Tracking referrer via hidden field and trigger campaign not working?

[Anonymous]

I've attempted to setup a campaign that tracks the referring URL to a Marketo landing page using a UTM to track the original source. So the path would be:

Clicks Twitter Advertisement that has UTM:

http://www.godigitalmarketing.com/learn/blog/brand-building-how-to-turn-a-negative-review-into-a-pos...

They land on our blog page, if they click the C2A at the bottom of the page they are redirected to a marketo landing page that has a hidden referrer field in the form:

Then I have a campaign set to trigger off of the UTM source in the URL (If referrer contains "twitter" then lead enters campaign flow)

This is not working currently and I feel like I am missing something big, or don't understand something important about UTMs... HELP!

[Grégoire_Miche2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Thomas,

I just ran a  test.

I used first Brand Building: How to Turn a Negative Review into a Positive Branding Strategy - G/O Digital Market...

Then I clicked the "download ebook" link at the bottom, I got here: Building Blocks For Your Online Brand

Looking at the form, I see the hidden leadsource field with the value "twitter", so the capture of the referrer parameter to the hidden field works as expected.

So you could try to use the "fills out form" without the constraint but with a "lead source = twitter" filter.

Now, your own trigger should work

-Greg

[Josh_Hill13]

Why not use UTM Parameter instead of Referrer? Is that effectively the same?

[Anonymous]

The reason we couldn't set it up with a UTM parameter is due to the path. We have a different UTM for each of our distribution channels:

• FB
• TW
• LI
• YT
• Outbrain

Advertisements connect them to our blog post, where the UTM will show in the URL. However, once they click the C2A that redirects them to the landing page with gated content, the UTM disappears. We want to know how effective the path:  Advertisement Source > Post > C2A is at capturing leads. So we're basically tracking two steps instead of one. If we drove them directly to the gated content page, then we could use the UTM parameter alone, but in this instance referrer parameter is needed. (I am new to using UTMs though...)

[SanfordWhiteman]

Thomas, the Referrer in a Filled Out Form activity context is not the same as the Referrer of a standard page view (Visited Web Page activity in Marketo).

The FoF Referrer is the page that hosts the form (this may seem counterintuitive, but is equivalent to the way referrers work with iframes, so it is not without precedent).

[Grégoire_Miche2]

So my reco above is the best way to go: removing the referrer constraint on the trigger and adding a filter on the leadsource =  twitter

-Greg

[Anonymous]

@Grégoire Michel

Awesome that worked! Thank you

[Grégoire_Miche2]

You are welcome.

-Greg

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi again Thomas,

FYI, the method though the referrer and hidden field works only if the visitor arrives to your LP in 2 clicks: 1 click to arrive on the blog page, a second click to the LP.

If you expect the journey on the web site to be more complex, you will have to go through cookies:

• Store the UTM values in cookies when the visitor arrives on the site/blog.
• Read the values from the cookies on the form, with hidden fields

-Greg

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the insight! I'll have to test around with cookies. When you say "store UTM values in cookies" is there something special I need to do to make it track, or does the munchkin code do that by default?

Thanks!