Pre-populate form fields with Lead Data from Database & no Cookie Data

[Anonymous]

Hello,

     I am not sure if this is the correct way to ask this question, but I am looking for a way for a lead to be recognized for form pre-fill data when clicking through an email, even if there is a lack of munchkin cookie data.

Essentially, I am creating a marketing email campaign that needs an extra verification step through a form on a Marketo Landing Page. We have all lead records in our database already, so I would like to avoid making the customer fill out all fields on the form. I would prefer that the name and email address fields are prefilled, and they just have to check the "opt-in" box and click submit to confirm their enrollment.

What we are finding is if the customer has not been cookied by Muchkin in the past, then the form prefill function doesn't work--even though they are arriving on the page from a Marketo email. Any ideas on how to get around this issue? I had two ideas I was thinking of exploring to see if they were possible:

1)  See if I can transfer the lead ID through the CTA URL and somehow to force Munchkin to link the session to the lead record.

2)  See if there was a way to carry the data (First Name, Last Name, Email Address) using tokens in the CTA URL and pre-populate form fields. Not sure if there are PII security issues with going this route, though.

Does anyone know if one of these options will work or have an idea on another way to approach this?

Thanks

Jason

[SanfordWhiteman]

Something is wrong with your setup. PreFill should work fine in your case: leads following a tracked and mkt_tok-enized link (the default) from a Marketo email to a Marketo LP will have automatically associated Munchkin sessions.

Are you turning off tracking on your links for some reason?

[Anonymous]

Hi Sanford,

    Thanks for your reply. That's good to know it is supposed to function this way automatically.

I am working with a new guided email template that has a CTA button coded into the template and uses Marketo variables to alter the button text and URL. (See attached image) In the past, we would usually go through the rich text editor and use the hyperlink feature, which applies the tracking. Do you think that because the button is hard coded, the tracking is no longer working? If so, is there a way to apply the function in the HTML code?

Button Code:

<table class="mktoModule" id="module-orangectabutton" mktoName="Orange CTA Button" align="center" border="0" cellpadding="10px" cellspacing="0" width="100%" style="min-width:100%;background-color:#ffffff;" >

  <tr>

    <td>

      <table class="buttonwrapper" align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-radius:6px;-webkit-border-radius:6px;background-color:${CTAButtonColor-Orange};font-weight:bold;text-align:center;font-size:14px;line-height:16px;">

        <tr>

          <td class="button type" style="font-family:Helvetica Neue,sans-serif;text-align:center;">

             <a href="${CTAButtonURL-Orange}" style="border-radius:6px;-webkit-border-radius:6px;color:#ffffff;display:inline-block;text-decoration:none;border-top-width:6px;border-top-style:solid;border-top-color:${CTAButtonColor-Orange};border-bottom-width:5px;border-bottom-style:solid;border-bottom-color:${CTAButtonColor-Orange};border-left-width:20px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:${CTAButtonColor-Orange};border-right-width:20px;border-right-style:solid;border-right-color:${CTAButtonColor-Orange};line-height:25px;">${CTAButtonText-Orange}</a>

          </td>

        </tr>

      </table>

    </td>

  </tr>

</table>

Thanks

Jason

[SanfordWhiteman]

It's certainly possible for button widgets to upset tracking, as I explored here: Those bulletproof buttons are also *tracking*-proof, though (here's the fix)

But I don't think that's what's happening here, if your links are bouncing off the tracking domain.

Can you add me (sandy@teknkl.com) to your db and send me one of these emails? (Not a sample but the real email.)

[Anonymous]

Thanks Sanford. I'll do that now.

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

Well:

Maybe you need to narrow down where this isn't working as it isn't universal.

Note btw that cookies need not even be enabled for this to work (there is no existing cookie on the first hit to the page: it's the mkt_tok query param that performs the association, not the _mkto_trk cookie).

[Anonymous]

Well then! Looks like it is something on my end. Thanks for the help on this Sanford. I'll work through this and try to pinpoint the issue.

[Anonymous]

Also, as a second note, the URL that comes through in the sample emails does show up as a http://mkto-.... link. I figured that because it showed up this way, it was being tracked.

[Stacey_Coleman]

Hi - I'm new to Marketo and looking to do just this. Both my onboarding rep and support have said this is not possible when I've asked the question. I thought that sounded crazy, but I've asked multiple times and received the same answer until I came upon this thread. Is there any how-to guide that I can reference to begin to set this up?

[SanfordWhiteman]

Is there any how-to guide that I can reference to begin to set this up?

There's nothing to set up! You'd have to UN-set something up for this to not work as described.

As long as your links are tracked and mkt_tok-enized (which you can check by looking in the URL query string after you click an email link) and your LP is a Marketo-hosted LP (which you'll surely already know!) then Pre-Fill works out-of-the-box, regardless of whether the lead has ever interacted with your site before. This is long-understood behavior.

I'm very disappointed if multiple Marketo staffers have given you wrong information here. I can only hope that in one of the cases (Support) the way you phrased your question threw them off. Perhaps you should reprint here exactly what you asked.