Personalized content not working

[Franky_Ruyssch2]

Previously, we have imported thousands of contacts from another marketing automation platform. Only a small part of them has a Marketo cookie.

Today, we have generated personalized content which is stored in 10 custom fields in a contacts profile ( 5 URL’s and 5 'Link' text fields ), not all fields are used for everybody.

Based on those fields we create a bullet list which can have up to 5 items ( all links, consisting out of a text link and the link itself )

The personalized content is used in an email (the links - if any - and text are correct, meaning the correct information from the contacts profile ). The same content is displayed on a landing page which is also personalized based on those 10 fields. So on the landing page the 5 links are visualized.

The problem,

On first time visit for a part of the contacts ( for which we think that they do not have the cookie ) , the landing page content is empty, only on a second attempt ( clicking a link from the mail ) the content is displayed. We should expect that the anonymous lead is converted to a known lead because he clicked on the link in the email. So why are contacts imported from our other automation platform not converted to a known lead? Is there a delay ? 

How should we solve this problem?

[Chris_Wilcox]

While the demographic information from your old CRM is in Marketo, Marketo has no idea who is who when it sees people using your website. There needs to be a cookie link created.

How would Marketo know what web user is associated with which lead in the CRM without a tie to the cookie and user? 

Linking the record in your CRM with that individual's web user occurs when a user either clicks a link in a Marketo distributed email (with the mkt_tok option enabled), or fills out a Marketo form. 

[Franky_Ruyssch2]

Hi Chris, thanks for helping

I have constructed the links in my email in html like :

<a href="http://{{lead.mkt3497link1}}">{{lead.mkt3497link1text}}</a>

Could it be that as done above they are not mkt_tok option enabled?

[Chris_Wilcox]

Hmmm I don't think I've ever confirmed if mkt_tok option works on a tokenized link URL, but I would expect it to work.  

[SanfordWhiteman]

You can see quickly if the link is branded: is it rewritten to bounce off your branding domain?

Also note a cookie is *not necessary* for dynamic content to work. Your first pageview doesn't send a cookie to Marketo. The cookie is created in JS *after* the page is received by your browser. You must, however, have a mkt_tok.