When a user comes to your site, they're often completely anonymous. Being able to de-anonymize visitors (i.e. identify them) allows you to take advantage of some advanced features of Mutiny, such as Salesforce campaign syncing. This article will walk you through how Mutiny identification works, and what steps you might need to take in order to accurately identify your users.

Introduction

Lets start with what problem we’re trying to solve with identification. When a new user lands on your website, they are completely anonymous (i.e. we cannot associate them with an email). Without an email, we can’t match that user back to your system of record and say “this visitor first saw a Mutiny experience, and then they signed a $100k contract.” Without being able to say this, it's very difficult to understand how Mutiny is impacting your pipeline. 

When identification is setup correctly, Mutiny will know the email of your user so that we can definitively say “Joe Shmoe saw three different experiences in the past 7 days and just recently signed a contract for $100k”.

The ultimate goal with identification is for Mutiny to know whenever a user inputs their email on your site. To help with this, we've built out a few different options that will help you "tell" Mutiny a user's email.

Hubspot

If you use Hubspot forms on your website, setting up your Hubspot integration should be most of what you need for a proper identification implementation.

When a user lands on your site that has Hubspot and Mutiny installed, they’ll be identified anonymously by both systems with a cookie. The Hubspot cookie is called `hubspotutk` and the Mutiny cookie is called `mutiny.user.token`. As soon as this user lands on your site, Mutiny will be able to match both of those values to a single user.

Now, when a user submits a Hubspot form on your site, they’ll provide their email. The `hubspotutk` cookie is automatically submitted with the form too, which means your Hubspot instance will now have linked the `hubspotutk` cookie and the user’s email.

Finally, using the Hubspot <> Mutiny integration, we’ll be able to search your Hubspot instance for that original cookie that we captured, and link that Mutiny visitor to the email address in Hubspot.

Marketo

Marketo works very similarly to Hubspot. If you use Marketo forms on your site, setting up your Marketo integration should be most of what you need for a proper identification implementation.

When a user lands on your site that has Marketo and Mutiny installed, they’ll be identified anonymously by both systems with a cookie. The Marketo cookie is called `_mkto_trk` and the Mutiny cookie is called `mutiny.user.token`. As soon as this user lands on your site, Mutiny will be able to match both of those values to a single user.

When a user submits a Marketo form on your site, they’ll provide their email. The `_mkto_trk` cookie is automatically submitted with the form too, which means your Marketo instance will now have linked the `_mkto_trk` cookie and the user’s email.

Finally, using the Marketo <> Mutiny integration, we’ll be able to search your Marketo instance for that original cookie that we captured, and link that Mutiny visitor to the email address in Marketo.

Segment

Segment works very similarly to Hubspot and Marketo. If you track user's on your site using Segment, setting up your Segment integration should be most of what you need for a proper identification implementation.

When a user lands on your site that has Segment and Mutiny installed, they’ll be identified anonymously by both systems with a cookie. The Segment cookie is called `ajs_anonymous_id` and the Mutiny cookie is called `mutiny.user.token`. As soon as this user lands on your site, Mutiny will be able to match both of those values to a single user.

When a user submits a form on your site, they’ll provide their email. The `ajs_anonymous_id` cookie will then be associated with an email, which means your Segment instance will now have linked the `ajs_anonymous_id` cookie and the user’s email. At this point, it's important that the user’s email is specifically associated with the Segment trait key of `email`.

Finally, using the Segment <> Mutiny integration, we’ll be able to search your Segment instance for that original cookie that we captured, and link that Mutiny visitor to the email address in Segment.

Identification script

If none of the above options work for you, you can manually pass a user's email back to Mutiny using our Identifcation script.