UTMs, Gcluid, and hidden fields | Community
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user81844
Level 4
March 1, 2023
Question

UTMs, Gcluid, and hidden fields

  • March 1, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 6484 views

Hey all! 

I am trying to figure out the best way to go about capturing UTMs and Gcluid via hidden fields on forms. 

We currently have it set to "URL parameters." However, for awareness campaigns that direct people to non-conversion-focused pages, they often navigate around before converting, thus we lose the UTMs and Gcluid when they end up converting. 

I have made some smartlists that show me if people visited these web pages via ads by creating smartlists that look for query that contains the corresponding UTMs. From this I can manually look back through the leads history and take the Gcluid out and populate a spreadsheet. Nightmare, but possible, and it allows us to feed the google ads algorithm. 

However, people keep asking me why a lead driven from an Ad has a lead source of direct/organic. I explain that it's because the system sees them as direct organic as the UTMs and Gcluid fall off as they navigate around the site before converting. 

Any ideas here? Do I need to tell our ad agency that we can only run conversion-focused ads? Do we switch to a cookie model? 

My dream state would be to tie ad campaigns running in google, back to the Marketo "looker program" (A program that runs in Marketo that looks for form fills with specific UTMs, corresponding to google ad campaigns, so we can track the success of the ad campaigns). So that I can report of the ROI of specific ad campaigns, then roll it up into a channel-level report. 

So tracking campaign and channel success. But with the massive drop off of people being captured by the "looker program" since the UTMs fall off before they convert.... I am lost. 

Does anyone have a solution for this? Or is this just the state of traceability currently 

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1 reply

Darshil_Shah1
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
Darshil_Shah1Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
March 1, 2023

I think this post talks about addressing the exact same issue that you've described. Basically, it stores the URL parameters into cookies and also takes care of updating them in case a user visits any of your webpages with different UTM values.

 

 

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user81844Author
Level 4
March 1, 2023

Hey Darshil,

It might be? But the language confuses me...

"So if someone navigates away and the parameters disappear, then the UTM values will not be captured.

To solve for this, we have created a tracking script that will store any UTM parameters it finds into a cookie. Now when a visitor fills out a form that contains the hidden UTM values on a form, the cookie will store the UTM value across the main and subdomains."

The above is saying the cookie will store the UTM value across the main and subdomains. Is this trying to say upon form fill it will input the cookie-stored UTM values into the hidden UTM fields? 

In my case I already have code that stores the UTM values as a cookie, but no code that injects it into the hidden field upon form fill.

Currently, I only have one cookie value store and its not broken apart:
Eg: https%3A%2F%2Fwww.exampleurl.com%2Flp-perfect-deal-23%2F%3Futm_source%3Demail%26utm_medium%3Dmarketo_email%26utm_campaign%3Dv-day

So the suggestion is to move to a cookie base model? And if so, how do I get Marketo to take the above cookie value and input it into the corresponding hidden fields? 


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user81844Author
Level 4
March 1, 2023

Also, am I wrong in thinking this also takes us further away from program-level success tracking? For example, someone could get cookied in with a utm, navigate all around, and then form fill with FORM: Register

The initial ad campaign could have directed them to webpage XYZ with FORM: Register.
But 10 webpages later they fill out FORM: Register on webpage ABC. 

Would I really want to consider that a success in the program that tracks success for the original specific ad?  While it may show me channel-based success, it fails to show me asset-based success. 

Is the best practice to have a master paid search program for example, that looks to see if someone converted after coming in through paid search and makes that their lead source, but does not count them as a program success for the specific ad campaign that brought them in if they convert on a different asset? 

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