Considerations for Visitor Tracking
When managing tracker domains and visitor tracking, keep these considerations in mind.
Required Editions
| Available in: All Account Engagement Editions |
Note
Pardot is now known as Marketing Cloud Account
Engagement. We wish we could snap our fingers to update the
name everywhere, but you can expect to see the previous name
in a few places until we replace it, including in the app
itself.
General Considerations
- First-party tracking is enabled by default in business units created after February 13, 2023. If your business unit was created before February 13, 2023, upgrade to first-party tracking.
- First-party cookies don’t track across domains, but they can track across subdomains of the same root domain. Use only one tracker domain or associate multiple subdomains with the same root domain for all assets in your marketing campaign. For example, go1.site.com and go2.site.com instead of go.siteA.com and go.siteB.com.
- A visitor record is created when a person lands on a tracked web page or tracker domain. When they visit other pages with a matching root domain, their activity is tracked. If the same person visits a page with a different root domain, a second visitor record is created, even if the visited page is a parent or subdomain of a tracked URL.
- Use only HTTPS links in your marketing campaigns. When you use a combination of HTTPS and HTTP, visitor activity is attributed incorrectly.
- We don’t recommend changing tracker domains on Account Engagement assets. Changing the domain resets cookies and visitor data isn’t linked between the old and new tracking domains. If you must change a domain, you can enable third-party cookies in Account Engagement Settings to link visitor data.
- Campaign IDs are obscured in the tracker code. Don’t insert the campaign ID directly into the tracker code.
- Embedded forms and hosted forms on web pages don’t create a visitor cookie. We recommend using a landing page instead. If you can’t use a landing page, use a custom redirect to create a visitor ID cookie before the page loads. This workaround ensures that a visitor ID is present and captures the first form view.
- Embedded forms and standalone forms don’t record form views on first visit to a domain.
When Browsers Don’t Allow Third-Party Cookies
The first-party tracking approach has some additional considerations when third-party cookies aren’t allowed by a browser.
- Activity isn’t tracked across subdomains of the same root domain. Progressive profiling and prefill features for forms also don’t work across subdomains.
- When the tracker domain is changed on an Account Engagement asset, cookies are reset and visitor data can’t be linked between the old and new tracking domains.
API Considerations
- To automatically embed tracking code for your primary tracker domain, use the Account API endpoint. If you have multiple tracker domains, manually add the tracking code for the remaining domains.
- To query tracker domains that use first-party cookies, use version 5 of the Account Engagement API. The tracker code is related to the default campaign for the tracker domain.
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