit (the user will not ever see the form, but data will be stored as individual lead fields in Mkto)."

It seems the idea is that the lead would submit a form without even knowing it and give you the UTM data. I presume you could amend the logic to only do it for known leads? Sandy could perhaps offer some detail on that.

An alternate idea, also provided by Sanford in the same thread, is to call a custom Munchkin 'viewWebPage' action (/utm/campaign/campaign12345, etc.).

You could then build some smart campaign logic looking for these variables in a Visited Web Page string and either populate UTM fields or assign to a program/campaign, whatever you are using for tracking.

I think both ideas are promising for your use case.

[Anonymous]

Awesome insight, thanks for pointing me to it Justin Norris​, and for the idea Sanford Whiteman​.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Thanks guys. Auto-submit will work well for this task. One thing: it can't only submit for known leads.* So anonymous leads will get updated too, but I don't see why that would be a problem.

* This is because there is no supported, programmatic way to determine if a cookie is already associated with a known lead, i.e. from a clicked link in an email. There's an unsupported way, but it requires an additional HTTP call and is likely not worth it here.

[Justin_Norris1]

Sanford Whiteman​ would submitting the form create a "known" record with just UTMs and no other personal info?

If so that is one drawback I see for that method, is that you could quickly accumulate a very big database of records useful just for source tracking but which are not actually addressable lead records.

[SanfordWhiteman]

You'd already have such records if you're running Munchkin, so it's just another activity in the log for those leads; there isn't a second, new lead created. Also, it's valuable to the have the anon lead's UTM info logged in case you later find out who they are via a non-UTM-coded method, like an organic re-visit.

Alternately, you could use the Known Lead part of the form to determine whether to auto-submit the form or to leave the form fields shown for the unknown users. That's another related trick....

[Anonymous]

Agreed - that behavior with anon leads sounds pretty desirable anyway. Will have to give it a try. Thanks again,