Going from unidentified visitor to known contacts¶
Info
What's the difference between anonymous and known contact?
Anonymous contacts are visitors to your site who have not yet interacted in a way that reveals their identity, such as completing a form. They are tracked primarily by their IP address and are often hidden in segments to avoid visual clutter.
Known contacts, on the other hand, have taken an action that provides identifiable information, such as submitting a form, which allows Mautic to collect additional data like their name, email address, or social media handles.
Mautic allows for the tracking of the entire visitor journey, matching records over the time to fill an entire contact profile. It means that you have a history since their first interaction, even before they become a known contact, allowing you to start personalizing their experience based on their behavior. This process is essential for gathering pre-engagement data.
Additional context
All this information enables marketers to create targeted campaigns and build detailed profiles. While anonymous contacts are tracked by cookies, they remain anonymous until they choose to identify themselves, and if they never do, they stay anonymous.
Mautic uses progressive profiling to gradually collect more information about a contact over time, for example, reducing form length by hiding fields already filled out by known contacts.
Success
Anonymous contacts can become known contacts automatically if they later identify themselves, at which point their historical data is linked to their new profile.
Note
Your Mautic instance has visitor tracking capabilities that adheres to privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA, so users must consent for data collection.
Steps¶
- Ensure your Mautic installation is set up for visitor tracking.
- Navigate to the Contacts page in Mautic's admin panel.
- Switch to the anonymous contacts view by clicking on the incognito button to see visitors' IP addresses and site activity.
Results¶
- A list of anonymous contacts with associated IP addresses and behavior on your site.
- You can identify and monitor the behavior of these anonymous contacts.
Note
This functionality helps you to create enhanced marketing strategies based on the visitor data.