Website Login to Identify Anonymous User and Update Activity

[Anonymous]

Hello.  New to Marketo and although I have searched the Community, I havent seen a good answer to this.  Seems like it should be pretty easy.  Below is the scenario:

1)  User not logged into website (Sitecore based).  Activity tracked as an anonymous user in Marketo.  In this example, let's say they have a week work of activity.

Anonymous User ---generates---> Anonymous Web Activity

2)  The anonymous user either logs in or registers.  We are probably keeping our forms since some drop downs are dynamically driven based on previous selections.  Email address is the Unique Identifier and the user name for the web site account.  I want to update the user's email address (and any other user information gathered) so the previously anonymous web site activity is now linked to that now identified user.  Lastly, I would get that information to flow into SalesForce.com.

Anonymous User ---logs in---> Known User
Unknown Mechanism --Updates--> Marketo Account with Gathered Information
Marketo  --Updates--> SalesForce.com

Any ideas on this?  I imagine I am going to need a developer for this so I need to schedule some time from the development shop.

Thanks in advance,

Carl

[Anonymous]

We use our own forms on our site as well and what we do is when we gather that information we send it to Marketo via their API so that anonymous becomes a known user. We also use Salesforce and Marketo Sales Insight so their activity information is sent to SF from Marketo. Hope this helps!

[Anonymous]

Thanks Karin.  It does.  I finally found a good API document yesterday evening and will be reviewing it and getting it in front of a developer's eyes so we can plan what needs to be implemented on our side to git 'er done.

Thanks again,

Carl

[Anonymous]

Carl, curious how you worked this out. We are new too and wanting to accomplish the same thing.

Karin, can you elaborate on how you "send it to Marketo via their API"?

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Sorry for the delay in responding, but I have been up to my neck in alligators.  Anyway, we use email address as the unique identifier on our website.  When someone logs in, we do the following:

 - evaulate the Marketo cookie if it exists to determine if the emails match.  If so do nothing.
 - if the emails do not match or the Marketo cookie does not exist, we use getMultipleLeads to determine if the email exists in Marketo.  Keep in mind there could be mulitple accounts in Marketo with the same email address (I hate the fact that Marketo doesnt treat email address as a unique identifier - causes a lot of problems).
 - if account(s) exist in Marketo, we update information that we have gathered on our website (using sychLead or synchMultipleLeads)
 - if no accounts exist in Marketo, we create the account (using sychLead - I think)

Search for the document named "Enterprise API Design" and download the implementation example.

Sincerely,

Carl

[Anonymous]

Thanks, that's super helpful!

[Anonymous]

If you send me an email to carl.schneider@incapital.com, I will forward you some process diagrams I used for this.

Sincerely,

Carl