Visited Web Page Activity Not Logged when Email Clicked

[Anonymous]

Hi. Thanks for testing. For the email, your clicked link in email and also web page visit was recorded correctly. That's what I found when I tested. But last Friday when the email went out, we had 266 leads that clicked the link in the email but yet never had a visited web page activity recorded. Maybe we just have to chalk this up to something with the rollout of the new release? It's just not clear why the issue happened. I would hate to think that the leads that clicked the link never actually got to view the landing page. But I guess it is possible that the Marketo servers were so busy that the page didn't come up. FYI, nothing has changed in the email or on the landing page so it isn't anything with how it was setup.

In terms of the "Request a Demo" and "Contact Us" forms being broken, can you please tell me why you think this is true? Tests with submitting the forms have worked doing exactly what is expected in the system. So just trying to understand why you believe they aren't working when we are seeing leads come through.

Thanks too for the hint on the favicon. I'll get that fixed asap.

Regards,

Sheila

[SanfordWhiteman]

Hi. Thanks for testing. For the email, your clicked link in email and also web page visit was recorded correctly. That's what I found when I tested. But last Friday when the email went out, we had 266 leads that clicked the link in the email but yet never had a visited web page activity recorded. Maybe we just have to chalk this up to something with the rollout of the new release? It's just not clear why the issue happened. I would hate to think that the leads that clicked the link never actually got to view the landing page. But I guess it is possible that the Marketo servers were so busy that the page didn't come up. FYI, nothing has changed in the email or on the landing page so it isn't anything with how it was setup.

Unfortunately, I wonder as well whether the leads ever saw the LP. It's possible that the tracking server was buggy (not so much overwhelmed as just broken).  A better, though still bad, reason would be that the Munchkin endpoint was down and/or not associating leads for a brief period.  What you can check, on this note, is whether there is Anonymous web activity that started with a mkt_tok in the URL.  This would signify a lead that should have been associated but wasn't.

In terms of the "Request a Demo" and "Contact Us" forms being broken, can you please tell me why you think this is true? Tests with submitting the forms have worked doing exactly what is expected in the system. So just trying to understand why you believe they aren't working when we are seeing leads come through.

With an unprimed browser (no assets cached) you'll sometimes see a race condition where you click the buttons and get a console error instead of the form. This is because the buttons try to load the form whether or not the Forms 2.0 library is loaded. It's not going to happen every time but over slow unprimed connections it will happen.  (I happen to be on a slow connection myself, working over 3G as my internet is down, so it was easier to see.)

[Anonymous]

Sanford Whiteman​ wanted to give you an update here....
I have sent the click email/no visited web page to Marketo Support. I realized a couple of other things that makes me think there is a bug. The issue seems to happen with emails that are sent with A/B tests. The "Click Email" activity is being logged at the same time as the "Send Email" activity. The "Email Delivered" activity is logged after the Click Email, hhm. For those that have a Click Email and Visited Web Page, there is another Click Email afterward. Also for emails sent without an A/B test, there is no Click Email at the same time as the Send Email. Smells like bug to me. I'll let you know what I find out.

In terms of the forms 2.0 library not being loaded on Usablenet website, I need to try and address this with the website developers but I want to make sure I give them the right direction. When I look at the source code on the home page, I see that at line 613 they have the

<form id=mktoForm_1346"></form>

<form id=mktoForm_1338"></form>

and at line 643 is when they load the form library: <script src="http://app-sj04.marketo.com/js/forms2/js/forms2.js"></script>

Do they simply have to move line 613/614 below below line 643? Or do they need to do something more? Sorry if I'm asking a basic question. I know enough about this stuff to make it work in simple situations but they have much more complex code on this page.Thanks again for your help here.

Sheila

[Loren_Posendek]

Hi Sheila - I've been reading through this thread as I recently noticed the same thing you did — a difference in the number of records who "clicked" the link in the email that directs to the landing page versus the number of records who "viewed" the landing page.

I did go through some records to find that the activity data was as follows: Send Email, Clicked Link, Email Delivered with no "visit webpage" activity. I've read some other threads to learn this is associated to email security software. It does strike me as interesting though that so few records had "visited web page" activity. In my case, the only leads showing in the "visited web page" smart list are leads who actually filled out the form (even though the leads who clicked the link in the email are known). This may be completely accurate/true data, but qualifies under "things that make you go huh?"

Have you noticed if the appropriate activity data has appended to records moving forward?

[Anonymous]

Hi Loren,

The visited web page does show up for leads that filled out the form that's why initially I was thinking it had something to do with leads not being set to Known after clicking the link. But I do have some that get the visited web page and haven't filled out the form. For these it seems to be leads that are already known. However, that could be a coincidence since it isn't a big sample.

The other thing that was confusing me is it seemed to be happening much more frequently on emails with A/B tests. Emails with no A/B test had less disparity between the clicked link and visited page. However, the email formatting is different and the content is very different so that could also account for the difference. Next step is to look at replacing the email template being used as that might be causing some of the spam filters too.

[Loren_Posendek]

Thanks for the reply, Sheila. It sounds like our experiences are similar. What's interesting is that our sample size was smaller than normal, too. So that could account for the discrepancy in the numbers. We'll continue to monitor, but if we find that there's a more a definite solution/reason why it's happening, I'll be sure to share.

[SanfordWhiteman]

But you can't solve this by changing layout.  The entire goal of link pre-fetching is to determine whether the destination of a link redirects to a malicious site, in order to protect against the exploitation of 0day (and older) security vulnerabilities and phishing scams.  It only works if this measure is run against every email, including those that perfectly echo the HTML of (for example) a PayPal or Amazon message, your own templates, or simple text.

Cleaning your list is always a good idea, but in general pre-fetching can only be skipped if a sending IP is specifically whitelisted, not simply not blacklisted. 

[Anonymous]

Thanks Sanford Whiteman​. Was reading some of your other posts on pre-fetching - really good stuff.

I had another question for you that got lost..

In terms of the forms 2.0 library not being loaded on Usablenet website, I need to try and address this with the website developers but I want to make sure I give them the right direction. When I look at the source code on the home page, I see that at line 613/614 they have the

<form id=mktoForm_1346"></form>

<form id=mktoForm_1338"></form>

and at line 643 is when they load the form library: <script src="http://app-sj04.marketo.com/js/forms2/js/forms2.js"></script>

Do they simply have to move line 613/614 below below line 643? Or do they need to do something more? Sorry if I'm asking a basic question. I know enough about this stuff to make it work in simple situations but they have much more complex code on this page. Thanks again for your help here.

Sheila

[SanfordWhiteman]

Unfortunately, it's more complex than that because they'd need to coordinate load order with several other actions.

[Roxann_McGlump1]

Hi Sheila,

Did a lot of these no-visit email clicks come from the same organization?  And did the email clicks happen almost immediately on delivery?  If so, the email security software on the recipient servers may be link-testing, "clicking" the links in an automated fashion to confirm where they go, but since this is just an automated test, the page is never opened in a browser and a visit is never logged.  This document discusses this in more detail:  Understanding a Spike in Click Activity