Tracking Organic, Direct, Paid, Social Sources from form submits into Marketo

[Anonymous]

Hi again,

I've seen various requests on this one, but no really complete answer - maybe I missed something.

we are starting to set up UTM parameter passing from social sites, but we need to be able to track the different sources that Google Analytics shows up - so: -

google / organic

(direct) / (none)

I'm not clear in which field/querystring? this data is available.

we also have some forms coming to us from the website directly via one of the Marketo API connectors - so again not really sure the information I need is even being passed.

Imagine you're talking to an idiot when you reply!

🙂

[Jenn_DiMaria2]

You will need to define the hidden fields in the form.

For example, I pass my campaign Campaign information into a "Lead Source Additional Info" field I've set up in Marketo. The field setup on the form looks like this:

PS: It's worth noting that Google's Source/Campaign aren't what gets pulled into those fields. UTMs are user-defined.

[Pavel_Plachky]

Hello Michael,

the question of lead source attribution is a complex subject that can easily take 6-18 months to implement, or perhaps even longer. See for example Josh Hill's Marketing Maturity Model where he has source attribution at month 36. That is why you will not see a conclusive answer on the community.

You may want to engage an experienced revenue consultant to help you go through the process.

Best luck,

Pavel

[Anonymous]

Ok - fair enough - maybe I wasn't clear - I don't want a strategy defined for me - what I want is to know how to track the querystring itself - so it's a technical question - does the querystring get passed automatically with all form submissions or does it need to be set up as a hidden field on the form?

[Jenn_DiMaria2]

It needs to be set up as a hidden field on the form.

[Geoff_Krajeski1]

PR Newswire does this in the same way as Jennifer DiMaria​ suggests.

Default value set on form, and then it picks up the querystring parameter, if present.

[Pavel_Plachky]

Hello Michael,

a typical setup is to have UTM values as hidden fields in your form, something like this.

As a first approximation you can populate the UTM fields directly from the Querystring as shown by Jennifer above. Best practice is to use JavaScript to store the querystring values in a cookie so that if a user clicks away from the page and comes back and fills the form later, the values are not lost.

Best,

Pavel

[Geoff_Krajeski1]

Good catch on storing the values in a cookie

[Anonymous]

so does this mean that the Query Parameter isn't 100% reliable - I'm talking about parsing the value that Marketo stores automatically - for example, on a Visit Web Page activity on a Lead record?

I've stored values on a form for the UTM stuff, and have seen advise that you don't need to do that for the querystring as it's being captured anyway - so is your comment about the cookie referring to UTM or Querystring or both?

is the cookie approach to create another hidden field and store the cookie value - or is there more to it than that?

[Jenn_DiMaria2]

It's not that the UTM values aren't reliable; it's that they could get overwritten. The javascript would store the parameter as a cookie and automatically load that upon the next visit, should they come from another source. In my case, however, I haven't found this to be an issue.