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A
Anonymous
June 12, 2017
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Clear UTM source field?

  • June 12, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 3679 views

We have a field in marketo for "utm_source" to track when people come in from Social vs emails vs newsletters, etc. and then put them in different sfdc campaigns, etc.

And we have multiple smart campaigns with varying flows which are triggered on form fill out and 'utm_source' being a certain value (Social, email, etc). Then I have a catch-all smart campaign for when people fill out the form without a utm source in the url, this one is triggered based on them NOT having one of the preset utm sources. (form fill + utm_source IT NOT Social, Email, Sponsored Newsletter, etc)

My concern is I don’t want people who have previously come in through a certain source to incorrectly go through the wrong flow in the future if they come in through a page without a source parameter in the url. (They should go into the catch-all for that, but will incorrectly go through social,etc since they were previously tagged as such)

My question is, should I have a campaign that goes through and clears 'utm_source' regularly (nightly)?

Is there a better way to be doing this?

Thanks

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Best answer by SanfordWhiteman

"Querystring is empty" constraint on that trigger instead does exactly what I need it to since it bases it on the current querystring rather than what's saved in the utm_source field.

I would use [not contains] "utm_source" because you will get hits on your site that have query strings, even if they don't have "utm_source".

I could just use querystring constraints and not need the form to pull querystring and populate the hidden field as part of it's function, right?

Sure, if that's the only place you'd need the query param (i.e. you don't need to store the exact current or historical value anywhere, you just use it for lead routing).

1 reply

SanfordWhiteman
SanfordWhiteman
New Participant
June 13, 2017
My question is, should I have a campaign that goes through and clears 'utm_source' regularly (nightly)?

No, just clear the utm_source (really should be called Last utm_source for clarity) when the conversion isn't associated with a current or recent utm_source in the query string.

    A
    Anonymous
    June 13, 2017

    Thanks @Sanford Whiteman, this actually led me down the path to fixing my issue.

    I was using "utm_source IS NOT xxx1,xxx2,xxx3" as another filter in the smart campaign after the form fill out trigger, but using the "Querystring is empty" constraint on that trigger instead does exactly what I need it to since it bases it on the current querystring rather than what's saved in the utm_source field.

    I actually now realize I could be doing this for all of the other smart campaigns that trigger based on form fill trigger + utm_source filter. Currently I was having the form pull the querystring into a hidden utm_source field and using that to inform which smart campaign to run through. I could just use querystring constraints and not need the form to pull querystring and populate the hidden field as part of it's function, right?

    SanfordWhiteman
    SanfordWhitemanAccepted solution
    New Participant
    June 13, 2017

    "Querystring is empty" constraint on that trigger instead does exactly what I need it to since it bases it on the current querystring rather than what's saved in the utm_source field.

    I would use [not contains] "utm_source" because you will get hits on your site that have query strings, even if they don't have "utm_source".

    I could just use querystring constraints and not need the form to pull querystring and populate the hidden field as part of it's function, right?

    Sure, if that's the only place you'd need the query param (i.e. you don't need to store the exact current or historical value anywhere, you just use it for lead routing).

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