Can Marketo identify anonymous website visitors?

Learn how Marketo tracks anonymous visitors on your website, its limitations, and what happens when anonymous visitors identify themselves.

How Marketo tracks anonymous visitors

When you implement Marketo's Munchkin tracking code on your website, it begins collecting data on all visitors—even those who haven't identified themselves yet. For anonymous visitors, Marketo:

Tracks page visits and web activity

Maintains anonymous activity data for up to 90 days

Associates visits with inferred data like metro area

Retroactively connects anonymous activity once they identify themselves

Say a prospect visits your product pages repeatedly before filling out a form. Once they submit that form—boom—Marketo associates all their previous browsing with their new lead record, revealing their entire journey.

Limitations of anonymous visitor tracking

While Marketo does track anonymous visitors, there are MAJOR limitations:

Data accessibility: You can't access individual anonymous visitor information until they convert

Activity detail: Anonymous visitor reports show page visits but not specific interactions like resource downloads

Identification: You cannot obtain identifying information like IP addresses

Reporting capabilities: Marketo provides limited aggregate reporting compared to dedicated analytics tools

For instance—you might see an anonymous visitor viewed your landing page, but not which video they watched or which PDF they downloaded.

Viewing anonymous visitor data in Marketo

To access anonymous visitor data in Marketo:

Go to the Web Page Activity report

Click "Setup"

Double-click "Activity Source"

Select "Anonymous Visitors" from the dropdown

Choose whether to include or exclude ISPs

Click the "Report" tab

This report shows anonymous page visits with basic location data—but remember, it won't reveal specific interactions.

What happens when anonymous visitors convert

Marketo's real power emerges when anonymous visitors identify themselves. When someone submits a form:

All their previous anonymous activity gets attached to their new lead record

Their full activity history becomes visible in their profile

You can use this comprehensive data for scoring, segmentation and personalization

Picture this—an anonymous visitor browses your pricing page multiple times, then fills out a form a week later. Marketo shows their pricing page visits in their lead activity history, giving your sales team crucial context about their interests.

Using web analytics tools alongside Marketo

Since Marketo's anonymous tracking has limitations, use it alongside dedicated analytics:

Google Analytics delivers comprehensive traffic metrics and interaction data

Marketo excels at connecting web activity to individual leads

Both together give you macro site performance and micro individual journeys

Use Google Analytics to understand overall traffic patterns and conversion rates, while Marketo shows you which known leads engaged with specific resources.

Practical applications and workarounds

Can't identify specific anonymous visitors? Try these practical approaches:

Use Web Page Activity reports to identify high-traffic anonymous pages

Create Smart Lists to find known leads who visited specific pages recently

Implement Google Tag Manager to house both tracking systems efficiently

Use Google Event Tracking to count anonymous downloads

For a landing page with multiple resources, create a Smart List for each asset to identify known leads who downloaded it, while using Google Analytics to track total downloads—including those anonymous ghosts.

FAQs

How to identify anonymous website visitors?

Marketo tracks anonymous visitors but cannot identify them until they convert by filling out a form or clicking an email link. When anonymous visitors do convert, Marketo retroactively connects all their previous anonymous browsing activity to their new lead record. Until then, you can only view aggregate anonymous visitor data through the Web Page Activity report, which shows page visits with basic location data like metro area, but not specific identifying information like IP addresses.

What is a smart list in Marketo?

A Smart List is a dynamic filtering tool in Marketo that allows you to identify leads based on specific criteria. You can create Smart Lists to identify known leads who have visited specific pages within a given timeframe or performed other trackable actions. Smart Lists update automatically as leads meet or no longer meet the defined criteria, making them useful for segmentation and targeting.

What is a campaign in Marketo?

A campaign in Marketo is a structured marketing initiative that automates actions based on triggers or schedules. Campaigns can include email sends, lead scoring adjustments, CRM updates, and other automated activities. Marketo offers two types of campaigns: batch campaigns (scheduled to run at specific times) and trigger campaigns (activated when leads meet certain criteria). Campaigns help marketers automate personalized experiences across channels.

What is Adobe Marketo Engage?

Adobe Marketo Engage is a comprehensive marketing automation platform designed for B2B marketers. It helps organizations manage lead generation, email marketing, account-based marketing, and revenue attribution. The platform enables marketers to create personalized experiences across multiple channels, track customer journeys, score leads, and measure marketing impact on revenue. As part of the Adobe Experience Cloud, Marketo Engage integrates with other Adobe solutions to provide end-to-end marketing capabilities.

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