Removal of "Is Anonymous" filters.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi all,

We have been receiving today an information from Cheryl Chavez​ about the removal of the is Anonymous filter, as part of the release of Munchkin v2. See here for more details : Next Generation Munchkin Tracking FAQ - Marketo Docs - Product Docs

Although this new version of the munchkin and the way the V2 will work is promising, there is one thing we will be missing, though: the ability to look at the anonymous leads, display inferred and origin informations and create an understanding of where they come from and how they arrived here.

Also, some database providers use anonymous leads to read their IP addresses and provide in return some leads from the same IP address for retargeting. They will be in hard difficulty.

Your thoughts ?

-Greg

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Mike Reynolds​ and Kenny Elkington​,

What about the created date ? Is it going to be the date of the creation of the cookie or the date at which the lead had been promoted ?

-Greg

[Mike_Reynolds2]

Greg,

Created date for the "Lead Was Created" activity in the activity log will be the date/time when the lead took the action to become known. Let's say the lead first started navigating your site on January 1st. Then on January 15th, they filled out a form, promoting them to a known lead. The "Lead Was Created" date/time will be January 15th.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Mike Reynolds​,

Correct me if I am wrong, but this will be a significant difference with today's behavior, as currently the created date would be Jan 1st in your example.

-Greg

[Mike_Reynolds2]

Greg,

No, that's actually the same as the current behavior. The New Lead activity is logged at the time the lead becomes known. If you look through the activity log, you'll see all the anonymous web activity and then the New Lead activity is logged right after the Form Fill activity or whatever action they took to become known. So, that part is actually the same as current behavior.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Mike Reynolds​,

My question was not about the new lead activity but about the "Created" field, which reflects the exact date/time at which the lead was created as anonymous in the Database. What will be the value of this field with the next release ?

-Greg

[Mike_Reynolds2]

Greg,

Ok, I see what you're referring to. Not the activity log at all, but the Created Date/Time stamp on the Lead Info tab. That refers to the specific time the lead record was created. Since a traditional lead record isn't created until the lead is promoted, I believe that would reflect that time when the lead was promoted to known lead. The anonymous web activity will be housed in a different "store", which is why the anonymous lead records won't exist any more. That activity is pulled into the known lead record when that is created, but the Created Date/Time stamp on the Lead Info tab of the lead record refers specifically to the date/time when that lead record was created.

Currently that does show the first anonymous activity (because an anonymous lead record is created), but after Munchkin V2 rolls out, it will then show the date/time when the known lead record is created (when they take action to become known)

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Mike,

Your answer makes sense.

We will test then 🙂

A pity that we cannot get at least the date at which the cookie was created in that field in the future. This is an info you necessarily have, since you are able to "re-run" all the smart campaigns on lead creation.

-Greg

[Grégoire_Miche2]

The corresponding idea is here :

-Greg

[Anonymous]

I've just posted an Idea   for creating a Release Readiness program. Either this "Is Anonymous" change should have been in beta with customers or at least a discussion held on this several MONTHS in advance so admins can analyze and make appropriate changes to their orgs. I'm personally getting very frustrated on the communications around upcoming release changes that affect end users or processes.

[Maarten_Westdo2]

Hi Mike Reynolds,

With regards to the inferred company information for anonymous leads, we actually built out an smart campaign that alerts sales reps when an anonymous visitors inferred company name matches with a list of predefined company names (their top 50 wish list accounts) and sends them an immediate report, which enables them to do more targeted "cold calling".

Would you say this is still possible in the new setup?

[Jep_Castelein2]

that won't work as a Smart List anymore. However, instead you can use the Web Page Activity Report and the Company Web Activity Report​ and have the sales rep subscribe. My understanding is that you can still use a Smart List there (however, no need for the 'is anonymous' filter). I'll let Mike confirm that though.

[Mike_Reynolds2]

Jep Castelein​  Maarten Westdorp​, Jep is correct, the Web Page Activity Report and Company Web Activity Reports will both give you that same data and you can set up a report subscription to get that data to your sales team.

[Dan_Stevens_]

While it's good to know of a workaround as to where to still find this data, our concern is that all of the trigger campaigns that we have setup to send an email notification to the respective sales execs when a threshold is reached on specific web activity (e.g., visits 5 or more high value pages in a day) within a specific account, will no longer function.  This was a huge value add that Marketing provided to Sales.  Now that's lost.

[Mike_Reynolds2]

Dan Stevens​ This won't be lost. Once a lead becomes known, any campaigns that would have triggered when the lead was anonymous will still be triggered at the time it is promoted to known, so those will all still work. Plus, since anonymous visitors have no contact information and are therefore useless to your sales execs, waiting until they are known and have that contact info available seems like it would be a better solution anyway.

There is one big technical issue to note here though. It's noted in the Anonymous Lead Upgrades – Under The Hood doc, but should be reiterated here.

Smart campaigns triggered at the time of lead promotion will only execute 5 specific flow actions. No other flow actions other than these will be executed in that replay at lead promotion to known lead:

1. Change Score

2. Interesting Moment

3. Change Data Value

4. Add to List

5. Remove from List

If your campaign is using a Send Alert flow step, it won't be executed. There's an easy work around though--have the lead added to a static list instead. Then have a recurring batch campaign running to send the alert for any leads on that list, then remove them from the list. This needs to be a recurring batch campaign and not a triggered campaign because of another technical detail (sorry) noted in that same Under The Hood doc--secondary campaigns will not be triggered.

[Dan_Stevens_]

Mike Reynolds​ - actually, this will all be lost since these alerts are triggered based on anonymous activity - well before if and when they become known.  This is one of those value-ads that Marketing was providing to Sales (in addition to all of the existing workflows/campaigns in place against known leads).  

[Anonymous]

Ugh, now I have to redo our documentation for sales.

[Mike_Reynolds2]

Hello all,

With all of the replies going around in this thread, it's hard to make sure we've gotten all questions answered and nothing has slipped through the cracks. If anyone has any questions that haven't been answered yet, please feel free to start a new discussion thread and drop an @-tag for me in there so that I see it and we'll pick up where we left off. Just be sure to also add the URL for the new thread in here so others can follow along. Always glad to help!

[Dan_Stevens_]

Mike Reynolds​ Can you just confirm that the way we use this today - for providing account-related activity/responses to our paid advertising campaigns - will no longer be possible?

In looking at the great documentation you guys posted recently - specifically Anonymous Lead Upgrades – Analytics Reports  - we may be able to achieve similar results here.  We'll just need to filter those specific landing pages in the smart list so that it only shows anonymous company activity results on those pages.   

If this is not the case, then we will have to rely solely on DemandBase for this (which is fine, but would have like to see this capability remain in Marketo).  FYI, here's a sample of the anonymous account-centric dashboards they provide (does RTP offer the same?).  I'd love to see similar capabilities in Marketo one day:

[Mike_Reynolds2]

Dan Stevens​ The Visited Web Page filter will work, but the Is Anonymous filter would break it and should be removed. Since all leads will be known, any Is Anonymous = True filter in use will return zero results. If you just remove that Is Anonymous filter, the Visited Web Page filter will give you the same results you're looking for, except that obviously you won't get the Anonymous leads any more.

Also, note here that your filter is set to only look for leads that have visited these 4 pages within the last 30 days. It could be thrown off by how long it takes for the lead to become known vs when the campaign/report is run. If the lead visited the pages 60 days ago, becomes known on day 61 and the campaign/report is run with the Visited Web Page filter set to in the past 30 days, it would filter them out.

As you said, you can still get these results in an analytics report by adding just the Visited Web Page filter to the report and then changing the Setup to show anonymous leads. This option will be available on the Web Page Activity Report and the Company Web Activity Report.

In regards to RTP, yes, there are a lot of capabilities available to see anonymous activity there, in particular with regards to conversions of leads by RTP Campaigns. RTP integrates with Google Analytics and there are some pretty powerful reports that can come from that integration as well. If you don't have RTP already, I'd definitely check it out. RTP doesn't have a stock integration with DemandBase, but they are a LaunchPoint partner and have an integration built with Marketo.

[Anonymous]

Mike Reynolds​ - I followed your link Anonymous Lead Upgrades – Analytics Reports and I am a bit confused about the images shown in that link and what I am seeing in our set up. Instead of seeing "Anonymous Visitors" I see "Activity Source". Since I don't see a way to add both known and anonymous to the same report (set up filters are greyed out on the right), I've had to create a "known" report and an "anonymous" report. Is this user error, a bug on our end that needs support, or are the pictures in the link incorrect? Or none of the above? Thanks for all your documentation and help with these questions!

What I see instead of "Anonymous Visitors" in the setup tab

My options when I try to edit "Activity Source"

[Mike_Reynolds2]

Greg, You'll only be able to do one at a time, either known or anonymous. It's telling the report setup to point to a different "store" of information, so it's an all-or-nothing switch. That's how it is for now, but I really like the idea so I voted for that one myself as well. It'll take time to develop that, but this is what we have for now.