Munchkin Cookie Persists/Identify Users Over Sessions?

[nhabischWings]

Hello!
This might be a dumb question - I know the munchkin cookie is generated from a webpage/domain visit and the mt_tok token from emails/forms - but is there anything in the munchkin cookie itself that identifies the Lead?

My initial assumption is no - assuming the munchkin cookie is re-generated each new "session" if it is cleared and the only Lead identification comes from the email/form token and not anything in the cookie itself?

[Darshil_Shah1 · Accepted solution]

A Munchkin tracking code has a token value in it, this token value is what gets associated with the person's record in Marketo (via the below-mentioned methods).

• Person visits a Munchkin-tracked page with a mkt_tok parameter in the query string from a tracked Marketo email link.
• Person must fill out a Marketo Form.
• A SOAP syncLead or REST Associate Lead call is sent to associate the Munchkin cookie with the person ID.

You see, the only token part is what gets associated with the person record in Marketo, the rest of the cookie value is used to determine the Marketo instance that receives new Munchkin events. You can see the token part in the below sample Munchkin tracking code (_mkto_trk). The ID just contains the Munchkin ID of the instance (561–HYG–937).

id:561–HYG–937&token:_mch–marketo.com–1374552656411–90718

This post on Say “associated Munchkin token” instead of “cookie” to be hyper-accurate by Sandy is a good read if you want to dive deeper into this.

Also, a single person can have more than one munchkin token associated with their person record (this is as simple as saying that they're a cookied record in multiple devices/browsers), which likely happens in the real world if they're using multiple devices to interact with your marketing content. In case this token value, i.e., the cookie is deleted, then upon reloading the page, Marketo would generate a new tracking cookie, which will not be associated with the person's record unless they do any of the above-mentioned actions. I hope this answers your question.

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

• The mkt_tok has nothing directly to do with forms. It's only attached to tracked email links and will not exist without such a link.
• The Munchkin cookie as a whole is randomly generated on the client side. It doesn't contain any information about the lead – that is, it's not encrypted data.

[nhabischWings]

Thank you! This is exactly what I expected, but wanted to verify.