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A
Anonymous
December 23, 2015
Question

Tracking App Store Downloads with Marketo

  • December 23, 2015
  • 4 replies
  • 3671 views

Received a request to track downloads of a mobile app that is downloaded from the app store or Google play. One of the goals is to track which facebook ads are driving conversion and bring that intelligence into Marketo.

Anyone have an approach for how to handle in Marketo? Even possible?

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4 replies

A
Anonymous
December 23, 2015

You can use a redirect so that when someone clicks the ad it goes to a webpage and is immediately redirected to the app store.

Use the configurator to create url parameters for tracking in marketo.

Josh_Hill13
Josh_Hill13
Level 10
December 23, 2015

How could we know if the person made the download?

    Casey_Grimes2
    Casey_Grimes2
    Level 10
    December 23, 2015

    There are ways to track this, but it's very much a Rube Goldberg-esque endeavor. I'm assuming for purposes here that you are tying your Marketo User ID to your Analytics ID or you're having every link Marketo-encoded here.

    For your iOS/Android install campaigns, set up URLs that write into Google Analytics, such as

    click.google-analytics.com/redirect?tid=UA-1111-1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Fapp%2Fmy-app%2Fid123456789&aid=com.company.app&idfa={idfa}&cs=source&cm=medium&cn=Example%20Campaign&cc=content&ck=keyword

    play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.android.g&referrer=utm_source=source&cm=medium&cn=campaign&cc=content&ck=keyword

    From there, you're going to need to use the Analytics API to bring the data back into Marketo (whether as Munchkin faux-visits or custom activities.) Additionally, you'll want to repeat the same step with the app itself to fire an event in GA/MKTO upon first being loaded to tie the app open/mobile IP to the associated record (and, obviously, to confirm installation.)

    But from a lazy point of view, if all you're looking for is Facebook conversions I'd skip the install campaign and just use Facebook's in-house conversion code for that, taking Marketo out of the equation.

      A
      Anonymous
      December 23, 2015

      Thanks guys. Never hear of Rube Goldberg so had to to do a little Googling. @courtney-3

      @Jamie Lewis, are you saying the data can get passed via a parameter into the AppStore? Is any kind of 3rd party app needed? @@Courtney Grimes, I guess what you are saying is it's time to bring in a developer?

      @Courtney GrimesTo get more specific, looking to see that Jim Smith clicked a FB adv or other adv and then downloaded the app. The goal is to have that data then sit in Marketo for reporting and nurturing.

      AppStore - Leads by Lead Source Details

      --FBRetargeting          987

      --EmailSponsorship     878

      --Homepage                678

        Josh_Hill13
        Josh_Hill13
        Level 10
        December 24, 2015

        Jeff Coveney​ it looks like the params are being passed to your UA/GA account, but not to Marketo. So you'd need a developer to build a URL that also passed back to Marketo. Of course, the link example Courtney provided would be wrapped in the Marketo code, so it *should* get tracked, however, not necessarily with the UTM field data you might want.

        Let's bring @Sanford Whiteman​ into this one

          SanfordWhiteman
          SanfordWhiteman
          Level 10
          December 25, 2015

          Thanks Josh... haven't tried to do this in a bit, but you caught the main technical prob immediately: tracking app downloads by lead as Jeff phrased it isn't the same as tracking hits to the App Store page.  While Android will reveal the store referrer (or at least used to) iOS will not.

          So across app stores, attaching download/install events to a known Marketo lead is only possible in two ways that I know of:

          1. Using "fingerprint" technology such as branch.io, an ugly-beautiful approach that attempts to match (and succeeds ~99% of the time) a browser click to a store download within a deliberately limited timeframe by tracking common browser and device info like source IP, OS version, etc.
          2. Perhaps this is self-evident: requesting the user's email address in-app and sending a corresponding form fillout. I imagine Jeff doesn't want to do this, but it's there.

          Using Branch would require significant custom development: not only would you need to add the Branch SDK to the app but you would also need to use the Branch Webhooks API to transform app events into Marketo events.  On the bright side, you would have a really cool system when it's all in place.

          AFAICS, Courtney's idea of redirection links isn't specific to GA -- it could just as easily use a custom Munchkin logging endpoint (or even a "multiplexing" logging page that sends hits to both services).

          I agree with Courtney that only looking at FB integrations makes sense (given that you specifically mentioned FB in your post) but as for "Jim Smith clicked a FB adv or other adv and then downloaded the app" I'm not confident you can do this because the Facebook EULA requires you to only use aggregate data, not user-specific data, for re/targeting.  You would likely need to let the user opt in by including the FB SDK and having them authenticate, only then relaying info to Marketo.

          tl;dr Unless you have an R&D budget for this you might want to go for aggregate info, unless I'm missing something.

          A
          Anonymous
          December 30, 2015

          Thanks everyone for your replies. As I suspected, there is no simple solution here. If we come across one, will respond back.

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