Tracking strategies

Not all audiences are the same, and visitors in different cohorts exhibit different behavior. Sitefinity Insight gives you the flexibility to change how the tracking cookie behaves when your visitors log in - become a known contact, and log out - become anonymous visitors again. You configure this behavior to improve the mapping between your visitors to contacts and which actions are attributed to different customer journeys.

The following sections provide an detailed description of the configuration options, how they interact, and when to use them.

In Persist mode, the tracking cookie is persisted in the user agent (browser).

If a visitor logs in, then log out, and another visitor logs in, they will be mapped to the same contact.

Persist is the default behavior.

Use the following diagram to get a better picture of the relationship between the user actions (on the left), and how Sitefinity Insight maps their journey. In this scenario, we have:

1. An anonymous (logged out) visitor
2. Who logs in, becoming a known contact,
3. A second anonymous user,
4. Who logs in, becoming a known contact.

In this scenario, these users share the persisted cookie and Sitefinity Insight maps their actions into one customer journey (shown on the right).

RECOMMENDATION: We recommend using this mode, unless your audience has very specific behavior.

In Renew mode when the Remove tracking cookie on logout option is selected, Sitefinity Insight creates a new tracking cookie and a new mapping to contact on every login.

If a visitor logs in and logs out and another visitor logs in, the two visitors will be mapped to different contacts.

You use this setting when multiple people are sharing the same user agent.

In Renew mode when the Remove tracking cookie on logout option is unchecked, Sitefinity Insight still distinguishes different contacts, but the anonymous visitors’ data between the two login sessions are included in the respective customer journeys.

Use the following diagram to get a better picture of the relationship between the user actions (on the left), and how Sitefinity Insight maps their journey. In this scenario, we have:

1. A logged in (a known contact) visitor,
2. Who logs out, becoming an anonymous visitor,
3. A second physical user who is logged in and is a known contact,
4. Who logs out, becoming an anonymous visitor.

In this scenario, Sitefinity Insight maps the first two visitors into one customer journey, and the last two visitors – into a separate customer journey (shown on the right).

In RenewOnlyForNewUserLogin mode, Sitefinity Insight creates a new tracking cookie only if the currently logged visitor differs from the last known one.

Therefore, if a contact logs out and then logs in again, she is recognized as the same contact. However, if a contact logs out, and another visitor logs in, the second visitor is recognized as a new contact and a separate mapping is created.

However, there are differences in the behavior, depending on the Remove tracking cookie on logout option.

• If the Remove tracking cookie on logout option is selected, and the user logs out, the anonymous traffic is processed on next user login. If the user, who logs in, is the same, Sitefinity Insight maps the anonymous traffic to this user journey. If this is a different user, a new tracking cookie and a new mapping are created and Sitefinity Insight does not attribute this anonymous traffic to the contact journey.
• If the Remove tracking cookie on logout option is not selected, when the contact logs out, the anonymous traffic is attributed to her journey.

Use the following diagram to get a better picture of the relationship between the user actions (on the left), and how Sitefinity Insight maps their journey. In this scenario, we have:

1. An anonymous (logged out) visitor
2. Who then logs in and becomes a known contact,
3. Then logs out again, reverting to an anonymous visitor,
4. Who then logs in and becomes a known contact again,
5. Then logs out again, reverting to an anonymous visitor,
6. A second physical user who logs in and becomes a known contact

In this scenario, Sitefinity Insight maps the first five visitors into one customer journey, and the last one into a separate customer journey (shown on the right).

To set up the desired cookie handling strategy, perform the following:

1. Log into your Sitefinity CMS backend as administrator.
2. Navigate to Administration » Settings » Advanced.
3. In the tree on the left, click DigitalExperienceCloudConnector.
4. In the Tracking cookie handling on login dropdown, select the strategy.
5. Click Save changes to save your changes.