Undesired behavior when using Personalized URLs PURLs | Community
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Dan_Stevens_
Dan_Stevens_
Level 10
March 18, 2014
Question

Undesired behavior when using Personalized URLs PURLs

  • March 18, 2014
  • 14 replies
  • 9691 views

I had some members of my team participate in a series of PURL test and came up with the following findings: 

  1. If the user has been previously cookied AND known, but enters a PURL intended for someone else, Marketo will correctly identify the user based on their cookied data and NOT based on the PURL.
  2. If the user has been previously cookied (and known), when they enter the PURL, they will be identified using the data in their lead record in Marketo - and a personalized landing page experience can be used.
  3. [EDIT 11/20/2017]: If the user has an associated cookie on their browser (e.g., visited your Munchkin-enabled web page) but is not yet KNOWN, when they access their PURL-enabled LP, the page will not be personalized (tokens will remain blank) - even though a lead record had been created in Marketo to support the creation of their PURL.
  4. If the user has does not have an associated cookie on their browser, when they enter their PURL, the personalized tokens will render properly on the LP.

1, 2 and 4 is the desired behavior.  And our desire for #3 would be to have the user identified by the data that was used to create the PURL.  Does Marketo have any plans to improve upon this?  We're using this approach for a direct mail campaign - and as a result of #3's outcome, I don't think we can rely on Marketo PURLs for appropriate tracking purposes and personalization via tokens.

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    14 replies

    Dan_Stevens_
    Dan_Stevens_Author
    Level 10
    March 20, 2014
    FYI, I received the following reply from Support:

    I was able to duplicate the issue you have described and it appears that Marketo is favoring the cookied lead over the PURL which is not desirable for anonymous leads. I have contacted our Product Management for clarification on this matter and am awaiting a reply. I will update you as soon as possible. 
    A
    Anonymous
    March 20, 2014
    Wonderful data and insight! Thank you very much Dan!
    A
    Anonymous
    October 1, 2014
    Was there any update on this?  What was the outcome?

    We are looking to do a direct mail peice with PURLs and would like to see if these are still known issues.

    Thanks!
    Dan_Stevens_
    Dan_Stevens_Author
    Level 10
    October 1, 2014
    We never received an update on this.  I suspect Marketo hasn't done anything to make PURLs more usable for direct mail campaigns.
    A
    Anonymous
    October 15, 2014
    Thanks Dan!  We'll call Marketo support and double check.  That's dissapointing if they didn't update this.  
    Dan_Stevens_
    Dan_Stevens_Author
    Level 10
    October 15, 2014
    Please keep this thread updated if you receive any new information.  I agree, it is a shame that Marketo doesn't want to enhance the capabilities to support the direct mail channel.
      Sean_McCombs
      Sean_McCombs
      Level 3
      October 20, 2014
      Unfortunately this is a Product issue that is still being addressed by Product Management.
      A
      Anonymous
      October 2, 2015

      Is there an update from product development on this? Curious to know if this has officially been addressed as we're about to start a campaign where we will be implementing the PURL process.

      A
      Anonymous
      March 4, 2015
      Has there been an update on this issue?
      A
      Anonymous
      June 18, 2015

      Has anyone ever tried this for an email campaign?

      SanfordWhiteman
      SanfordWhiteman
      Level 10
      June 24, 2015

      Lindsey, I don't know if you saw this recent discussion but there are effective workarounds that apply equally to email (I suppose you mean if you are sending from outside Marketo).

      Ayan_Talukder
      Ayan_Talukder
      Level 4
      January 17, 2016

      Was this ever resolved by the Marketo team? We're about to run a direct mail campaign and want to try this exact same scenario. It seems if they are not cookied there is no point running the campaign.

      One way around this I have found (which is slightly manual and not Marketo related) is to mass generate short URLs using a bit.ly API. You can export the results from bit.ly to see how many times a link has been "clicked". Pivoting the results in Excel will show you which URLs were actioned upon but these results cannot be added into Marketo.

      This is one idea for Marketo perhaps? To obtain the data on which anonymous leads accessed the link, it can track which link was clicked and track that individual? I'm sure it's more complex than that but it seems like a foundation to start from perhaps. It would just be crucial to ensure the wrong links don't get clicked by the incorrect individual.

      Dan_Stevens_
      Dan_Stevens_Author
      Level 10
      January 17, 2016

      Marketo has not fixed this - I'm not even sure they consider this a bug. We too scrapped all PURL-based DM campaigns in Marketo. If we can't offer a personalized experience when the user arrives to a Marketo landing page, there's no sense in using PURLs to begin with.

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