Lead Association through email for external landing page is slow | Community
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Eben_Shapiro
Level 3
October 29, 2015
Question

Lead Association through email for external landing page is slow

  • October 29, 2015
  • 2 replies
  • 1801 views

Hi,

I'd like to implement prefill on external landing pages using the method described here:

http://developers.marketo.com/blog/external-page-prefill/

Since Lead Association is supposed to occur after a user clicks on an email link that is tracked, has the mkt_tok parameter, and goes to a page with the munchkin tracking code, I figured I'd be able to get the prefill information this way, but it can take as long as 30 seconds before the lead info is available. Has anyone else experienced this behavior?

Thank you,

Eben

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2 replies

A
Anonymous
October 29, 2015

Yes, I have experienced this before as well.  The data needs to be committed to the database before it becomes available.  It can take a few seconds for this to occur and for the data to become available to the form.

SanfordWhiteman
SanfordWhiteman
Level 10
October 29, 2015

You don't need your cookie to be associated before using that method.  You just need the Lead ID (or other lead key) which you can append to the URL.

But I wouldn't recommend using that method unless you've signed off on the DoS vulnerability it creates, as I have noted in several places.

E
Eben_ShapiroAuthor
Level 3
October 29, 2015

Hi Sanford,

I'm confused. I want to use '_mkto_trk'. I don't want to pass anything in the email link, like a lead id, so the email link performance stats can be aggregated within marketo. Therefore I think the lead has to be associated or else the cookie id won't return any data. Is that right?

I'm aware of the DoS vulnerability. I guess I thought the chance of that happening is comparable to someone throwing a brick through my front window. It could definitely happen, but I think I'll keep my window. And the worse case scenario would be for one day I hit my api limit quota (can something worse happen?). In life we live with risk, but it would be good if there were a way to minimize that risk and still get prefill on an external page. Is there a way to do that?

Thank you,

Eben

SanfordWhiteman
SanfordWhiteman
Level 10
October 29, 2015
I'm confused. I want to use '_mkto_trk'. I don't want to pass anything in the email link, like a lead id, so the email link performance stats can be aggregated within marketo. Therefore I think the lead has to be associated or else the cookie id won't return any data. Is that right?

That's right. If you include a token in the link, the links are differentiated.  However, this is the only way to have a directly linked non-Marketo site be aware of the targeted lead from the very first page view.  The reporting drawback is a prime reason it's better to bounce the user off a Marketo LP so that you have that data available.

I'm aware of the DoS vulnerability. I guess I thought the chance of that happening is comparable to someone throwing a brick through my front window. It could definitely happen, but I think I'll keep my window.

I don't think online security/risk/reliability concerns compare to neighborhood vandalism, unless you live in a neighborhood where there are rocks thrown at your house thousands of times per day!

This attack could be executed by a single disgruntled customer, a very junior hacker just trying to prove his/her skills, or a competitor (or someone trying to impress a competitor). A DoS attack that can be executed by a single machine running over a 56K modem is something I have to take seriously.  This isn't something that takes a botnet to execute (that would fall into the acceptable risk category, esp. because your site probably couldn't handle the traffic anyway).

And if it kept happening, then I would stop doing it. In life we live with risk, but it would be good if there were a way to minimize that risk and still get prefill on an external page. Is there a way to do that?

Yes, there is. It's something I'm going to publish at some point (hopefully on the Community blog when I get access).

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