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

Anonymous
Not applicable

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

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!

🙂

12 REPLIES 12
Jenn_DiMaria2
Level 10

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

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:

Screen Shot 2016-06-02 at 8.59.44 AM.png

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

Pavel_Plachky
Level 5

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

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
Not applicable

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

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
Level 10

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

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

Geoff_Krajeski1
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

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

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
Level 5

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

Hello Michael,

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

pastedImage_1.png

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
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

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

Good catch on storing the values in a cookie

Anonymous
Not applicable

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

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
Level 10

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

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.