Hi BeyondKey,
I also encountered the issue you said.
After I reviewed the thread which you posted before:
https://community.dynamics.com/crm/f/microsoft-dynamics-crm-forum/387247/track-contact-name-for-page-visit-in-dynamics-365-marketing
tested you current issue and read documentation, now I think there is a better explanation for all of them.
As we have found, there are three different types of visit record:
* no name, Anonymous
* contacts' name, Named
* contacts' name, Anonymous
Type 1 record will be created when clients open marketing page without any submission.
Type 2 record will be created when clients open marketing page via link in marketing email, or when clients submit form and then reload the page.
(If clients submitted form and reloaded page for serveral time, then it will create serveral type 2 records.)
Type 3 record is special, it will be created when clients submit form, but clients has visited page as anonymous visitor previously. In other word, type 3 is actually converted from type 1.
So why our contact become anonymous again when they open page directly?
It could be said that there are two factors to control whether a visitor is named.
Marketing email link(or link cookie) and Automatically generated cookie(submission cookie) after form submission
Marketing email link:
Because specific unique parameters are encoded in link in marketing email, so the page script will recognize visitors' identity and takes these parameters to match existing contact(a link cookie is set in browser), then the visit record will be in "Named" status.
Automatically generated cookie:
If visitor submits form, then a cookie will be set in his/her browser.
an example:
visitor opens the page. (visit record 1)
↓
visitor reloads the page. (visit reord 2)
↓
visitor submits the form
↓
visitor reloads the page twice. (visit reord 3)
↓
visitor reloads the page third time. (visit reord 4)
↓
visitor closed browser
↓
visitor opens the page again. (visit reord 5)
Before submission, it's obvious that visit record 1 and visit record 2 will be type 1 record.
After submission, a cookie is set to clients' browser, visit record 1 and visit record 2 will be converted into type 3 record,
the following visit record 3 and 4 will be type 2 record due to cookie has been set.
However, cookie will be removed due to clients closed browser and open again, so visit record 5 will be type 1 record again.
Thats why visit records of subscription center are always in Named status, because we are always required to open the SC page via Marketing email link.
For landing page, we will open it directly in most of time, and cookie will be cleared after browser is closed,
but if client checked "Remember Me" to enable prefilling form feature, the cookie will always be in browser regardless of browser closing.
;By this way, following visit records will still be 'Named' status.
Now we know how will form visitor become a "known contact":
For Landing page:
1. Form visitor opens the page via the link, and keeps browser open.(link cookie)
2. Form visitor could open the page directly but he/she should submit form at least once, then keeps browser open.(submission cookie)
Obviously, above approaches make no sense because we won't always keep browser open.
Thus the third would be the only option for us to track customer as "known contact"
3. Whatever way visitor takes to open landing page, make sure he/she could check the "Remember me" option, in other word, the form could be always prefilled after the first time submission.
(We could image that customer might doesn't like to be tracked if he/she doesn't check the option.)
For Subscription Page, the page will be always opened via link, and prefilling feature is always enabled, thus the form visitor will be guaranteed as "known contact" for each time visit.
Regards,
Clofly
