Actually yes, you can “pre-cookie” website visitors in a new marketing automation platform that were previously “cookied” (tracked) in your old platform.
We’ve done exactly that for customers switching to Net-Results (where I’m founder and CEO) from Eloqua, Pardot, and others.
The only requirements are that you or someone on your team will need to be savvy with writing some code/scripts, and it will take a 2 – 4 hours of time to get it working, ymmv.
For this example we’re going to assume you’re switching to Net-Results because, well, that’s an example I can have fun writing 🙂
That said, the process laid out below should work when switching to/from Hubpsot, Marketo, Pardot, Act-On, Eloqua, etc.
The method I describe here will allow you to identify, in your new platform, many of the visitors previously identified by your old platform. This will not transfer a detailed history of past activity including website page views, email activity, etc.
Transferring detailed activity history may be possible depending on the capabilities of the respective platforms. That said, it’s far more labor intensive, so I’ll consider that an advanced topic beyond the scope of this question.
“Transferring Cookies” Between Marketing Automation Platforms
- Keep tracking code from Platform X (the platform you’re switching from) in place on your website. Do not remove it yet.
- Get the tracking code/beacon from Net-Results running on your website (or “Platform Y” that you’re switching to)It’s critical that you have tracking code from both platforms running on your site simultaneously.Now any “known” visitor in Platform X is cookied as an anonymous visitor in Net-Results.
- When visitors known to Platform X (visitors with a known email address) visit your website, pull identifying information from Platform X.Platform X, if it’s worth a shite (which most are), provides you the ability to tell who any identified visitor is while that visitor is on your website.This is done differently in each platform. I leave it to you to ask their support team how to get this information.
At a minimum you’ll need the email address of the identified visitor but you will probably want to grab the values of all standard and custom fields, maybe more than that. - Use the Net-Results API to update the anonymous “Contact” record with the email address and other standard and custom field values pulled from Platform X.I’m assuming our competitors all offer this capability as it’s pretty basic.Each visitor to your site is issued a “visitor ID”, but that visitor’s email address and other fields are “null” – they simply lack values.
This technique is actually really simple (for someone who can write a bit of javascript). You just fill in the blanks – email address, first name, last name, etc. – in Net-Results with the info pulled from evil Platform X.
