Custom Query Strings

PathFactory’s Custom Query String manager allows marketers to manage commonly used query strings and to easily append them when sharing a link to a Content Track or Explore Page. This allows you to easily append everything from campaign IDs to UTM parameters ensuring consistency, and accuracy. This is especially important because in some systems query string parameters can be case sensitive.

To manage custom query strings, start by clicking on Organization Settings in the dropdown menu in the top right corner of any page in your PathFactory authoring environment, then click on Organization Settings.

Within Organization Settings click on the Custom Query Strings tab.

In this section you can configure the query strings you plan to commonly use when deploying content tracks.

By default, you’ll have a query string which merges a recipient’s email address into the URL which corresponds to your marketing automation platform (ie. Marketo, Eloqua, Hubspot, Pardot). This is important to incorporate when deploying email campaigns as this is the most common way for PathFactory to identify known individual visitors, and tie individual content consumption back to a known email address and thus to a contact record in Marketing Automation, lead or contact in CRM, and to other analytics tools. Note: you cannot delete or edit the default query string for your marketing automation platform as that query string is an important way to integrate Marketing Automation with PathFactory. If you wish to have this changed please contact your PathFactory CSM or Solutions Architect.

For example, the Marketo email tracking querystring is lb_email={{lead.Email Address}} therefore if you wish to add additional UTM parameters to that, you’ll need to add a new query string which might look something like:

 lb_email={{lead.Email Address}}&utm_source=marketo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=replace&utm_content=attendees

This would ensure that when this link is included in a Marketo email the email address is merged correctly into URL and the visitor will then be known to PathFactory and that the tracking can then sync back to the known person in Marketo as expected. All of this while the UTM parameters of source, medium, campaign, and content will also be included in the PathFactory session data.

When you save the new query string, it will be available whenever you access a content track in PathFactory.

When you click on the Sharing Link button (box with the arrow), a pop up window appears.

This will automatically append the query string to all content track links in the Activation section within PathFactory for Sales.

For example, if the custom query string toggled on for PF for Sales is: lb_email={{Email}}&utm_source=Sales

Every content track link in the Activation section within PF for Sales will now have ?lb_email={{Email}}&utm_source=Sales as a query string.

However, if you select a value in the email tracking dropdown inside of PF for Sales (pictured below), any lb_email= value you have set in Custom Query Strings gets overridden with the value associated with the dropdown. So if you selected Plain Text tracking for a visitor persona@pathfactory.com, the sharing link query string will now become ?lb_email=persona@pathfactory.com&utm_source=Sales.