This post is in response to a comment I recently received on my post How Much Are Your Emails Worth? Setting Up Conversion Tracking. I responded to the comment, but have since decided to make a post of the question posed to me, in case there are any readers out there who are curious or just want me to further expand upon the subject. The comment reads:
Cookies Are The Key
You may not be able to eat these cookies, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t love them just the same! Cookies are what allow us to determine that the source of the conversion is from an email sent from Bronto. Cookies contain identifying information that lets our report tracking system know that the conversion resulted from a specific email sent via our system and not some other source. In more technical terms:
In computing, a cookie (also tracking cookie, browser cookie, and HTTP cookie) is a small piece of text stored on a user’s computer by a web browser. A cookie consists of one or more name-value pairs containing bits of information such as user preferences, shopping cart contents, the identifier for a server-based session, or other data used by websites.
It is sent as an HTTP header by a web server to a web browser and then sent back unchanged by the browser each time it accesses that server. A cookie can be used for authenticating, session tracking (state maintenance), and remembering specific information about users, such as site preferences or the contents of their electronic shopping carts.
Source: Wikipedia
A Simple Bronto Example
So with Bronto conversion tracking, when one of your contact clicks on a link within a Bronto email, a cookie is set in their browser. When that contact loads up a page with the conversion tracking URL embedded in it, Bronto logs the conversion.
If some one loads up a page with the conversion tracking URL embedded in it, but with no cookie set, then Bronto doesn’t log anything. It’s pretty simple: no cookie, no email conversion. Hence, when you take a look at your conversion metrics in Bronto, you are only seeing the conversions that resulted from messages sent via Bronto.
I hope this post has provided the necessary insight to understand how we determine the source of conversion tracking URLs sent via Bronto. Should you have any additional questions, feel free to leave a comment in the comments section below!
John Gunther
Technical Writer/eLearning Specialist at Bronto
Editor of Brontoversity
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