UTM vs Marketo Cookie: Need Clarification

[Anonymous]

Hi,

we want to use cookie parameters as a source for hidden fields, e.g. campaign_source, medium,.. We have used UTM parameters as a source for that so far but the big disadvantage is that if lead click through ad he lands on our lp with UTMs but if he search our website before he submit a form on lp he loses UTM and when he finally fills the form we track it as organic as there is no UTM at that moment.

We decided to test cookie source - so UTMs are recorded in cookie. So there is no problem if the lead search our website and come back without UTMs, we are still able to attribute form submission to specific channel. We want to set up timeout for those parameters, e.g. 2 days. We don't want to store those information for a long time as they can come on our website organically after some time - 2 weeks and not because of our ad - in this case we would populate paid channels.

What is your approach in this please? How do you cope with attribution model?

Thank you,

Jan

[SanfordWhiteman]

You're not talking about Marketo cookies, then: you're talking about generic browser cookies that you create to maintain source info. So the Munchkin.init() options are not relevant.

When setting your own cookies, you can set any expiry you want. If you want to align with GA session expiry, you can add corresponding logic (if new utm_ params in URL or > 30m since last visit, etc.). You will need a developer to create a flexible solution.

[Anonymous]

Hi Sanford,

thanks a lot for your insightful answers. And as you wrote - I don't want to touch marketo cookie if I would loose info about unknown leads. O would rather adjust our own cookie with our developer.

Thanks again.

[Anonymous]

HI Sanford,

one more question please. You described 2 cookies - one from marketo and one our own. But which one is used to capture/collect information in marketo forms if we use source from cookie and not from utm parameters?

Thanks a lot

[SanfordWhiteman]

If you use the built-in Marketo "AutoFill from cookie" feature you actually need multiple cookies. There's a one-to-one correspondence between form field and cookie.

You can build, quite easily, a custom solution to store UTM values or other fields in one big cookie (a JSON object) and then pass that to addHiddenFields. That's what we do.

Again, the Marketo Munchkin cookie is not related to collecting data from query string/referrer/etc. and passing it to the form. Forms actually work without Munchkin even being enabled.  It's two different -- highly complementary, but different -- technologies.